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Bugging Away Our Freedom: An Open Letter To President Obama
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PRISM
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By
Albany Tribune -- (July 4, 2013)
By Arshad M Khan
Mr. President,
We
have watched the parades; we have enjoyed the games in village and town
parks; we have watched the fireworks; we have celebrated Independence
Day — the glorious July Fourth. Independence means freedom, in this case
freedom from the English — sometimes it seems half the world celebrates
freedom from the English, even Scotland will be trying next year to
throw off London’s yoke.
The question to ask ourselves (even
yourself, for in three years you, too, become a private citizen) is
whether anyone who knows he is bugged can really be free. Will he
subconsciously exercise censorship? And those (especially politicians)
who are only now aware they too were bugged … are they susceptible to
blackmail? Pure conjecture perhaps, but it helps to explain President
Francois Hollande’s oddly inconsistent behavior.
First, Mr.
Hollande was the only European condemning the PRISM bugging program
himself directly — the others used spokesmen. Then he turned around and
denied French airspace to the Bolivian President Evo Morales’ jet
returning from an oil and gas conference in Moscow. Spain, Portugal and
Italy followed suit. The plane, stranded, running short of fuel, was
then allowed to land in Vienna where it was searched because of a rumor
that Edward Snowden was aboard. He was not, and after heated
negotiations over 14 hours the plane finally flew to the Canary Islands
where Spain had granted landing permission to refuel. Whatever happened
to diplomatic immunity, international law and the like in our new
post-1984 world?
But here’s the rub: instead of just the tabloid
press bugging a besotted Prince Charles’ phone calls to his then
mistress (now wife), we are more likely to have young contractor
employees listening in on a louche Bill Clinton, or even an
ex-President’s daughters’ calls to their boyfriends. Who will put this
genie back in the bottle?
It also turns out that the Ecuadorian
Embassy in London, where Julian Assange is holed up, has been bugged by
the British, and the U.S. is bugging E.U. embassies. It used to be that a
walk in the park was the safe way to have a private conversation in the
former Soviet Union; how the tables have turned …
And Julian
Assange’s asylum has yet another twist on a Soviet era story. On
November 4, 1956, Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty arrived at the U.S. Embassy
Chancery in Budapest and requested asylum. He went on to live there for
the next 15 years using the ambassador’s office as a reception area and
sleeping in an adjacent room; shameful for the Soviet system then in
everyone’s eyes. If only we could see the mirror images now, blurred but
barely (and not for want of trying) by context.
As someone
observed recently: if we were all asked to carry a tracking device by
the National Security Agency we would be appalled, yet we carry cell
phones; if we were told to send a copy to the NSA every time we email,
we would be shocked, but that is already the case …
Ari Fleischer
(President George W. Bush’s press secretary) tweeted recently: “Drone
strikes. Wiretaps. Gitmo. [Guess who] is carrying out Bush’s 4th term.”
Thus in Tanzania, at the conclusion of your African tour, the meeting
with George and Laura Bush, far from appearing incongruous, makes
eminent sense … plus ca change …
Arshad M Khan is a retired Professor. He writes occasionally for the print and electronic media, and also edits the website http://ofthisandthat.org/
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