It started off as a slow news day, and a routine update on the state of the Free World Order with NSA Director General Baxter. But then the news broke of startling revelations from the fearless paladin of adversarial journalism, guardian of civil liberties, journalist Glen Greenwald, concerning a shadowy spying program called PRISM. Who is behind these revelations, and how should we view them? How will the Authorities, and the Corporations implicated, respond? Join Robert Foster for a...
Dale T. McKinley - Here’s a sobering fact: none of us, whether in South Africa or in most any other democratic country for that matter, really knows what our government security-intelligence agencies (‘spooks’ for short) are up to; and, that is exactly the way the spooks want to keep it. That’s why the recent actions of Edward Snowden - a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the United States CIA and employee of various defence contractors who worked at the government’s...
Ex-CIA intelligence analyst, Edward Snowden, joins Bradley Manning to become another whistle blower exposing the egregious overreach of the American surveillance state. Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian newspaper, which revealed worldwide surveillance of the Internet and online communication by the US National Security Agency (NSA) that has developed sophisticated technology, allowing it to spy not just on US citizens, but also on ordinary people all over the world. The Obama...
Jane Duncan - South Africa has a sorry history of its intelligence services being abused for political ends. In 1994, the country was promised that never again would those in power be in a position to misuse the state apparatus to spy on their political opponents. This promise was repeated after the bruising succession battle between then president Thabo Mbeki and his successor, Jacob Zuma, after evidence emerged that National Intelligence Agency (NIA) officials took sides in the battle. The NIA has...