Gringo Espionage

On Wednesday, The Guardian revealed a secret court order according to which the Obama administration requires telephone companies to provide access to the conversations of millions of people inside and outside the United States. Social networks will also be releasing information to the National Security Agency. The operational program, PRISM, allows the extraction of audio, video, photos and emails.

The existence of espionage is nothing new. What is surprising is its increasingly blatant legalization, including endorsement by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the president of that country. After the Cold War, the U.S. government has been justifying its actions to keep the world under control. The news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center sparked a new fear, incurable and — what a coincidence — only eased by the murder of those they consider to be terrorists. Humans had never been more vulnerable. Train stations, post offices supposedly threatened by Anthrax trafficking and other places were paralyzed. For the past 12 years, we have been subjected to the humiliating task of taking off our shoes in front of immigration guards at airports.

The promise in 2001 that bin Laden would be found hiding under rocks included spying on any country. Due to the sad scenes of 9/11, the U.S. received global solidarity, but expressions of condolences changed, in the course of a week, into the foreign obligation to support U.S. incursions. At the same time, the U.S. advertising industry designed new heroes. Aging Tarzan, Mighty Mouse and Clark Kent/Superman stepped up to bat for the rudest people in Hollywood: Skinny women armed to the thongs and hairless bears that have come to recover the lamentable admiration of new Latin American generations for counterterrorism.

If we did not already believe we were in constant danger, that bin Laden could attack again or that the resurrection of Saddam Hussein could be possible, another story, perhaps more dangerous, is the stifling of the social networks. The leaks that Julian Assange caused with his foundation WikiLeaks were the pretext for intervention in cyberspace. The U.S. made its cyberpolice a gang of kidnappers who operate with virtual impunity anywhere in the world, except in Cuba and other countries that now come to mind; like it or not, they maintain unwavering dignity.

We should not be surprised by the disclosures of The Guardian. In Guatemala, the most recent exhibition of featured abuse was when they offended the former President Portillo, which was not only an injury to his rights but a national humiliation.

My opinion does not contain anti-imperialist sentiments, as you might think, because I believe that Yankee imperialism no longer exists: It is imperialism’s corpse that still causes aftershocks and scares these timid governments. It is a ghost led by a disconcerting sort of man. Jonathan Turley, a columnist for The Guardian, said of him: “Obama has truly crippled the civil liberties movement in the United States.” And the world.