The National Insecurity State

Germany and Brazil approach the United Nations to restrain U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance of communications by foreign leaders and governments. If, as Edward Snowden stated in a statement yesterday, "Today, no telephone in America makes a call without leaving a record with the NSA. Today, no Internet transaction enters or leaves America without passing through the NSA's hands" how can it be plausible, if the capability exists that we can track this staggering volume of information, that we would not be tracking this information among other countries, allies as well as enemies? Where rational security efforts begin, and potentially authoritarian surveillance ends, is a debate that will continue as long as the capability exists and the concern for anti-terror and security concerns continues. Snowden states "Our representatives in Congress tell us this is not surveillance. They're wrong." The American government, responsible for the security of its people, would of course beg to differ. The question raised of course is it is clearly not racial profiling if you are gathering everything out there into as wide a net as possible and then sifting it into smaller pails for subsequent study. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer? Still this is not a new issue. Only the technology has changed and the willingness of new generations to surrender privacy. Full article on Edward Snowden and US Senator Diane Feinstein on this issue here Full article from Foreign Policy here