The Internet, Secrecy and Spying

08-18-2013 • Free Press Publications

Speaking to a group of staff and families at the US Embassy in Brasilia on August 14, John Kerry said, “this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year... makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people.” Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com wrote, “ it is hard to hear this from US officials and not immediately think about the Internet’s role in facilitating whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.” On August 15, Barton Gellman of the Washington Post released information provided to the Post by Edward Snowden. Gellman says that according to an internal audit the NSA “counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications.” What I find to be quite disturbing is not that the NSA violated it's own pr