EVERYBODY UNDER CONTROL
Frei Betto*
The new hero of democratic transparency is called Edward Snowden, he is 29 years of age, born in Maryland close to Fort Meade where the powerful NSA (National Security Agency) has its headquarters. He did not finish high school and was exempted from military service in 2003 due to an accident. As he showed great talent for computer science, the CIA employed him.
He is now hiding in Hong Kong for having denounced and proved that the USA government, through the NSA, controls the private life of millions of citizens. The Guardian and the Washington Post published the documents about the Prisma project which Snowden leaked in May 2013. He worked for companies contracted by the NSA like Dell and, more recently, for Booz Allen Hamilton.
http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2008/02/13/amazonia-an-ecocide-foreseen/
The documents prove that the NSA became the true Big Brother described in George Orwell’s celebrated novel 1984. It can enter your email, record all your phone calls, collect all the data from your credit card and has been monitoring the private life of almost 5 million citizens. According to Snowden, all he needs is a person’s email in order to access his or her computer’s total contents.
With the invention of Facebook it is no longer necessary to recruit spies. Many users describe their daily routine, preferences and even romantic intimacies there. Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor, admits that “we use the information (shared by users), to prevent potentially illegal activities”. All Facebook enthusiasts, when they click “Like”, accept that all their information will be “transferred and filed in the USA”.
“I don’t want to live in a world in which all I do and say will be registered” says Snowden. He added that he acted as he did because “I progressively became aware that presidents can lie in order to stay in power and ignore their public promises without any consequences”.
The Obama administration is embarrassed. The documents prove that the NSA cheats on innumerable US laws, and is protected by “secret laws”, a resource which to the horror of the principles of law, is adopted by dictatorships. Snowden hopes that his country’s Justice will contest the electronic vigilance practised on a large scale by the NSA.
Edward Snowden now enters a select list of whistleblowers. One of the more famous is Daniel Ellsberg who worked for the State Department and in 1971 leaked Pentagon papers denouncing the true character of the Vietnam war. At the time, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a research institute closely linked to American secret services.
Ellsberg leaked 43 ultra confidential volumes holding 7000 pages proving that, from Eisenhower to Nixon, every president had lied regarding US involvement in Vietnam. This caused a switch in public opinion which then demanded an end to the war causing Uncle Sam’s defeat.
Nixon was so furious that, after offending the denouncer’s progenitor, he had Ellsberg’s psychiatric consulting rooms invaded in search of information which could discredit him – he also tried to place LSD in his soup. The trial ended in 1973 when Ellsberg’s defence proved that illegal wire tapping and fabricated “proofs” had been confirmed. Today, at 82 years of age, he defends the young people who have set alerts in motion.
Another whistleblower is Bradley Manning, a military analyst in Iraq who, at 22, passed 700,000 documents over to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks.
Like Snowden and Manning, how could subordinates have access to ultra secret documents? The answer, according to analysts, is the panic that has swept over the USA after the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001. The haste to recruit agents for espionage services impedes more careful selection.
“One of our obligations is to guarantee that the US remains permanently secure” declared Democrat senator Dianne Feinstein after Snowden’s denunciations. Obama was not less emphatic: “We must admit that it is not possible to have 100% security and, at the same time, 100% privacy and no inconvenience”.
This is the legitimisation of the Police State, capable of controlling all citizens. The fear of domestic terrorism today causes 56% of North Americans to favour telephone and electronic patrolling of the population.
We therefore have an imitation of democracy. A democracy lacking freedom and privacy. Proving that democracy and individual freedom are not compatible is, without a doubt, Osama Bin Laden’s victory.
ABOUT FREI BETTO
He is a Brazilian Dominican with an international reputation as a liberation theologian.
Within Brazil he is equally famous as a writer, with over 56 books to his name. In 1985 he won Brazil’s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers’ Union.
Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church’s ministry to workers in São Paulo’s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST).
tags: usa-ausspioniermethoden 2013-prism
http://exame.abril.com.br/tecnologia/noticias/os-grandes-numeros-da-espionagem-americana
“Wikileaks zeigt offene Wunden.” (Sao Paulo)
Der Umgang mit einem brasilianischen Systemkritiker in Berlin, laut Landesmedien: http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2012/12/08/brasiliens-ex-prasident-lula-in-berlin-2012-brasilianer-in-berlin-weisen-auf-fehlende-kritische-fragen-an-lula-ua-angesichts-der-verurteilung-von-engen-lula-mitarbeiternmensalao-skandalheikle/
Laut “Jornal do Brasil” war ein brasilianischer Systemkritiker, der Spruchbänder(”Brasilien ist das Land der Korruption – Brasilien verbreitet Lügen über seine wirtschaftliche Realität”) entrollt hatte, aus dem Saal “rasch entfernt” worden – per Internetsuche wurden in deutschsprachigen Medien keinerlei Hinweise auf diesen Vorfall gefunden, was Bände spricht. (Hatten Sie was darüber in ihrem Leitmedium gesehen? Über ein halbes Jahr später, im Juni 2013, sind die Themen des brasilianischen Systemkritikers auf einmal “in”…)
„Wir müssen weniger rauben – vielleicht für zwei Monate!“ – Humorvideo anklicken: http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2013/06/28/brasilien-systemkritikerproteste-2013-wir-mussen-weniger-rauben-polithumor-uber-eine-prasidentin-und-ihre-minister-anklicken/
« „Boomland“ Brasilien – die aktuelle Einkommenslage 2013: Umgerechnet 548 Euro mittleres Realeinkommen der Beschäftigen(mit und ohne Arbeitsvertrag) im April, laut neuesten Daten des gewerkschaftsnahen Statistikinstituts DIEESE. Viele Waren des täglichen Bedarfs, darunter Grundnahrungsmittel, in Deutschland billiger. Über 55000 Gewalt-Tote jährlich in Brasilien. – Brasilien-Systemkritikerproteste 2013: „Wir müssen weniger rauben – vielleicht für zwei Monate!“ Polithumor über eine Präsidentin und ihre Topleute, anklicken. Julia Rabello in der Rolle einer Präsidentin. »
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