US Spy operations annoy Europe
-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL
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For years now,
especially since the so-called Cold war era, European nations look to USA for
their survival and Washington readily made full use of the threat of Soviet
ideological expansionism to keep European continent under literally its
custody. NATO terror operations have been a formidable binding force
among the western capitalist terrocracies.
So much so, most of
European nations always decide polices and plans keeping in view the US
interests.
Since capitalism
remains the base of their policies, Europeans cannot easily tear themselves
away from US domination and control mechanism. They willingly play second
fiddle to Washington’s terror muse while CIA conduct spy operations to know all
secrets of the European allies so that it can plan in advance its
maneuverings.
As the only super power of
the globe, USA now officially controls the world powers.
None can challenge or question America.
It is obvious that USA has
the largest spy network today, collecting
complete information about individuals, groups, organizations,
nations and world leaders.
Exposure of US spy networks
by Snowden has taken the world by surprise and shock.
Privacy of individuals, especially the global leaders, has
become a major causality of the nefarious spy operations.
The US spying
scandal broke in early June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that
the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of
tens of millions of Americans. The paper published the secret court order
directing telecommunications company Verizon to hand over all its telephone
data to the NSA on an "ongoing daily basis".
That report was
followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that the NSA
tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Face book,
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in
a surveillance program known as Prism. Britain's electronic
eavesdropping agency GCHQ was also accused of gathering
information on the online companies via Prism.
Shortly afterwards,
the Guardian revealed that ex-CIA systems analyst Edward Snowden was
behind the leaks about the US and UK surveillance programs. He has been
charged in the US with theft of government property, unauthorized communication
of national defence information and willful communication of classified
communications intelligence.UK spy agency 'taps fibre-optic cables'
The GCHQ
scandal widened on 21 June when the Guardian reported that the UK spy
agency was tapping fibre-optic cables that carry global communications and
sharing vast amounts of data with the NSA, its US counterpart. GCHQ was
able to boast a larger collection of data than the US, tapping in to 200
fibre-optic cables to give it the ability to monitor up to 600 million communications
every day, according to the report.
The information
from internet and phone use was allegedly stored for up to 30 days to be sifted
and analyzed. GCHQ and NSA eavesdropping on Italian phone calls and internet
traffic was reported by the Italian weekly L'Espresso on 24 October. The
revelations were sourced to Edward Snowden. It is alleged that three
undersea cables with terminals in Italy were targeted. Italian Prime Minister
Enrico Letta called the allegations "inconceivable and unacceptable"
and said he wanted to establish the truth. USA 'hacks China networks'
After fleeing to
Hong Kong, Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the
NSA had led more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including many in
Hong Kong and mainland China.
Claims emerged on
29 June that the NSA had also spied on European Union offices in the US and
Europe. The US had spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at
the 27-member bloc's UN office in New York. One document dated September
2010 explicitly named the EU representation at the UN as a "location
target". The NSA had also conducted an electronic eavesdropping operation
in a building in Brussels, where the EU Council of Ministers and the European
Council were located.
The German
government summoned the US ambassador on 24 October - a very unusual step -
after German media reported that the NSA had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela
Merkel's mobile phone. The allegations dominated an EU summit, with Mrs Merkel
demanding a full explanation and warning that trust between allies could be
undermined. She discussed the matter by phone with US President Barack Obama.
He assured her that her calls were not being monitored now and that it would
not happen in future. But the White House did not deny bugging her phone in the
past. Past surveillance practices by secret police, whether Nazi or communist
have made Germans very sensitive about privacy issues. Incumbent Germany
Chancellor Mrs Merkel grew up in the former East Germany, where the Stasi spied
on millions of citizens.
France's President
Francois Hollande expressed alarm at reports that millions of French calls had
been monitored by the USA. The Guardian later reported that the NSA
had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders after being given their
numbers by another US government official. A total of 38 embassies and missions
have been the "targets" of US spying operations, according to
a secret file leaked to the Guardian. Countries targeted
included France, Italy and Greece, as well as America's non-European allies
such as Japan, South Korea and India, the paper reported on 1 July. EU
embassies and missions in New York and Washington were also said to be under
surveillance.
US allies in Latin
America were angered by revelations in Brazil's O Globo newspaper on 10 July
that the NSA ran a continent-wide surveillance program. US agents
apparently joined forces with Brazilian telecoms firms to snoop on oil and
energy firms, foreign visitors to Brazil, and major players in Mexico's drug
wars. Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile all demanded answers from the US.
Documents leaked to
the Washington Post in mid-August suggested the NSA breaks US privacy
laws hundreds of times every year. The papers revealed that US citizens
were inadvertently snooped on for reasons including typing mistakes and errors
in the system,
Later in August,
the Washington Post reported that US spy agencies had a "black
budget" for secret operations of almost $53bn in 2013. SMS messages
'collected and stored' In January 2014, the Guardian newspaper and Channel Four
News reported that the US had collected and stored almost 200 million
text messages per day across the globe. A National Security Agency (NSA)
program is said to have extracted and stored data from the SMS messages to gather
location information, contacts and financial data.
The documents also
revealed that GCHQ had used the NSA database to search for information on
people in the UK. The program, Dishfire, analyses SMS messages to extract
information including contacts from missed call alerts, location from roaming
and travel alerts, financial information from bank alerts and payments and
names from electronic business cards. Through the vast database, which was
in use at least as late as 2012, the NSA gained information on those who were
not specifically targeted or under suspicion, the report says.
Again, Edward
Snowden was the source of the incredible pro-humanity report. The file
allegedly detailed "an extraordinary range" of spying methods used to
intercept messages, including bugs, specialized antennae and wire taps.
The revelations
came on the eve of an expected announcement by President Obama of a response to
recommendations by a US panel on ways to change US electronic surveillance
programs.
European nations
now are deadly suspicious of US intentions in perpetual and unethical spying of
their leaders. White House has been in touch with foreign leaders to cool down
the tempers, but so far without any credible success. Whether the spy episodes
would make a basic shift in relations among them remains to
be seen. USA can always use both NATO and World bank and IMF to sustain the
hold over the Europeans. .
US foreign
secretary John Kerry said that activities to protect national security were
"not unusual" in international relations.
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