The Year of the Spy

When the National Security Agency (NSA) hired Edward Snowden, little did they know that they had made the worst decision of their lives. After discovering just how much the US government spies on its own people, last year Edward Snowden decided to leak that information.

Snowden handed over a colossal amount of information to Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who worked at the Guardian Newspaper. Despite the huge amount of data already leaked, according to the Guardian, by November last year they had published only 1% of the Snowden files!

The powerpoint slide used to explain PRISM
source: Guardian

So what was actually released? A program called MAINWAY in which the US government recorded and stored metadata on people’s phone calls. Metadata (in this case) means that the actual content of the phone calls was not recorded but rather who called who, for how long and where they were located. Yet the biggest headlines were made in relation to the internet. PRISM is the program whereby all data held by nine popular tech companies (most of which are primarily websites) is recorded. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, Skype, AOL and Apple all participate in this program. When I say ‘all data’ I literally mean ALL data; drafted emails that are never sent, the audio and video of your Skype conversations, even what you type but never send. All of those are recorded! Tempora is the other major internet based program revealed by Snowden. This one is carried out by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA. Tempora gives GCHQ the ability to easily hack into the internet. It is whereby GCHQ has access to the fibre optic cables that make the internet possible.

If this was not bad enough, Snowden has revealed that America not only spies on ordinary citizens but on allied leaders. It was revealed that the USA had spied on over 35 world leaders. The most prominent was German Chancellor Angela Merkel who later compared NSA spying to the Stasi (the Nazi secret police).

These revelations have truly shocked and horrified the world. The fact that the Guardian, Greenwald and Snowden all say that the worst has yet to come is scary to say the least. I can only assume that the revelations have nothing to do with spying as I honestly cannot think of anything that would be worse than has already been revealed. So what has the US and its allies done that could possibly be worse? My mind is running through all the conspiracies I have dismissed as crazy in the past and wondering which of them (if any) are actually true. If you had told me a year ago that the US government records basically all the information on the internet, I likely would have told you to stop watching Alex Jones and take off the tinfoil hat.

So does the US government assassinate non-terrorists? Did they cause Chavez’s cancer? Was 9/11 an inside job? Is there really a New World Order? Are all world leaders actually green lizards? OK so the last three, and especially the last two, are undoubtedly not true. If they turn out to be true I will literally eat my hat. The former two are not so ridiculous though. After all, when the CIA started out it couldn’t stop assassinating people! It was only when John F. Kennedy became President that it was stopped (cue another conspiracy).

Whatever 2014 holds, spying and Snowden will be on the menu. 

Edward Snowden in an interview with the Guardian