Edward Snowden (Continuación)

MundoAmérica,

Dear Mr. Snowden,

I see in the press that you’re considering asylum in Venezuela. If that’s true, I’d like to make you a business proposal. I think you and I could make millions of dollars here using your new expertise on applying for asylum abroad.

You’ll soon see that there are thousands of Venezuelans who would love to flee and start over in other countries. Long lines of people hoping to snag visas or passports form each morning outside the U.S. and European embassies in Caracas. After you arrive, we could counsel them on the best way to leave.

Don’t get me wrong.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.

After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions.…  Seguir leyendo »

Internacional,

El pasado 3 de julio el presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, que regresaba a su país después de haber asistido en Moscú a una reunión oficial del foro de países exportadores de gas, tuvo que permanecer 13 horas, después de un aterrizaje no previsto inicialmente, en el aeropuerto de Viena al revocar Francia, Italia y Portugal el permiso de sobrevuelo previamente concedido al avión del Jefe del Estado boliviano, como consecuencia de las presiones ejercidas sobre esos países por EE UU, que sospechaba que en dicho avión se encontraba el ex analista de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional norteamericana, Edward Snowden, quien desde el pasado 23 de junio permanece en la zona de tránsito del aeropuerto de Moscú.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Gracias a Edward Snowden, ahora sé que la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad de los Estados Unidos (la NSA) me está espiando. Utiliza a Google, Facebook, Verizon y otras empresas de Internet y de telecomunicaciones para reunir enormes cantidades de información digital, que sin duda incluyen datos relativos a mis correos electrónicos, llamadas telefónicas y uso de tarjetas de crédito.

Como no soy ciudadano de Estados Unidos, esto es totalmente legal. E incluso si yo fuera ciudadano estadounidense, es posible que de todos modos las operaciones de vigilancia hubieran recogido un montón de información sobre mí, aunque el blanco de la búsqueda fuera otro.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropa,

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior,

The decisions by France, Spain and Portugal to interrupt Bolivian President Evo Morales's flight home, apparently on the hunch that he was smuggling Edward Snowden out of Russia, have proved embarrassing for Europe. Even unfortunate.

The episode has made these European states appear beholden to U.S. political pressure. It also made them look silly, once Austrian airport police had searched the Bolivian president's aircraft and found no leaker of U.S. National Security Agency secrets on board. Asked to explain why they did what they did, French officials in particular seemed speechless.

In Latin America, though, fallout from the high-handed treatment of Morales is proving more than unfortunate.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial

El proceso de filtración de información clasificada por parte del ex empleado de la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad americana, Edward Snowden, ha provocado acalorados debates acerca de la privacidad y el derecho internacional que, lamentablemente, han eclipsado la dimensión geoestratégica de sus acciones. En realidad, las revelaciones de Snowden sobre los programas de vigilancia de EE.UU. y su actual lucha para evitar la extradición, revelan mucho sobre la impronta de Barack Obama en las relaciones exteriores de EE.UU.

En el mundo entero, Obama ha generado más expectativas que cualquier otro presidente estadounidense en la memoria reciente. Sin embargo, ha demostrado que su interés principal, si no exclusivo, se centra en asuntos internos lo que conduce a una política exterior de reacción.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad, , ,

Edward Snowden has done us all a great service. In the past two weeks Europeans have been made aware of massive data collection from their private and business communications by American and British security services. The extent of this surveillance has been staggering. We have also learned that the US is apparently spying on EU representations in Brussels, Washington and New York, and the embassies of European member states. These practices have nothing to do with the war on terror.

We can only speculate about the real motivation. What type of information is being extracted, and what is being done with it?…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

A week in Moscow was enough for Edward Snowden to change his plans completely. No one has seen the National Security Agency leaker since he landed at Sheremetyevo Terminal E on June 23, intending to go on to Ecuador, where he had requested political asylum. Now he isn’t going there: On July 1, the Russian consul at Sheremetyevo reported that the night before, Snowden asked for asylum in Russia.

Dithering by the Ecuadorean authorities and, apparently, some prompting from the Russian special services have transformed the former NSA contractor full of romantic notions about Internet privacy and information freedom into a modern-day Kim Philby, destined to live out his life in a country waging a cold war against his homeland.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad, , ,

Europeans are outraged. At least that's how it appears from newspaper and Internet headlines about the latest revelation from American leaker Edward Snowden: that the U.S. National Security Agency spies extensively on its European allies. A closer examination suggests something more subtle.

The Snowden stories, published by the Guardian in the U.K. and Der Spiegel in Germany, make several revelations. First, that the NSA was spying on the European Union’s delegations in Washington and at the United Nations. Second, that it was bugging several embassies, including those of France, Italy and Greece. Third, that the NSA was targeting crucial EU communications in Brussels.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoAsia, , , , ,

The month-long sojourn of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden on Chinese soil ended with his departure for Moscow and other parts after Hong Kong’s refusal to issue a warrant for his arrest despite an American request.

From China’s standpoint, this is the best resolution possible. It has been the main beneficiary of the whistleblower’s accusations against the American government, and it will now be spared a prolonged battle in the Hong Kong courts over whether Snowden should be extradited.

Snowden turned up in the former British colony at roughly the same time as a summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California, at which time the American leader berated his Chinese counterpart for alleged involvement in large-scale cyber espionage against the United States

Snowden’s release of information about massive U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa, , , ,

Here we go again: Another violation of the basic right to privacy. Another public outcry. Another blow to citizens’ trust in the security of their personal data. Yet more evidence that something fundamental has to change if we want to stop citizens from worrying about somebody watching every time they visit a Web site or write an e-mail.

The Prism scheme allows the national security agencies of the United States to access E.U. citizens’ personal data. While the scale of the program is not yet entirely clear, Europeans are being put at a severe disadvantage compared with U.S. citizens. Through Prism, American national security authorities are able to survey E.U.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

Should unauthorized disclosures of classified information be praised or condemned?

The events of recent weeks -- and the disclosures of Edward Snowden in particular -- have propelled this question to the forefront of public debate. Unfortunately, the responses have been polarized, with some hailing leakers as patriots, and others condemning them as traitors. Some have cited the Founding Fathers to make the case that Snowden was justified in revealing secrets. As is often the case, the truth is more complicated.

The first thing to bear in mind is that employees such as Snowden volunteer to be entrusted with classified information. When they disclose secrets, they are violating the trust that they have asked to be placed in themselves.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

The revelation that the federal government has been secretly gathering records on the phone calls and online activities of millions of Americans and foreigners seems not to have alarmed most Americans. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center over the four days immediately after the news first broke found that just 41 percent of Americans deemed it unacceptable that the National Security Agency “has been getting secret court orders to track telephone calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism.”

We privacy watchers and civil libertarians think this complacent response misses a deeply worrying political shift of vast consequence. While President Obama has conveniently described the costs of what appears to be pervasive surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications connections as “modest encroachments on privacy,” what we are actually witnessing is a sea change in the kinds of things that the government can monitor in the lives of ordinary citizens.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

President Obama's response to the troubling news of indiscriminate government collection of communication information was meant to be reassuring: The NSA is operating under supervision by all three branches of government, he assured us.

Even if this were true — and it is not — this purported defense should make us more nervous, not less, because it suggests that Washington has become entirely comfortable with keeping basic information from the American public about what powers of surveillance the government claims it can lawfully use.

The secret court that apparently authorized this program operates nothing like the judicial branch contemplated by the Constitution as a check on abuses of governmental power and a neutral evaluator of whether governmental conduct complies with the Constitution.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaReflexionesSocial, , , , ,

I live my life in the open: I'm easily googleable, emailable, and you can figure out from my Twitter and Instagram accounts what I've been doing. For a while my phone number was posted publicly on my Facebook profile.

I'm aware that these sites and services are tracking me. I know they're collecting my data, crunching it and selling it to advertisers, who in turn try to sell me things, and I am OK with this.

It's the cost of admission. These services help me stay connected with my friends and interact with strangers, and in turn I grant them permission to analyze my tweets and profile my Facebook interests for profit.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

Recent revelations about the extent of government phone and Internet surveillance are already shaking up the national debate.

But these programs are just symptoms of broader changes that will be shaking up our government and society for many decades to come.

Let's not cheapen or simplify the debate by trying to ram these revelations into the GOP-friendly framework of "another Obama scandal."

We should be honest and admit that something much bigger than that is going on here. The implication of the issue for our politics will be felt long after today's round of political "gotcha" and "pin the tail on the donkey" has faded away.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

Since it was revealed this week that the National Security Agency is collecting the telephone and Internet data of millions of people, this is the question most people have asked me more than any other: "Why should I care that the government has all this information?"

On Thursday, as we were learning that the NSA has been storing the so-called metadata of millions of Verizon customers, a woman told me that she was less concerned about the intelligence agency knowing her phone number than she was the local CVS, which has been calling her at inconvenient times and pressuring her to renew prescriptions she was filling at another pharmacy.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

The revelations this week that the federal government has been scooping up records of telephone calls inside the United States for seven years, and secretly collecting information from Internet companies on foreigners overseas for nearly six years, have elicited predictable outrage from liberals and civil libertarians.

Is the United States no better than those governed by repressive dictators who have no regard for individual rights? Could President Obama credibly raise human rights issues with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at a summit meeting on Friday, if America is running its own vast surveillance state? Has Mr. Obama, for all his talk of ending the “war on terror,” taken data mining to new levels unimagined by his predecessor, George W.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , , ,

In recent months, the issue of privacy has come to the forefront in a number of cases, including the latest revelation that the U.S. government has been secretly collecting Verizon customers' phone records. Here's a selection of CNN.com op-eds on related issues.

We're losing control of our digital privacy

The erosion of privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment, written to protect us against unreasonable search and seizure, began in earnest under President George W. Bush. The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order. Moreover, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's 2008 amendment act grants U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »