How Nice to Know Obama Is Spying on My Emails (and Yours, Too …)

A few days ago, I attended an unusual meeting for Italian standards: a conference open to the public with Markus Seiler, the head of the Swiss intelligence agency. It took place in Bellinzona, without any particular security measures, and with the usual Swiss simplicity, introduced by Norman Gobbi, Ticino’s minister of the interior. It was an interesting and calm evening, during which Seiler claimed: “As of today, 80 percent of emails make a quick stop in Washington or London where they are copied and archived. Only encrypted and classified emails slip through this gigantic net.”

Seiler refrained from making any political judgment, but the tone of his speech was clear; it was as if he were asking the audience, “Are you OK with that?”

I am a journalist, not a diplomat, so I have the right to answer this question: No, I am not OK with that. I am very pleased to know that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, is interested in my private and professional life, involving British Prime Minister David Cameron, but it is not acceptable that all my emails, as well as yours, dear reader, be immediately copied and stored in a gigantic database.

Lately, I have been reading Orwell’s “1984” again, 30 years after it was published, and turning page after page, I shuddered: Some of the measures of social control from “Big Brother,” written by the great English writer, are actually happening today. Filing everything written by a citizen, tracking his contact network — they know who I write emails to, who my Facebook friends are, they have access to my contact list through WhatsApp — was the dream of every dictator, from Hitler to Stalin and Mao, and now, it has become a reality due to a power that, until yesterday was the bulwark against dictatorship, but now, with the excuse of fighting terrorism, has turned itself into an invasive inquisitor.

It is a piece of cake to refine searches in the database and, it seems to me, target every one of us. The selected and refined data can be used for improper or political ends, from a country that doesn’t hold the state of law in high regard, either at home or abroad. Snowden, the National Security Agency agent who revealed the huge espionage network of American intelligence, had warned us.

Now, the head of Swiss intelligence, Markus Seiler, confirms the existence of a silent, systematic violation of the liberty and sovereignty of all states.

Apart from the Islamic State, the real threat is elsewhere. They are taking everything away from us thanks to the massive complacency that prevents people from even realizing the danger and regression of civilization. You should be alert; Big Brother is here, in your computer. And one day, everything you write may be used against you.

May I ask again, “Is that OK?”