Enemies of the Internet
by digby
The government that prides itself on its constitution and guarantee of civil rights must be doubly proud today:
The U.S. government is an enemy of the Internet, according to an annual list released by Reporters Without Borders.
The press freedom group chided the Obama administration for its surveillance activities through the National Security Agency (NSA), which it claimed have "undermined confidence in the Internet and its own standards of security."
“U.S. surveillance practices and decryption activities are a direct threat to investigative journalists, especially those who work with sensitive sources for whom confidentiality is paramount and who are already under pressure,” the organization said.
The U.S. had never before been included on Reporters Without Borders’ "Enemies of the Internet" list. Other countries listed as enemies include Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea, as well as the United Kingdom, which was criticized for its Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Along with the NSA, the GCHQ was implicated in many of the programs unveiled in leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“The Internet was a collective resource that the NSA and GCHQ turned into a weapon in the service of special interests, in the process flouting freedom of information, freedom of expression and the right to privacy,” Reporters Without Borders said.
According to documents released by Snowden, the NSA actively worked to weaken encryption standards, have private software firms reduce their tools’ security and capture information about the users of major Web companies like Google and Facebook.
Disclosures about the controversial surveillance programs have caused a stir around the world and upset advocates of freedom online.
This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called President Obama to denounce personally the breadth of the surveillance programs. In a post on his website, he said that the government’s activities are posing a “threat” to the Internet.
At the same time, the NSA was denying reports that it had posed as Facebook in order to infect targeted computers with malware.
The internet shouldn't feel singled out anymore. We now know they have the capability of collecting recordings of 100% of the phone calls to and from certain countries so they can go back and listen to them later. But that is no cause for alarm at all. What could possibly go wrong with that? True, this one of the reasons they are building the massive storage facility in Utah (all those recording and metadata take up a lot of space!) but that doesn't mean we should be concerned.
Clearly, we need all of this to fight Islamic terrorism. (How could they have ever caught this dangerous terrorist madman without it? Oh never mind. They did catch him without it.) But I'm sure there are lots more terrorists out there making phone calls and writing emails and the government needs to have a recording of every single bit of communication in the world just in case. To keep us safe.
And if they happen to overhear some other stuff well, that's the price you pay for freedom.
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