Edward Snowden is Not the Issue (Les DernièresNouvellesd'Alsace, France)
"Stealing large quantities of entirely personal data at
will, the NSA's PRISM program is a major slap in the
face for both democratic and republican ideals otherwise trumpeted to the world
by the United States. ... given the enormity of these issues, doubts about the
motives of the man behind the NSA revelations are insufficient as a distraction."
Is
technological progress still compatible with individual liberty? One has to
question this, considering the scale of the espionage conducted, thanks to the
Internet, by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Stealing large quantities
of entirely personal data at will, the NSA's PRISM
program is a major slap in the face for both democratic and republican ideals
otherwise trumpeted to the world by the United States.
The
implementation of this surveillance state reveals the degree to which modern
communications technologies have accentuated the imbalance between citizens and
the authorities. The digital age has not only expanded the speed, quantity and
nature of information in circulation to an astonishing extent, but has also
made possible things which, up to now, could not even be contemplated and which,
even in Orwell’s nightmares, had their limits: large-scale surveillance of
individuals, even down to their most private activities.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Homo modernicus [modern man] has extreme traceability. In
the event that its foundations are threatened, a democracy may be presumed to
know how to defend itself, secreting antibodies against this type of attack. In
reality, it must be noted that the legal safeguards are reversed on the grounds
of national security or the war on terror. A great space of freedom, the
Internet also plays the role of a place for the erosion of individual liberty
and a suppressor of the prerogatives granted by our societies to their members:
the right to oblivion, the separation of the personal and professional spheres,
and control over the dissemination of information about each person.
In
the face of the enormity of these issues, doubts about the motives of the man
behind the NSA revelations are insufficient as a distraction. After all, no
matter the origin of a grain of sand, what it reveals of the faults in a system
of government said to be democratic can nonetheless be informative.
