The American Administration is saying that the objective behind the surveillance of American people in the States and others abroad, by NSA and other American intelligence services, is "to keep the citizens safe." The critically important question that should be pertains to the reason why some people initiate terrorist attacks against the United States. The answer is a simple one: Because the U.S. national-security state is killing, torturing, kidnapping, humiliating, impoverishing, and destroying the citizens of foreign countries through policies that include coups, support of dictatorships, regime-change operations, interference with internal politics, deep involvement in foreign disputes, assassinations, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, secret imprisonment, and so forth. The two preceding paragraphs are my verbatim translation of a piece written by Jacob Hornberger, the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, and titled: The Role of Foreign Policy in Security-State Surveillance. Hornberger is a well-known American activist. His piece is in line with a column I wrote last Wednesday, complaining that following the Boston and London latest attacks, the international media discussed everything but the reasons behind terrorism. My column was much more conservative than what Hornberger wrote, since he is a US citizen writing about his country, which is not my case. I just read that the surveillance scandal of the NSA is "the greatest scandal in the history of the American intelligence services", knowing that this is the New York Times' opinion, not mine. Indeed, the agency has been spying on the phones, emails and personal accounts of millions of Americans who are not accused of anything. The spying activity has also reached citizens of other countries and it seems that Britain played a part in the scandal, all under the pretext of safeguarding the safety of citizens. This is of course a lie. The surveillance failed to stop a terrorist explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and it failed to prevent terrorists in Britain from killing a soldier with machetes. The "greatest scandal" was exposed by a young 29 year old American man called Edward Snowden, who was able to uncover the surveillance of the citizens, thanks to his job as the manager of technological affairs in Booz Allen Hamilton, a company contracted by the Ministry of Defense. Snowden looked into the computer system of the NSA and discovered the illegal surveillance. He complained about this to his bosses who just ignored his complaint, so he revealed the information he had to the London Guardian and the Washington Post, thus starting the greatest scandal in the history of the US intelligence services, which operate through 16 agencies and a budget amounting to tens of billions of dollars. Snowden left his girlfriend, a night club dancer, back home and he hid in Hong Kong, which he could have left by now. He probably wants to seek political asylum in a country that has no extradition treaty with the USA. Snowden told the Guardian that he cannot allow the American government to destroy people's personal freedoms and individual rights. He also said that his sole objective was to expose the actions and violations that the government is perpetrating in the name of the people. He further insisted that the government is collecting electronic intelligence data in an illegal manner and also alluded to the existence of the right atmosphere for the establishment of a "government tyranny." The word tyranny was mentioned in several columns dealing with the scandal. It is as if we are talking about a third world regime persecuting its citizens and any other citizens that it can reach. I must add that Snowden first contacted a well-known American political activist, Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is a writer and a lawyer who is the Guardian's correspondent in the USA. I always admired him and I referred to him in my April 23 column about the "neo-atheists." In that column, I alluded to the good writers who responded to the neo-atheists and I indicated that Greenwald was the best in that context, since he exposed their racism against Islam and the Muslims. In conclusion, I do not mind that the American intelligence services spy on me. I have nothing worth uncovering. However, it seem that many have things that they prefer to keep secret. [email protected]
