It would not be a piece of new information for many thoughtful people that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collects intelligence information about foreign countries and nationals through various multinational corporations, aid agencies, local and international NGOs. It is quite a familiar piece of information that global Internet companies supply personal details of foreign nationals to the CIA. Millions of Internet users receive unsolicited and troubling mails from unidentified senders. The users’ addresses are obviously sold to such unidentified agencies. However, there was no official confirmation of this underhand activity so far, no matter how apparent it has always been. The New York Times on 6 June 2013 has officially confirmed this, referring to the US Administration sources.
The newspaper states, “The federal government has been secretly gathering information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation’s largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats.”
Surveillance is not a new thing at all. It is done for various good and bad purposes. Especially, states adopt surveillance as a primary method to record and analyze people’s movements and activities. Whenever and wherever noble-minded people are doing their best that favors humanity or benefits the majority of human beings, they must not feel mentally debilitated. Yet, ideologically differing people, with a critical and analytical mindset geared towards the transformation of status quo are mostly being watched.
Terrorist organizations have become the greatest bedrock for militarily intoxicated nations to experiment their military technologies in the Third World in the name of anti-terrorism war, often quoted as ‘counterterrorism’. This is what troubles the noble minds on Earth. Had the military oligarchies of the world respected the sovereignty and human dignity of all the nations, they would get wholehearted moral support for their good deeds. But most of the intelligence information has been misused for further criminalizing the human society. This is another serious aspect to study regarding information gathering through the Internet. And what is worth remembering here is the fact that those with much updated, classified and analyzed information in their hands are more powerful compared to those with little information or with little access to information. It is equally true that crime industries are not run by people with a staunch belief in moral principles and productive labor. Ordinary people working full time for bread are not the masterminds of crimes. Those with access to power, money, media and technologies must be the masterminds behind institutionalized crime industries. The mega crime industries operating on a global scale are definitely the strategies based on long-term information gathering and analysis. Therefore, nations in favor of democracy and human rights must remain cautious of this possibility.
Although any nation has a natural right and a law to protect itself against terrorist threats, this must not be an excuse for colonization and dictatorship, defaming democracy and human rights globally accepted by nations.
Military democracy is to be refuted all over the world. Information spy must not be for colonization and terrorism.