Publish date15 Jun 2013 - 13:52
Story Code : 133308
Outcomes of releasing millions of new documents

Bush and Obama on two sides of a coin

American citizen, Edward Snowden, who unveiled the biggest state spying network, released his identity in an interview with The Guardian daily on Sunday.
Bush and Obama on two sides of a coin
He is a 29-year-ol American citizen in Hawaii, previously working in National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA. He had kept the information on PRISM program measuring its release and finally decided to release the information because he thought his country had created a secret structure and an unacceptable spying system that tracks every American citizen.

He told Guardian that the reason behind what he did was to inform the American people of illegal spying of the government. Now the question remains that what awaits Edward Snowden.

Immediately after releasing the information he left the US for Hong Kong while China may take the case as a political one and evades submitting him to the US. But if submitted, the least punishment that awaits him is life imprisonment. Although he is hopeful that Iceland, who values freedom of internet, grants him sanctuary.

In any case, according to the wide range of programs that have been released, it is known that companies like Facebook and Google have been gathering the information on millions of American citizens.

Other telecommunication companies including Verizon were involved in eavesdropping telephone conversations. It is noteworthy to say that these controls were limitless and besides hearing phone conversations, all electronic communications, including emails, were also under control. The disclosure by Snowden is counted as one of the biggest of its kind in the whole history of the United States.

The case shares similarities with the case of Bradley Manning through who classified information of the US army had leaked to WikiLeaks. This is while according to a report by Guardian, National Security Agency (NSA) in the US has another intelligence website that only in March had gathered 97 million information documents from computers around the world. Iran stands on top of the countries that had been searched.

Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt are in the next ranks. Spying on the citizens from other countries is also among the missions of NSA and what has made that a trouble for Obama government is that releasing the facts on this spying agency has happened by an American citizen.

Certainly the measure by the US government is violation of civil liberties, which is why the unveiling of the data has raised wide discussions both in and out of the US on the range of inspection over the information and personal communication by security organizations in the US, an inspection that has been greatly increased during the past decade.

Former US president, George Bush government, had passed a bill that granted the permission to information and intelligence organizations of the country. The government of incumbent president, Barack Obama, has also maintained the policy. His government is accused of continuing the spying programs from the US citizens while the White House has defended the move calling that a necessity to guarantee national security of the US. The issue leaves Obama in turmoil since he claimed to defend civil liberties of the citizens and freedom of speech.

Back in 2008, he claimed to open a new page in the history of the US and that the particular counter-terrorism methods will not be followed any more though now it is known that they were all futile vows and that Obama has been exactly following the previous methods. He has a background of going against his promises since everyone remembers his fake vows to close Guantanamo and the chaos over American Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).

Eventually Obama and Bush might follow the same security methods under different behaviors. Obama claims that the program had been a secret though legal program because it did not control the citizens and the congress was informed on that.

It is also noteworthy that no one in the US Congress has criticized the move and it was only Tea Party representatives (extremist right hand party) and extremist lefties who had questioned the program. Republicans and Democrats seem to be in unanimous agreement over the issue.

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