Are we getting used to surveillance?

I was remembering about the summer 2013. It was middle June, right after the first Edward Snowden’s revelations about the massive surveillance activity of NSA against alleys but also the same US citizens she has to protect. In these days there was really some kind of revolution, all the media were involved in the World biggest disclosure about control technologies and, in reaction to this pacific revolution, we have gained knowledge and safety. Government infrastructures are more safe, citizen computing is more safe, cryptography is spread as never before but what about now?

Yesterday, in a tweet, Glenn Greenwald has linked an article about Regin: a particular, extremely advanced malware (compared to Stuxnet) that maybe was used by UK and US to spy on UE  and Belgian telecommunications.

The point is that this is no more a breaking news…

A comment in particular down this tweet was:

spy agencies spying, who would’ve thunk it?

What kind of comment is this? It’s obvious that “spy agencies spy” but the problem of the datagate is that

1. NSA is not a spy agency. It does not intelligence. NSA is not the CIA but the National Security Agency, so NSA goal is to protect US citizens and not to collect massive data about them.
2. NSA and GCHQ are not only generally spying but they are spying on their own citizens/infrastructure and on infrastructures of alley Countries. Ambassadors telecommunications were tracked and many spy were done to even assure economical advantages.

That’s the problem of the datagate. It’s no more a spy vs spy like in the cold war between USA ad URSS, that’s an internal spy and an economic war between alleys, out of the National Security vocation of these agencies.

And what’s wrong, in my opinion, is the continuation of the comment to Greenwald’s tweet that asserts that this is the “new normal”, as we have to accept this current state of things.

Just why? There is no good reason to accept as “normal” something that is clearly wrong, just because it is wide spread. In democracy, citizens are the only one that may define what is normal and what is not, and if we accept these control practices, then we’ll be no more able to revoke them.

So, before to get used to bad things just because you know their existence, think that there’s always another way to grant democracy, safety and peace that is not massive control.

Advertisements