On America's Global Spying for Selfish National Interest (The Frontier
Post, Pakistan)
"Snowden's revelation of Obama Administration wrongdoing has
rocked Americans and the outside world alike. It has not only triggered a furor,
but has culminated in a debate on the spy apparatus of the U.S. government,
which has invaded the privacy and threatened the hard-earned civil liberties of
people around the world."
Edward
Snowden, a former CIA contractor who worked at the National Security Agency,
revealed himself on Sunday as the source of the bombshell leaks about U.S. surveillance.
The 29-year-old Snowden now faces likely criminal charges on the insistence of U.S.
intelligence. Regardless of the outcome for himself, the courageous Snowden come
forward, saying he sacrificed a comfortable life because he cannot in good
conscience allow the U.S. government, with its massive, secretly-constructed
surveillance machine, to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and essential
liberties around the world.
Acknowledging
his fears of detention without due process or being "rendered,"
Snowden is willing to accept whatever comes. However, he doesn't believe he has
done anything wrong. To the utter dismay of the Obama Administration, the CIA
and NSA, Snowden has shown the true face of the American
government, which has advocated the causes of freedom, privacy, security for
its own people, and world peace. Snowden's revelation of Obama Administration wrongdoing
has rocked Americans and the outside world alike. It has not only triggered a furor,
but has culminated in a debate on the spy apparatus of the U.S. government,
which has invaded the privacy and threatened the hard-earned civil liberties of
people around the world. In fact, the Americans are engaged in the unlawful and
immoral act of global spying for selfish national interest.
With
unfathomable sadness, we now know that Internet giants like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, while making untold billion from their
users, have provided backdoor government access to customer data. Denying that
they gave unfettered access to their data, ISPs say they did so only because
they were legally-compelled to. Whatever their excuses for doing so, the fact
is they have betrayed their subscribers by surreptitiously giving American
spies access to the e-mails, online chats, pictures, files and videos uploaded
by foreign users.
The
explanation put forward by the U.S. government is even flimsier: that the NSA program doesn't involve listening to actual
conversation. But without the availability of such contents, no data analysis
is possible, do this hardly sounds credible. Over the years, under the guise of
a counter-terrorism campaign, the U.S. administration has unleashed an era of
unchecked human rights violations. The selective morality employed by the United
States deserves strong global condemnation, as no civilized society can
tolerate such an infringement of civil liberties.
Whatever
impact Snowden’s revelation have on the Americans, this is an eye-opener for Pakistanis,
particularly those siding with the Americans as allies in the so-called war on
terror. These people should take this as a warning and not assume that what
they do at American insistence is legal. Pakistan must rework its national
policies. The Americans must be asked to rein in their clandestine programs in
order to prevent unnecessary risk to the lives Pakistan's people and assets.
