The Snowden effect

History is going to have an interesting time placing Edward Snowden in context and assessing his relevance. Of all the whistleblowers of the modern era there are none that have had quite the impact that he has had, and two years after he leaked a mass of data relating to the activities of the American National Security Agency (NSA) and its invasion of the privacy of millions, he is still making waves. On June 2, the US Senate passed a bill that will end the bulk harvesting of many millions of phone records of American citizens without prior authorisation. The Bill was passed swiftly and with minimal opposition to plug the gap left by the expiry of several provisions of the Patriot Act that had given carte blanche to the NSA. It is the most significant revision of legislation relating to surveillance since 1978.

The scaling back of surveillance systems in the US are in contrast to the heavy penetration of cyberspace by the government in Pakistan. We live in a time where the nature of warfare is evolving faster than at any other, and the weapons of war are increasingly diverse. War is fought increasingly in what is broadly called cyberspace, that ill-defined terrain that is a human construct but far removed from everyday reality. The flow of data in cyberspace, be it phone records or how to build a dirty bomb is of overarching interest to the world’s intelligence agencies who are busy trying to prevent acts of terror and cyberwarfare. It is at that interface between the priorities of the security community and the rights of the common man occur that another battle is being fought — that for privacy. It is of note that analysis of NSA phone surveillance in the US in 2014 revealed that it had no impact on limiting terrorism whatsoever. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has praised the passage of the USA Freedom Act but is apprehensive for the future saying that there were many more intrusive and ‘overbroad’ powers of surveillance that were as yet untouched or debated. None of this would be in the public domain were it not for Edward Snowden, be that for better or worse only history will tell.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th,  2015.

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