The US Spying Scandal

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/224851/the-us-spying-scandal/

The US Spying Scandal
Raya, Qatar
By Editorial
Translated By Kristine Anderson
27 October 2013
Edited by Gillian Palmer

The fallout from the “scandal” that former American spy Edward Snowden broke, revealing the comprehensive spying operations U.S. intelligence practices on heads of state and foreign governments, some of them U.S. allies, has snowballed, demolishing the wall of trust between allies and revealing the darker side of international relations.

This scandal has motivated two diplomats from Germany and Brazil, among the nations whose officials U.S. intelligence has monitored, to prepare a United Nations resolution allowing for protection of personal freedoms. This resolution would be an expansion of the International Bill of Human Rights,* which the U.N. approved in 1966 and which was put into practice in 1976 to protect individual rights, including Internet activities.

If the U.N. were to successfully issue a law that would require nations to protect the private lives of individuals, this would send a message to all who exploit the system to spy on or arbitrarily and illegally intervene in a person’s life or that of their family, residence and mail. It would also send a message to those who would impinge on a person’s honor or his or her reputation, in that international law would not allow for such infringements, under penalty of legal action.

Now up to its ears in scandal, after the news that it had tapped the phones of 35 world leaders, the U.S. is attempting to convince its allies that “information gathering is a basic element of counterterrorism.” However, the increasing number of U.S. ambassadors to ally countries, who have been called back to Washington to come up with an explanation for why the U.S. set out to spy on its allies and friends, reveals the major hole the U.S. has fallen into, as well as the climate of distrust that has clouded Washington’s relations with its Western allies in particular.

[bemildred]

1. Jun 17th, 2013 - Snowden: ‘Truth is coming and it can’t be stopped’

Jun 30, 2013 - Assange: "There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage"

October 25th, 2013 - Keith Alexander:

The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith Alexander, is accusing journalists of "selling" his agency's documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor Edward Snowden.

"I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make sense," Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog.

"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on," the NSA director declared.

http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2013/06/17/edward-snowden-to-answer-online-questions/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/30/julian-assange-more-snowden-leaks-cant-be-stopped/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/europe-erupts-nsa-spying-chief-government

Who are you gonna believe?