Edward Snowden’s Wake-up Call : Cyber Security, Surveillance and Democracy

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Edward Snowden, in his courageous, principled expose, has brought out how USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on most nations in the world. This spying is clearly to establish or strengthen USA's political, economic and military global clout. India is the fifth-most spied-upon nation, even more than China and Russia. Considering that India is USA's strategic partner, spying on India is breach of faith. Iran tops the list (14 billion pieces of intelligence); then come Pakistan (13.5 billion), Jordan (12.7 billion), Egypt (7.6 billion), and India (6.3 billion). Major General S.G. Vombatkere

[Ref.1] It is piquant that India, USA's strategic partner, is in the “club” of Iran, Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, where USA perceives “threat” to its global hegemony. USA has other strategic partners and doubtless they too are being spied upon, and many national leaders, notably of Turkey, Germany and Russia, have raised serious objections. But India is USA's junior and subservient strategic partner due to the long-term, built-in subservience of India's political and bureaucratic architects of the strategic alliance.

There has been no official Indian protest and there is unlikely to be even a squeak on this sovereignty issue. However, people's voices have been raised, especially from within USA, against USA's presidentially-sanctioned, global electronic spying and surveillance. These voices are directed simultaneously at demanding recognition and protection of individual privacy rights, calling for accountability and transparency of U.S presidential and Congress decisions, and attempting to influence USA to pardon whistleblower Edward Snowden who is still in hiding.

Snowden's expose on the heels of the commencement of the trial of that other courageous and righteous prisoner-of-conscience whistleblower Bradley Manning, is a grievous blow to the pride of NSA and the U.S establishment. Thus these whistleblowers are “traitors” who need to be punished severely because they have weakened USA against its “enemies”, self-created and self-imagined. Added to the list of “traitors” are the courageous people in The Guardian and Washington Post, like Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, who actually brought Snowden's leaked information to public glare. It is now clearer than ever before that USA's official enemy is not this country or that, not Al Qaeda or Taliban, not this religion or that, but the spread of peace and real democracy, and the demands for human and civic rights, all of which threaten the pre-eminence of the military-industrial complex MNCs which run USA from behind a teflon curtain.

http://asiantribune.com/node/62920

Opinion from India.

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