From The Guardian UK: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/19/gchq-we-monster-we-cant-control
We’re subject to huge unwarranted surveillance – but Westminster’s useful idiots are more likely to sanction than criticise it
Simon Jenkins
The Guardian, Thursday 19 September 2013
The Brazilian president cancels a state visit to Washington. The German justice minister talks of “a Hollywood nightmare“. His chancellor, Angela Merkel, ponders offering Edward Snowden asylum. The EU may even end the “safe harbour” directive which would force US-based computer servers to relocate to European regulation. Russians and Chinese, so often accused of cyber-espionage, hop with glee.
In response, an embarrassed Barack Obama pleads for debate and a review of the Patriot Acts. Al Gore refers to the Snowden revelations as “obscenely outrageous“. The rightwing John McCain declares a review “entirely appropriate“. The Senate holds public hearings and summons security chiefs, who squirm like mafia bosses on the run. America’s once dominant internet giants, with 80% of the globe under their sway, now face “Balkanised” regulation round the world as nation states seek to repatriate digital sovereignty.
And in Britain? Nothing. From parliament, the courts, and most of the media, nothing. Snowden, the most significant whistleblower of modern times, briefly amused London when he turned scarlet pimpernel in the summer; then the capital was intrigued when David Miranda was seized by Heathrow police on bogus “terrorism” charges. But the British establishment cannot get excited. It hates whistleblowers, regarding them as not proper chaps.
Nothing better illustrates the gulf that sometimes opens between British and American concepts of democracy. Congress is no puppet of the executive. The US may be brutal in its treatment of leakers such as Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, but the fourth amendment lurks deep in its culture, protecting privacy from the state without due process and “probable cause”. Britain has no such amendment.
What moved Americans about Snowden was not just the scale of NSA hoovering of data – though polls indicate strong aversion – but the lying to Congress. Snowden, a Republican former soldier, was simply shocked at the clear collapse of congressional and judicial oversight. The US had lurched into aping precisely the totalitarian regimes it professed to guard against.
Continue reading at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/19/gchq-we-monster-we-cant-control
