SPYING ON ME – SPYING ON YOU

This post is about SPYING, something currently topical in the news media. And it’s not entirely about Edward Snowden, the American Government intelligence analyst now holed up in in a passenger transit lounge at Moscow Airport because he leaked crucial secrets about the spying activities of the United States and Britain on various foreign Governments, international organizations and private individual citizens around the world. The unfortunate Mr Snowden, now urgently ‘wanted’, has applied for political asylum in many different countries but has so far been refused by most and has nowhere to go because he committed the unpardonable offence of telling the truth.

Telling the truth, in this respect internationally divulging State spying secrets, is not so much a serious offence but deemed by the United States as a very serious crime which is why they’ve put huge pressure on those countries to which he’s applied for asylum to reject his applications. Indeed, telling these truths is considered so serious that it is willing to damage its relations with many of these countries just so that it can get hold of their man. For example, the aircraft containing the President of Bolivia was forced to divert to Austria on its return journey from Moscow because Italy, France, Spain and Portugal refused to allow it to fly over their airspace, it being thought that it carried Edward Snowden along with the Bolivian President, a false rumour inspired by the Americans. The consequence of this has been a meeting between six or more Latin American heads of State offended and furious by the actions of the Obama Administration to decide what further action to take.

So what information was revealed that was thought serious enough to jeopardize and undermine America’s foreign relations across the globe, particularly with the European Community. Well for one thing  organizations belonging to its member states are now known to have been spied upon in various American cities. Many of these countries have already expressed shock and disbelief but the news that it happened is already out there. It’s old news, already in the public domain, same as the collaboration between the CIA and the British GCHQ to spy on British and American citizens. That said, why are the Americans making such a fuss? Why are they so determined to get Snowden back to America? Could it be that he has many more unpalatable secrets to reveal and somehow has to be silenced?

Maybe, maybe not, but then Edward Snowden isn’t exactly what you might call a spy, just someone who revealed secret information because he finally made up his mind that he didn’t like what he’d been doing over many years and decided to tell everyone about it. Some people do things for a time then they change. The human personality isn’t a fixed entity. It experiences emotional and intellectual growth, sometimes contraction. It’s not necessarily rigid. People experience change and they change accordingly. For example members of the Metropolitan police undercover squad have recently begun to divulge the nature of their spying activities on various individuals and organizations. They decided that they didn’t like what they’d been doing, thought it was wrong and divulged their conduct to the media. These people were spies, same as those in Britain’s GCHQ who listen in to people’s private telephone conversations here and abroad, gain information about them along with details of the industrial and commercial activities of foreign companies and Governments.

This is national and international spying but let’s not play the innocent auntie. The Chinese military have been busily engaged in international electronic espionage for years, both against foreign companies and Governments, particularly those of the United States and Europe. The business of international industrial espionage is huge and worth hundreds of billions. And not far behind comes America, Russia, the UK and all of Europe. They’re all doing it, both on their own citizens and everyone else’s. Citizens, corporations, institutions and just about everything. We all know it so let’s look a bit closer. A bit closer to home! And let’s make it more personal while we’re at it!

Spying? Well, does anyone still want to play being a virgin? Isn’t spying something we’ve all done? Something we all like to do? Oh, you think I’m being rude do you? Well then, let’s take a look and start by holding up a mirror so you can see for yourself. You’re 6 or 7, travelling with your parents on your way home. You may be in a car or a train but one thing’s for sure, you’re bored to the back teeth but never mind, your parents know just what to do to keep your mind occupied. Dad has a brainwave… Let’s play I Spy! I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With K! Okay, is it in the car or outside the window? Now that really gets you thinking! It’s a game you love to play when you are five, maybe six. After that it’s the IPad or something electronic, but meantime it’s I SPY! Boys are often more ingenious, more seriously ingeniously silly than girls. Girls are more factual, like S for steering wheel or W for window! For boys it’s H for hair or E for dad’s earring! Okay, you play the I SPY guessing game on the way home. But then maybe it’s a follow on from something else. Something naughty you’ve done at home like secretly spied on mum and dad having sex in the bedroom! Listened in on it or maybe had a squint through a door that was meant to be closed. Oh you spied all right! Retained some secret knowledge, only it led to something else.

You grew up and went to school. Wanted to be thought well of by the teacher or in the cubs or girl guides so first you told tales then you kept an eye on your mates after which you told teacher. You observed people and situations. Developed an eye for that kind of thing. It was only ‘small’ really. You really couldn’t call it spying ‘cos that was dirty, something associated with dodgy practice! But maybe you went ahead with it because you were encouraged, even thought well of for doing that kind of thing so it was less shameful than it seemed. It was just YOU, not your mates. It was a solitary kind of thing. Privatized! Individualized! Something personal, keeping an eye out on people. Not FOR people so you could be there to help them, but ON people! Just to make sure they didn’t do anything wrong or bad… Didn’t harm anyone… That’s how you justified it, keeping an eye on them. You were doing THEM good, doing what was right for society in the process. AND THAT’S HOW YOU BECAME A POLICEMAN!

All the same, they were they but you weren’t you anymore. You were someone else! Part of something else! You were a policeman or woman. You worked for the State. You worked for GCHQ. Used your natural skills or were trained to collected intelligence, about individuals or organizations. Found out things about them. YOU SPIED WITH YOUR LITTLE EYE and met other people who did the same. It was a natural, logical development since childhood, to grow from what you were to what you’d become. You played I SPY then you learned to use the binoculars someone bought you for Christmas. Ooh, look what they were doing through the window across the road! You’d never believe it, so you increased the focus… Just for clarity really! Years later you finished at Oxford or Harvard and got recruited into MI6 or GCHQ, or the CIA or the special department in the KGB and worked directly for Stalin or Putin or Obama and spied on every comrade citizen, or American. Or American, Russian, Chinaman or Frenchman. Everyone and everything! They were all suspect really!

If you told a Frenchman he was being spied on he’d probably get all uptight. You know, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and all that. It’s just an idea that they hate! Most Americans on the other hand simply don’t know or don’t care. They’ve got the Constitution on their side. They can bear arms and shoot who they like. The British however are special. They are without doubt the most spied upon nation on Earth and they simply don’t care! There are no serious civil liberties issues here! CCTV cameras on every street corner in every city and town. Likewise in every shop, bank, hospital and library. They are just about everywhere. People looking at you that you didn’t think were looking at you. That you didn’t even ask yourself why you were being looked at. Why and for what purpose? Whose benefit was it for, for you to be personally examined while out in public. Well it certainly wasn’t for your benefit so who gave these watchers permission? BUT THEN IT’S CLEARLY NOT AN INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY BECAUSE NOW YOU DON’T HAVE ANY. It’s not an intrusion into your private space because out there in public you’re simply not private! And that’s not you’re thinking but theirs. When you’re outside your home you belong to someone else.

Actually, who gave these WATCHERS permission to watch you while you were just strolling along, smiling, thinking your own thoughts or chatting to your wife or kids or family, picking your nose or scratching your arse? Who gave them permission? To most British people it just doesn’t matter. They have such a low sense of self anyway. Sense of self… That’s not the same as self-importance, be clear on that. Most of us here in the UK think that we, individually, are more important than anyone else but that’s very different from having a sense of self. Self-importance is a psychological attribute. Something fundamentally defensive and born out of weakness. Sense of self is a characteristic of self-confidence, something born out of strength. Perhaps this is why police have a problem in dealing with self-confidence people, those more from the middle class than elsewhere. It contradicts their own individual sense of self-importance that you will all have noticed. Often a kind of inferiority that comes from poor education. An aspect of personality that is almost universal. Perhaps this is why British people from the lower middle class down in general don’t mind being spied on and more often than not respect the police; but always in Essex, much more than Liverpool!

Spying on Me, Spying on You! Spies are not necessarily people who GIVE AWAY secrets. They’re much more likely to be people who COLLECT them, pass them on or make them public for political reasons. Others steal secrets and sell them. They might need to spy to obtain them so what, you may ask, is the difference between that and intelligence gathering? Well the latter is more often a State promoted and driven activity, the former more for private profit or gain. Sometimes of course spying might be for blackmail. The kind of thing that nasty people do with camera lenses on unsuspecting moral transgressors. Much depends on where you are morally. For some spying is justified for the retribution it brings, for others it’s justified for the profit, for the sense of power derived from blackmail, for the purpose of personal or national security, this latter very much a primary justification. Edward Snowden’s supposed crime is quite special. He’s supposedly given away secrets about spying! In that sense he has uniquely betrayed America’s national security. But then, quite frankly, how secure was it anyway?

People are always human first and foremost. They are likely to change their beliefs and their values. How they see themselves. Who they think they are and what they are. People are always likely to change. Become someone different. Someone else. Casting away what they once were in a process of moral recrimination. Seeking moral, spiritual regeneration. No longer being what they once were and resenting the fact. With this understood, the best way of keeping secrets is not to compartmentalize their storage in vulnerable individuals or machines but have as few as possible worth keeping. Something impossible in a world where human activity is motivated by competition and profit. Where Governments and institutions are insecure and most people are likewise.

Insecurity leads to fear. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side! Better known as spying!

Telling the truth is something else Mister Obama!