Are intelligence agencies simply “the exercise of naked state power to gain political and economic advantage”? Seumas Milne in the Guardian an article in which he contends several times that “ But as the Snowden leaks have moved from capability to content, its been driven home that much of what NSA and GCHQ (virtually one organisation) are up to has nothing to do with terrorism or security at all, but, as might be expected, the exercise of naked state power to gain political and economic advantage… But to frame the controversy as a trade-off between security and privacy misses the wider picture. The main western intelligence agencies are instruments of global dominance, whose role in the rest of the world has a direct impact on their own citizens. Its not the revelations that threaten our security, but the agencies and their political masters themselves.” I agree with most of what he writes in the article, what he writes about is all the bad things that the NSA is doing and as I am sure you know by now I think they are pretty bad too. The problem is that the article headlined ‘Its the spies, not the leaks, that threaten our security The NSA-GCHQ machine is about global power, not protecting its citizens. US and British intelligence still fuel the terror threat’ and as noted he makes this contention about power several times. Yet he does nothing to back up this claim. Yes we know that the NSA is invading the privacy of a lot of people but how does this relate to power? We have yet to be given any evidence that the NSA uses this spying in a way that is actively coersive of anyone. Nobody has yet leaked anything that shows the NSA blackmailing anyone with the information they have obtained – and surely if the information was among that obtained by Snowden such a revelation would have been among the first things leaked because it would make it an open and shut whistleblowing case. We now know that the US has been listening in on leaders phone conversations, but we don’t yet have any evidence that this has been used for much except keeping tabs on what the leaders are thinking. This has probably been used in subtle ways – the US President will be more prepared for the positions taken by other leaders, will have a better idea of where they might compromise etc. but the key thing is the information is not being used to force compromise. Information certainly can be used for power purposes but as yet we have not been given any evidence that this is what the US does with it. The same is the case economically. The US has even denied that it uses its spying to further its economic position saying “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” It maintains that this is what sets it apart from the kind of cyber attacks coming from some of its rivals. Of course it may actually be doing this and we don’t yet know about the specifics but as with political coercion we don’t yet have the evidence for this. So Yes the NSA is doing bad things, yes it could be used for power politics and furthering the economy of the US, but no as yet we don’t know that they actually do any of this. As misguided as it may be in its methods it seems quite likely the NSA really is mostly looking for terrorists, drug traffickers, threats from other countries etc. theguardian/commentisfree/2013/oct/23/spies-not-leaks-threaten-security articles.washingtonpost/2013-08-30/world/41620705_1_computer-worm-former-u-s-officials-obama-administration idebate.org/blog-post/are-intelligence-agencies-simply-%E2%80%9C-exercise-naked-state-power-gain-political-and-economic-
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:20:10 +0000
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