I’ve been writing a lot about the NSA, government snooping, and what it all means for us. I’m an American and my writing has reflected that by viewing the events through the lens of what it means to America and Americans. Europeans have seen themselves, I think, as collateral damage in all this: the NSA is sweeping up their data too.
All that changed with Britain’s detaining of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s husband, over the weekend on extremely nebulous Schedule 7 grounds. British authorities may have gotten more than they bargained for. The incident has resulted in a firestorm of protest and outrage all over the world. Brazil, Miranda’s home country, has condemned the action and demanded an explanation from the British government and Miranda is threatening legal action.
Two European authored posts, in particular, are terrifying to read. In the first, Charlie Stross speculates that these are the beginning of efforts to shut down the open Internet. Read Charlie’s post for the details on how he thinks this will go down.
The second post is truly terrifying. Rick Falkvinge discusses the Miranda affair and the GCHQ’s raid on the Guardian to oversee the destruction of hard disks containing the Snowden documents. These are, he says, the last warning bell before the onset of totalitarianism. It’s easy—or, at least, it used to be easy—to dismiss such talk as overheated or even falling into tin foil hat territory but Falkvinge makes a good case and points to lots of supporting evidence.
Falkvinge says that there’s exactly one thing that can stop the slide into totalitarianism: the en masse firing of our current politicians and their replacement with those who support privacy and the rule of law. He ends is piece with this:
I wish I could ask how many more warning bells people need to see
what’s happening, but the question is pointless, because there won’t
be another one. This was the final bell.
As I said, truly frightening and something that you must read.
Meanwhile, in the USA, the much loved and extraordinarily influential Groklaw is shutting down. It’s nearly impossible to overstate how important Groklaw was in the bogus SCO-Linux lawsuits. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years. Now Pamela Jones (PJ) is shuttering the site due to concerns that it is no longer safe for people to communicate with her or Groklaw because of NSA spying. You can read what can only be described as PJ’s cri de coeur at the above Groklaw link.
With all these events and previous U.S. government actions it’s no longer possible to deny that there’s an active war on journalists and journalism going on all over the world. Perhaps it will at last persuade journalists to knock off the cheer leading and get back to looking into what the hell is going on in our governments.
Update Changed the Groklaw link to the permanent link of PJ’s last post.