Protect Us from Terrorism ... and Government
Snooping (Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung,
Germany)
"The individual Internet user is helpless against this development. Therefore, companies that conduct their business using the lure of the Internet should be asked to do something. Data protection must urgently be incorporated into devices and software programs. Privacy must become a selling point. ... Democratic states must address a task
that needs to be taken far more seriously in the future than it has in the
past: In addition to surveillance to protect against terrorism, they must also protect
the digital freedom of their citizens so they remain free themselves."
Is the U.S. government
spying extensively on users of Google, Apple, Facebook and Co.? The denials of
the companies are not important, and maybe they are even forced to make them by
the legislation. What matters is the official confirmation from the
authorities.
American military
intelligence, the NSA, has access to tons of e-mail,
photos, videos and other stored data - and maybe not even through a “backdoor”
into the network servers of the companies concerned, but certainly on a legal
basis. Therefore, the companies can't change anything, but must simply provide
the state with the available data.
And that is said not
only to pillory the United States, because this certainly applies to
many other countries, most of which do not have a well-functioning democratic
order. What is so sobering is the fact that this is precisely the approach of
a country that has free elections and a functioning separation of powers.
Why are companies like
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL and Apple
mentioned, but not Amazon and the short message service Twitter?In any event, despite America's
official confirmation, aren't we still largely in the dark when it comes to
these cyber-snoopings?
Amazon is, after all,
one of the largest service providers of data storage in digital cloud
computing. And short, real-time messages are exchanged across the world, mostly
via Twitter. Here, only part of the truth has been published. And how is it
possible to undertake such large-scale surveillance with
only $20 million, which is mentioned in the documents?
The individual Internet
user is helpless against this development. Therefore, companies that conduct
their business using the lure of the Internet should be asked to do something. Data protection must urgently be incorporated
into devices and software programs. The manufactures of smartphones, for
example, must ensure that the operating systems encapsulate personal data so it
cannot be read by any of the phone's apps [applications]. Privacy must become a
selling point.
Here also, democratic
states must address a task that needs to be taken far more seriously in the
future than it has in the past: In addition to surveillance to protect against
terrorism, they must also protect the digital freedom of their citizens so they
remain free themselves.
