[governance] 'Not surprising India has become an important surveillance target'

[parminder]

from the Hindu


  'Not surprising India has become an important surveillance target'

Shobhan Saxena
GLENN GREENWALD: ‘The U.S.’s primary tactic is to try to scare citizens 
of the world by constantly manipulating the threat posed in order to 
induce submission … This has been particularly exposed with these NSA 
stories.’
AP GLENN GREENWALD: ‘The U.S.’s primary tactic is to try to scare 
citizens of the world by constantly manipulating the threat posed in 
order to induce submission … This has been particularly exposed with 
these NSA stories.’

/For some time now, people around the world have suspected their emails 
are being read and phone conversations tapped into by government 
agencies. But there never was any proof. Everybody’s worst fears came 
true in June when Edward Snowden, a system administrator with the U.S. 
National Security Agency, disclosed information about mass electronic 
surveillance programmes being run by the agency since 2007. *Glenn 
Greenwald *broke that story for The Guardian. /

/Since then the American journalist, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, has 
done a series of hard-hitting stories that have exposed the reach of the 
NSA’s secret surveillance operations. His expose about the NSA snooping 
on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s phones and email has already led 
to the cancellation of her state dinner at the White House. /

/Now collaborating with /The Hindu/on a series of stories about the 
NSA’s spying activities in India, Mr. Greenwald spoke to *Shobhan Saxena 
*in the course of their meetings in hotel lobbies and at his house, 
which he shares with his partner David Miranda, 10 dogs and one cat, in 
the middle of Tijuca forest in Rio. Excerpts from the interview: /

*What do you think has been the most important impact of your stories?*

It’s that not only Americans, but people around the world, now 
understand the true aim of the U.S. surveillance system: collect, store, 
and analyse all forms of electronic communication between human beings. 
In other words, their goal is, by definition, to eliminate privacy 
globally. And this realisation has produced profound and intense debates 
on every continent about the value of individual privacy and internet 
freedom, the dangers posed by secret U.S. surveillance, and more 
broadly, the role the U.S. plays in the world.

*Your reports have revealed the United States to be a massive 
surveillance state. This image is very different from the US own 
projection of itself as beacon of individual liberty, freedom and 
protector of individual privacy. How have these revelations affected the 
image of U.S. in the world?*

In the beginning, people assumed that the primary focus (of our reports) 
was going to be on what the National Security Agency is doing and what 
the U.S. surveillance policy is, and what was going to change was how 
Americans thought about spying and how people in the world thought about 
privacy. But what actually changed the most from these stories was how 
people think about America generally — exactly the way you just asked.

These stories revealed a surveillance programme that functioned without 
the knowledge of not just people around the world but also of Americans 
who supposedly hold their government democratically accountable; the 
U.S., it is clear, does not observe any legal limits or ethical 
constraints in its pursuit of power. It’s completely contrary to the 
image it presents to the world.

*Is this process irreversible because both the Republicans and Democrats 
in the US now talk the same language on matters of national security? 
The way the Obama administration has reacted to the reports, it seems 
there is no soul searching happening in Washington.*

I don’t think anything is irreversible when it comes to political 
trends. We saw in the last three to four years how the most entrenched 
tyrannies in the Arab world were weakened, subverted and even uprooted. 
There are all kinds of examples in history of radical changes that 
people never anticipated. So, I don’t think it’s irreversible. I do 
think it’s difficult to change it because of this bipartisan embrace by 
both the parties of not just the national security state in general but 
also America’s role in the world as an empire. But one of the things you 
are already seeing in the five-six weeks since we have been reporting 
the story is a scrambling of partisan divisions. So, half of the most 
vocal support for the reports has come from Republicans, conservatives 
and libertarians; the other half has come from liberals and people on 
the left.

It really has scrambled the normal ideological categories in ways that’s 
unprecedented; you also see in public opinion polls a huge increase in 
the number of people who are genuinely concerned about the excesses of 
the surveillance state, civil liberty abuses and privacy infringements. 
All this suggests that change is probably inevitable when it comes to 
these sorts of questions as a result of these disclosures.

*Your partner David Miranda was detained in London under an anti-terror 
law. Do you think they were really after the documents he was carrying 
or were they trying to intimidate you? *

There is no question their primary goal was intimidation. If their goal 
was to take what he was carrying, they could have done that by detaining 
him for 9 minutes. Instead, they detained him for 9 hours, the maximum 
allowed by law. And they not only detained him, but did so under an 
“anti-terrorism” law. Especially for non-U.S.-and-U.K. citizens, it’s an 
incredibly terrorising thing to hear that you’re being detained by the 
U.K. pursuant to a “terrorism” investigation given that country’s awful 
human rights record over the last decade.

A U.S. official told /Reuters/ that the purpose of David’s detention was 
to “send a message” to those of us reporting on these stories that we 
should stop. It was a thuggish attack on press freedoms.

*There have been attempts in the U.S. to criminalise journalism, as 
happened in the case of /Fox News /and /AP/? Doesn’t this bother you? *

They are already succeeding in creating a climate of fear against 
whistleblowers and sources. That’s why some federal lawyers have told me 
that, at least for now, I shouldn’t go back to the U.S. and I should not 
try to enter the country. It’s pretty extraordinary for American lawyers 
to tell an American journalist that you should not try to re-enter your 
own country for fear that they may try and arrest you.

*So you have not been to the U.S. since you published the stories?*

No, I have not. I have been to Hong Kong and back to Brazil through 
Dubai. I am not saying that I will get arrested, but just the fact that 
it’s even on the table for discussion and that a lot of people feel 
publicly free to advocate this without losing their position or their 
credibility, makes it a real possibility. When you talk about being 
charged by the US government under espionage statutes, it’s not a risk 
that you can casually dismiss.

*Why do you think the NSA has targeted the diplomatic missions and other 
interests of India, which has friendly ties with the U.S.? *

India is an increasingly important country in virtually every realm: 
economic, political, diplomatic and military. The U.S. goal is to 
subject virtually everyone to mass surveillance, but it is not 
surprising that India has become an important surveillance target. 
Ultimately, it’s a question of power: the more the US knows about what 
other countries are doing — not just their governments but their 
companies and populations — the more power the U.S. has vis-à-vis that 
country.

*One of the most shocking revelations in your reports was the 
involvement of several western democracies like the U.K. and Germany in 
these secret surveillance programmes. It seems few countries are willing 
to stand up to the U.S.*

I think the world can be very broadly divided, when it comes to the 
relationship of states with the United States, in three categories. One 
is states that are incredibly subservient to the U.S. and always 
capitulate to its dictates. The other part is the states that are 
generally hostile to the U.S., and then there is a majority of countries 
in the middle that are independent. They ally with the U.S. if their 
interests suggest they should and they oppose the U.S. if they have to.

Most European states are very squarely in the first camp, namely the 
governments that always capitulate meekly and subserviently to the 
dictates of the United States. So you saw lots of feigned anger and 
artificial indignation when these revelations first emerged because the 
citizens of European states were targeted and they actually care about 
privacy. So the governments had to pretend to be angry but what you saw 
was their true colours when U.S. basically told them to deny airspace 
rights to the plane of (Bolivian President) Evo Morales. They complied 
in really extreme ways by denying the airspace to the president of a 
sovereign country. The reason they did that is they are complicit in it: 
virtually all these western European governments; whereas in Latin 
America and to some an extent in Asia, certainly in the Middle East in 
some countries, there is a lot more independence. So the anger that is 
being expressed is to some degree artificial but it’s also more genuine.

*There seems to be hardly any anger against technology firms like 
Facebook, Skype, Google, which almost collaborated with the U.S. 
government in collecting information about people around the world. Now 
these firms claim they didn’t have any choice. Did they have the option 
of saying ‘no’ to the NSA? *

There are legal frameworks that require them to collaborate with the US 
government in its surveillance programme but they have gone beyond 
what’s legally required, just like the telecom companies did during the 
Bush years. The reason is that they benefit massively in all sorts of 
ways from positive relationships with the government. Just the benefits 
they get from collaborating with the U.S. government in terms of this 
massive spying programme vastly outweigh what they think are the costs 
to their customer relation or to their goodwill in the world from doing 
that. One of the reasons they made that calculation was because they 
have been able to do all this in secret; nobody knew they were 
cooperating to this extent and one of the benefits of disclosing what 
they have been doing is that it alters the calculus for them because if 
people start perceiving that these companies are so complicit with the 
US government and their communications are not safe, they will start 
looking for alternatives.

The problem right now is that Facebook, Google and Skype are such 
mammoth entities that it’s almost impossible to avoid using them. If you 
are a 22-year-old, you may be bothered by the fact that Facebook is 
invading your privacy, but when all your friends, all your peers, all 
your employers are on Facebook and demand you to be, it’s very difficult 
to take a principled stand and say ‘I am not going to continue to use 
Facebook or Skype’.

*Your reports have in a way also exposed the so-called mainstream media 
like the /New York Times/ and CNN, which ran more stories about Edward 
Snowden’s personal life than the U.S. surveillance programme. Even you 
came under attack in some newspaper columns. Do you think the space for 
good journalism and investigative reporting is shrinking in global media?*

Yes and no. I think it was completely predictable what they were going 
to do. Even before we disclosed the identity of Snowden I ran a column 
with the intent of predicting that they would try to distract attention 
from the revelations because serving the government’s interest is what 
their function is. They are going to demonise him along with anybody, 
including journalists, who work with him for transparency. That’s what 
they do in every single case. They did that to Daniel Ellsberg 30 years 
ago, 40 years ago. They did that to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning. We knew 
they are going to do that to Snowdon and eventually to me.

But it hasn’t really mattered. The space for investigative reporting in 
some sense has diminished because of how corporatized mass media has 
become, but the way the internet has given rise to all sorts of 
alternative models the space for investigative journalism is larger than 
it ever was. I am a creature of the internet. I started my own blog 
seven years ago and even now when I work for the /Guardian/, I did so by 
demanding total editorial independence. I have my own voice that I am 
not worried about. My career doesn’t depend upon currying favour with 
people in power. I was able to develop this alternative model because of 
the power of the internet and finding my own audience and not having to 
rely on these big institutions. There are lots of other people who are 
doing that in all different realms, in all different cultures, in all 
different places on the planet and it has definitely transformed 
journalism. There is a lot of soul-searching going on inside the /New 
York Times/ and other media outlets on why they were completely frozen 
out of one of the biggest — if not the biggest — media scoops in many 
years. And the reason is that Snowden didn’t trust them to report the 
story aggressively. He didn’t trust them to resist the demands of the US 
government, just like Bradley Manning didn’t trust the /New York Times/ 
or /Washington Post/ and went to Wikileaks. So you are going to see more 
of that as more stories like this end with places or people like me or 
with Wikileaks, rather than in the /New York Times/ and /Washington 
Post/. Their model of journalism is increasingly going to become 
discredited. It’s happening already.

*You are working on a book on this whole affair. Is the book also about 
Edward Snowden? *

Only a part of the book is going to be about my time, my story about how 
I ended up involved in this story and how I ended up with developing a 
relationship with Snowden as my source, how I got the documents, how I 
reported them, my experiences in Hong Kong and afterwards. But the bulk 
of the book is going to be about what the US has done in constructing 
this surveillance state and what the implications and dangers of it are. 
There are going to be new revelations as well based on the documents.

*Some people have suggested that Mr. Snowden could be a false flag. 
Naomi Wolf even wrote an article arguing that this all could be a 
set-up. Did you have any doubt whatsoever about Snowden or authenticity 
of the documents before you sat down to write your stories? *

No, to buy this theory would be so stupid that I didn’t spend a second 
of my time and energy on it. Part of what we all do as human beings is 
based on intuition. You have to make judgments about who is lying to you 
and who is telling the truth, who is not credible, who is tricking you 
and who is being authentic. When I went to Hong Kong, my only goal for 
the first four or five days was to understand everything I possibly 
could about Edward Snowden and to ensure that there was nothing he was 
hiding and he was genuine about what he was claiming. As I had never met 
him before, I spent dozens and dozens of hours with him in the first 
week alone. Speaking face to face with him — four feet away from where 
he was sitting and looking into my eyes — and I had no doubt about what 
he said and who he was. I would rather have people who are excessively 
sceptical rather than excessively gullible but that particular theory 
deserves nothing but contempt.

*You have been living in Rio de Janeiro for eight years now. How do you 
feel living in Brazil? *

I love Brazil. That’s why I have been living here for so long. Of 
course, I was here because of the discriminatory law in the United 
States that prevents my partner from emigrating there even though I 
could emigrate here.

But there is really a robust CIA presence in Rio de Janeiro; the station 
chief of Brazil and Rio is notoriously aggressive in his methods. So I 
assume that I have been spied on and monitored. We had an incident, when 
my partner’s laptop disappeared from the house. But I feel as safe here 
as I would anywhere else. I don’t feel particularly unsafe here. You are 
only so safe when you are carrying in your bag 10,000 top-secret 
documents of the most secretive agency of the most powerful government 
in the world. You don’t have complete safety, but I don’t feel unsafe 
either.

***





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