U.S. officials are poking fun at the fact that Edward Snowden, whose commitment to a free society motivated him to disclose the NSA’s massive secret surveillance scheme over the American people (and the people of the world), has fled to China and Russia, two countries that are near the top of the list of violators of civil liberties and privacy.

 

I find that very amusing. When U.S. officials point their finger at China and Russia, they conveniently ignore the fact that there are three fingers pointing back at them.

In their rage over Snowden, they miss the big point. In communist and totalitarian regimes, such as those in China and Russia, there are no such things as civil liberties and privacy. U.S. officials are absolutely right about that. There is no way that the Chinese people or the Russian people can be considered to be living in a free society so long as their governments wield the power to spy on them and monitor their activities, especially by monitoring their telephone calls or reading their mail. In fact, government surveillance over the citizenry was always one of the hallmarks of the communist regimes in East Germany and Eastern Europe.