Big Brother  sees red

Editorial-June 27, 2013

When Dan Brown’s unputdownable techno-thriller, Digital Fortress, was first published about fifteen years ago, many may have considered its fascinating story a figment of the imagination. It tells us about a code-breaking supercomputer created by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to access people’s personal information and resistance from a prominent NSA employee, Ensei Tankado, who is pursued and assassinated for trying to expose and sabotage that project on ethical grounds.

But, today, the US is all out to nab an intrepid NSA worker, Edward Snowden, on the run, for leaking highly sensitive information to the media about a clandestine electronic surveillance programme known as Prism, with which the NSA steals web and phone data from individuals and institutions. One is also reminded of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, which tells as about the Oceanic regime notorious for Big Brother and omnipresent surveillance. Whoever would have thought way back in the late 1940s, when that book was first published that such condemnable methods would one day sully the image of America, ‘the land of liberty, peace and plenty’?

While Julian Assange of the Wikileaks fame is hiding in a foreign embassy in London, having ruffled the Eagle’s feathers by leaking US diplomatic cables and Pentagon documents, Snowden is stuck in a Russian airport in transit. The US has faulted China for having allowed Snowden passage through Hong Kong. His presence in Russia has led to a diplomatic spat, but President Putin is holding his ground.

In what has turned out to be a queer turn of events replete with irony, some western democracies have ganged up against two whistleblowers and the nations castigated by the international media as incorrigible human rights violators have risen in their defence! Russia, China etc may not be able to project themselves as five-star democracies by helping Snowden evade extradition, but they have caused the so-called free world to lay bare its true face.

Information leaks naturally hurt those in power and they react in different ways when their interests are threatened. In a country under the jackboot of a dictator acts such as whistle-blowing are serious offences which carry stringent punishment––even the death penalty. In an ‘advanced democracy’ whistleblowers may not be put to death, but they run the risk of being incarcerated and harassed in such a way as to create a deterrent for others of their ilk. How Bradley Manning, a US soldier, accused of having helped Wikileaks disclose America’s classified information is being treated is a case in point. Arrested and manhandled, he is now facing a military trial; he is sure to be made to rue the day he was born!

How would Snowden have been treated if he had been a Russian intelligence operative hiding in a US airport following a damaging information leak in Moscow? The White House would have promptly rolled out the red carpet for him and elevated him to a hero; he might even have got an international award for bravery and defending democracy.

Should a person blow the whistle selectively and steer clear of national security matters including unethical and illegal projects that pose a serious threat to democracy like the NSA’s Prism? Should he or she work on the so-called my-country-right-or-wrong basis? If the US and other western powers think a whistleblower ought to subjugate his or her conscience to his or her country’s national security concerns and he or she should be hunted down for not doing so how can they condemn the autocratic regimes that act in a similar manner in dealing with whistle-blowing and dissent?

One may not agree with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia etc ideologically, but the question is whether any whistleblower with the courage to take on the US would have had any place to take refuge in to avoid persecution if those countries hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to Washington. What would have happened to Snowden if he had happened to land in a country subservient to the US is anybody’s guess.

What’s this world coming to when the very defenders of global democracy intrude into people’s private lives to steal information in the name of national security and hunt down those who have the courage to turn the spot light on their sordid operations?