A Profile of Big Brother in the 21st Century

In the area of privacy and security, the government imposes mandates on individual liberty.

“We will not apologize simply because our [intelligence] services may be more effective.” – Barack Obama.

Exactly 64 years after George Orwell published his celebrated, and now prophetic, work “1984,” on June 5, 2013, The Guardian began to divulge the largest package of leaks from the United States intelligence system ever revealed, which unleashed a political storm of enormous proportions.

The former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden delivered to The Guardian and The Washington Post more than 1 million documents demonstrating not only the way the NSA works both inside and outside of the United States, but — more importantly —exposed the unbelievable reach of its spying and surveillance operations.

The American public discovered that its government had concealed the NSA’s illegal activities to the point of lying about their existence. In March 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in charge of coordinating the 16 security and surveillance agencies in the United States, denied before the Senate that the NSA was illegally compiling data about hundreds of millions of American citizens … at least, “not deliberately.” Three months later, in the face of Snowden’s revelations, Clapper maintained that he had not lied: He had responded in the most truthful way possible.

The Tentacles of the NSA

The NSA receives information from phone communications — the phone numbers of the people involved, time, place and duration of the calls — of hundreds of millions of individuals in the U.S. and worldwide. It has access to the systems of collaborating Internet companies, allowing the NSA to access billions of metadata daily on people and institutions, both inside and outside of the United States.

This access is made easier due to the fact that between 80 and 90 percent of the world’s telecommunication traffic, including cell phone calls, Internet and satellites, passes through servers and fiber-optic cables located in the United States, owned by American corporations.

The NSA was not alone in this work. It has also counted on the collaboration of the intelligence services from the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Australia and other allies that contributed information and received key data for their security. This explains why the reactions of these countries and others affected by the spying have been strictly formalities.

The awareness of these surveillance activities generated a tremendous scandal in the United States, where political pundits have judged that such actions go against the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects the privacy and liberties of citizens. At the same time, the Internet and communications companies involved have seen their corporate images negatively affected and have alleged that they did not always cooperate voluntarily.

From the Cold War to the War on Terror

However, how did this new Big Brother come about that so exceeds the Orwellian monster from “1984?”

In 1952, President Truman created the NSA, which would become the most secret organization in the whole U.S. intelligence system. It was in charge of watching communications and compiling information outside of the United States. During both World Wars, in 1914 and 1939, the U.S. government intercepted all of the communications of their enemies, along with the communications that entered and left its own territory, with the cooperation of private corporations.

Throughout the Cold War, the NSA concentrated on spying on outside enemies — at the time, the Soviet Union and its satellites — through the interception of their telephone, telegraph and radio communications, using satellites and various other surveillance technologies.

With the dissolution of the USSR at the beginning of the 1990s and the resulting end of the Cold War, the activities of the NSA and other parts of the U.S. intelligence system were greatly reduced. This led to a significant decrease in the budgets and activities of these agencies.

Nevertheless, something soon happened that would radically change the situation and Washington’s entire global strategy. The Bush administration used the terrorist surge against American principles, which would culminate in the tragedy that was Sept. 11, 2001, to exponentially strengthen and expand the NSA and its surveillance operations to an unprecedented extent.

Now, it was no longer carrying out surveillance on Kremlin officials to figure out their intentions, but tracking elusive suicide-terrorist cells that were moving stealthily throughout the world, including inside the United States. In addition, the world had entered the digital age. The technological revolution led the NSA to change its surveillance systems, as terrorist groups had also begun to use new forms of technology to communicate. Beginning in the 1990s, the NSA began to design programs and technologies capable of intercepting the ever-increasing telecommunications traffic, first of cell phones and later including the Internet as well.

A scandal very similar to the current one broke out in December 2005 when The New York Times revealed that an executive order signed by Bush in 2002 had authorized the NSA, without first obtaining a court order, to listen to the phone calls of innumerable American citizens. This order was in open violation of the rules that prohibited the agency from spying on its own citizens, except in the case of a specific court order, according to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Despite the public denunciation, Bush got Congress to approve a series of reforms that permitted the NSA, little by little, to go around the regulations imposed on surveillance on all types of communications, both inside and outside of the United States, instead of reinforcing congressional power to audit the intelligence system.

The situation did not change with Barack Obama’s arrival to the White House; in fact, the NSA continued to widen its surveillance instead, as evidenced by Snowden’s leaks.

The 2013 budget for all 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence system — the so-called “black budget” — amounted to $52.6 million, of which the CIA and the NSA received the lion’s share: $14.7 million and $10.8 million respectively. In 2009, Obama’s first year, their budget totaled $40.9 million, in order to maintain an annual average of $52 million.

It has been calculated that about 70 percent of this budget will end up with some 2,000 private contracting companies that sell the government all kinds of goods and services related to security and surveillance. Of the 107,000 employees of the intelligence system, 22,000 work for the NSA, while a similar number is made up of contractors in the private sector.

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In light of the scandal Snowden’s leaks have unleashed, Obama finally announced that he would reform the NSA, including promising not to spy on foreign leaders of allies and to slowly eliminate the massive storage of phone-records information.

Nevertheless, surveillance will continue to operate without major alteration, and it cannot be any other way. To begin with, every government spies and carries out surveillance, not only on other nations —[whether they are] allies or enemies — but also on its own citizens. It is something inherent to the government.

The problem arises when it is revealed that the intelligence apparatus has acquired too much power, overreached its functions, exceeded its authority and violated the Constitution, as has happened in the U.S. and many other countries.

In the age of the Internet and digital communication, privacy has been greatly reduced, while surveillance by agencies such as the NSA has expanded in an unprecedented way. This expanded surveillance allows them to know even the most intimate information about millions of individuals.

As both a superpower and victim of international terrorism, the U.S. has had to reinforce its surveillance systems, but it has developed them to an unacceptable extent. The surveillance agencies have placed themselves above the Constitution and are no longer solely using surveillance to fight terrorism, but also to collect information about millions of people and to obtain diplomatic, economic and political advantages over many countries around the world.

All the same, the conflict between privacy and security, between individual liberty and the government’s mandates will always be an issue and will always be decided in favor of the latter options. As Obama summed up clearly in a recent statement:

“It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. And what I can say is that in evaluating these programs, they make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity.”

The 21st century’s version of Big Brother, embodied by the NSA and other secret agencies of the U.S. and its allies, has existed for many years, even before Orwell illustrated it for us so masterfully in “1984.” Thanks to the technological revolution and its accompanying security challenges, Big Brother has acquired an extraordinary power and global impact in the 21st century that have been impossible to control on certain occasions, even by those who are a part of it.

While terrorism endangers the country and individual freedoms, attacks on the constitution of a country violate the very foundations of the nation and democracy.