Big Brother Is Alive

Unfortunately when we are having our own problems, we tend to ignore the big crisis of Western democracy and the attack on it by both the U.S. and the United Kingdom’s secret services.

Everything happening in international diplomacy these days, related to the extradition of Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, exposes the Orwellian state of 1984.

The young American, who can be seen as a hero of global democracy, revealed some shocking information.

The secret services of two of the most democratic countries have developed a computer network that soon became the international Big Brother. Personal communications data of billions of people were recorded, stored and processed without any democratic or moral legalization. They have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and both the political leaders — shame on Barrack Obama! — do not feel ashamed to claim that they are the ones who had been robbed. This way they are making authoritative governors, like Vladimir Putin, look as if they are defending citizens’ rights — that would again include everyone who cannot resist against the American-British arbitrariness.

It is uncertain that the Americans will manage to get Snowden extradited to the U.S. so as to face a trial in U.S. courts for spying. (This is another Orwellian characteristic: It is newspeak to blame the one who uncovered the whole truth for spying.)

The ideal would be to learn more about the attack on citizens’ rights. We should at least be aware of the way Big Brother is acting and take precautions.

However, European authorities need to move quickly. They are the only remaining fortress of democracy. They should assist at least in a political way in Edward Snowden’s struggle and take the lead in revealing the dishonorable practices that Obama and Cameron had been using, which would be more than enough to make their ancestors ashamed of how their political descendants have ended up.

“The price of democracy is eternal vigilance,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote. The poor man could not have imagined that this vigilance should be the governments’ aim after his long struggle managed to establish it as a democracy.