After NSA, Obama Far from Justifying Nobel Prize (SavonSanomat, Finland)
"The spy scandal shaking the world won't help matters. The status
of Obama and the United States as builders of global peace have been badly blemished.
... It is interesting to consider what makes spying and data breaches by an organization
like the NSA acceptable, but the intrusions of individual hacker-hobbyists into
state information systems such a serious crime."
British-born hacker Lauri Love, now living in Finland: Next to Edward Snowden, he is one of America's most wanted hactivists. But are his activities any more condemnable than those of the National Security Agency? There are millions around the world who would say they are not.
More action must be expected from Barack Obama if he
wants to earn his Nobel Peace Prize.
The spy scandal shaking the world won't help
matters. The status of Obama and the United States as builders of global peace have
been badly blemished. The United States justifies its actions based on the
fight against terrorism, but it is difficult to explain why it also needs to spy
on allied leaders.
Spying with modern technology is more effective
than ever before, the volumes of data it gleans are larger, and capacity for processing
information is huge. Technology makes it possible for more spying, and spies no
longer need to physically penetrate offices. It is enough to know how to hack
into computer systems.
The change in scale over the past 60 years is
difficult to grasp - but let us try.
The U.S. National Security Agency - the NSA,
was founded in 1952. In its formative years it was already an effective
organization, with tens of thousands of pages of intelligence material gathered
on any working day.
Today, the NSA is perhaps the world’s most
powerful hacking and phishing organization. It has been able to infiltrate
Google and Yahoo data centers in various parts of the world, having cut into their
cables to access hundreds of millions of user accounts.
Just last winter, the NSA was able to listen into
60 million calls in Spain in just a single month, and French Le Monde revealed recently that the NSA
has snooped on 70 million calls in France.
But the data gathered through massive spying
and phone tapping via the search engine and data cables merely scratches the
surface of what modern intelligence apparatus is capable of.
It would be naive to assume that Finland is safe
from this snooping and espionage.
Finland is a small country, and the interests
of larger states aren't much directed at it. Nevertheless, Finnish government authorities,
the police, the defense forces, have likely spied on individuals, too, or have
at least tried to do so. So it has been before, and there is no reason to believe
it won't be true in the future.
It is also unlikely that the Finnish Foreign Ministry
is the only ministry that other governments are interested in. This reality is
also reflected in the way the country’s leaders have responded to the issue:
calmly, pragmatically, and hopefully, effectively.
All states are capable of searching for and collecting
information, and determining when such collection becomes illegal can be
difficult. Which is why it is so interesting to follow the foreign policy and
security advice of the United States. The range is substantial: search for justifications,
don't talk about the issue, apologize for attacks, and of course, intimidate.
For example, at first, spying on Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s phone was entirely denied. Then, it was admitted. Ultimately, information
was relayed to the public that Obama had ordered a complete cessation of the
eavesdropping. Prior to all this, the United States had explained that phone
tapping was only one of a number of other necessary counter-terror operations.
Of course, this is a lame explanation, because
of how difficult it is to show how listening to Merkel’s phone calls prevents terrorism.
It is also interesting to consider what makes
spying and data breaches by an organization like the NSA acceptable, but the
intrusions of individual hacker-hobbyists into state information systems such a
serious crime.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Data leaker Edward
Snowden, who paved the way for the exposure of all this espionage, currently ranks
number one as a target of the United States. A
close second is Finland-based Brit Lauri Love, who is suspected of having hacked into the
U.S. military, NASA, and government information systems.
So Lauri Love will not be the last young nerd to mock the most protected information systems, and who
the United States would see behind bars for years.
Although the United States now find itself
caught in a devilishly tight spot, one should remember that intelligence plays
a significant role in preventing terrorism. The fuss Snowden began, however, has
forced to think about where the boundaries of intelligence gathering should be,
and what it should be used for.