Two extremely important news breaks — one by the Guardian, and the second by the Washington Post — have confirmed what many have long suspected: that the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US government have been and are snooping on practically every call, online chat, email, Facebook post and skype call made, under top secret programs that have now been exposed.
Two extremely important news breaks — one by the Guardian, and the second by the Washington Post — have confirmed what many have long suspected: that the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US government have been and are snooping on practically every call, online chat, email, Facebook post and skype call made, under top secret programs that have now been exposed.
The Guardian exposed how the Obama administration obtained a military court order to force telecom companies to share call records of all their millions of American users. The Washington Post, a day later, exposed how the US, using a never-disclosed program called PRISM, directly
accessed all online information from the central servers of nine internet giants — Google (including gmail), Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, Skype, Apple and two others. Dropbox is their next target. These exposures confirm what has long been suspected and have triggered a massive public uproar in the US and globally (since the central servers of these companies contain the data of all customers, located in different parts of the world).
In a further exposure, the Guardian has revealed how the US has been spying on people of all countries. According to its report, in the month of March 2013 alone, the US NSA collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks world-wide. This includes 3 billion from computer networks in US. According to this report Iran topped the list of countries spied upon (14 billion) followed by Pakistan (13.5 billion), Jordan (12.7 billion), Egypt (7.6 billion) and India (6.3 billion).
These are part of the attacks of the US administration on the rights and freedoms of the American people as well people all over the world, attacks which have been justified time and again in the name of “internal security”.
These exposures reveal, one again, the true nature of the US imperialist state. The state that promotes itself as the leader in “defending democracy and freedom” has no hesitation in blatantly violating people’s rights and secretly spying on its own citizens and on people all over the world. This same state arrogates to itself the right to brutally interfere in the affairs of sovereign nations, including direct military intervention, in the name of “exporting democracy” and carrying out “regime change”, in order to suit its own geo-political imperialist interests.
The concentration of this spying on countries in West Asia and South Asia, including in countries whose governments are considered as strategic allies of the US (Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and India) reveal the intent of US imperialism to crush all opposition to its efforts at complete domination of this region. It shows that US imperialism is the biggest enemy of the freedom and independence of peoples, both at home and abroad.
The efforts of the Indian state to establish a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) should be seen in this same light. It wants to crush the growing opposition of the working class and people to its anti popular policies under the signboard of “war against terrorism” and internal security.
These are signs of growing fascism, under the signboard of democracy and fighting terrorism. People cannot afford to accept these bogus justifications for violating their privacy and their national sovereignty.
Mazdoor Ekta Lehar condemns these steps being taken by the US state and other imperialist states, and calls on all democratic and peace loving forces to combat this growing fascism.