SO what’s the big fuss about one Edward Snowden spilling the American beans?
Since time immemorial, intelligence gathering or espionage has been a normal human activity. Tribes wanting to kill other tribes collected as much information as possible about their targets before they were on a warpath. Nation states wanting to invade their neighbours sent out spies to find out how strong the city walls were; size of the army and what kind of weapons they possessed; sources of grain and water; how much gold and number of goats or horses; who would be the likely allies of their adversaries, and so forth.
Knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of one’s enemy, potential or current, must be accurate and timely. Various methods have been used to this end.
Nearer to home, there is a story related by the late Bishop Peter HH Howes in his book ‘In A Fair Ground’, Excalibur Press of London – 1995.
In August 1937, the priest was going mountaineering with some boys from St Thomas’ School in Kuching. On their way down Mount Santubong they saw two Japanese artists making sketches of the Sarawak River. The boys were excited and very sure that these foreigners were spies. The good priest told the boys not to be preposterous! But four years later, when he was arrested and interned at Batu Lintang by the Japanese Imperial Army, which had landed in Sarawak on Christmas Eve 1941 via that river and Sibu Laut, he ruefully admitted that the boys had been right!
Human intelligence
In the past, information gathering was mainly done by humans: men and women. The men disguised themselves as travellers but carried mini-cameras and tape recorders; the women were the standard lures for the male politicians and military top brass on the other side. Because of the frailties of human nature, many a male would fall for a beautiful woman and would whisper state secrets into the ears of a newly-found friend while in bed only to discover that she was under cover in more ways than one.
Nowadays in a borderless world, there are other means of spying: the handphones are equipped with cameras; the unmanned drones can identify ‘enemies’ and shoot at them, innocent children included. The satellites hovering miles above your head can take pictures of the movements of the vehicles on the ground. What are the photographs for if not for sale and the likely buyers are the intelligence agents of the countries mapping possible routes of invasion in future.
When I was in Australia a couple of years ago, my 11-year-old granddaughter showed me on her gadget where my house in Kuching is! The photo was taken by someone from the sky sometime ago.
The GPS (Global Positioning System), can direct you to wherever you want to go – a locality or a street or a house number if you have earlier fed it with information about your destination.
All thanks to IT– the Information Technology – a bane or boon, it will be part of life for a long time to come.
With IT at your command, no private secrets can be kept secret any more. Once I sat next to a total stranger in a bus from Kuching to Lundu. The man suddenly got a call on his mobile from some woman. He shouted into his phone for a good five minutes, all the time sticking to his guns when he was being accused of having done something wrong to her. You should have heard how she shouted back. Everyone on the bus could fully understand what the problem was between the couple. But it was none of my business, not having a licence as a private investigator.
State secrets can be revealed just as well by careless agents. See Ian Fleming’s creation, James Bond, in various films. There are many such films, fictional most of them, but based on real life dramas.
So what’s the big deal with Edward Snowden?
Here is a citizen of the United States of America who dares to tell the world how his government’s surveillance programme works via the Internet, at least part of it. He may not know the rest of it. But damage has been done, nonetheless. Little wonder then the American politicians have called Snowden by all sorts of names and want him back to face the music if he has violated the laws of the country.
Snowden takes the moral high ground, claiming to reveal the wickedness of his own country. I refuse to believe that he doesn’t know perfectly well that EVERY country on earth is doing some spying, for whatever reason. At the time of the Cold War, offices, hotel rooms, train stations and public lavatories for all I know were bugged, and that doesn’t mean cockroaches. With the possible exception of Lichtenstein, a country so small that the Prince can see what all his citizens get up to by looking out of the palace window, every country was (and is) spying on somebody or something. The Americans just happen to be better at it than some others, at any rate they spend a lot of money on the spying business.
However, Snowden’s leaks made in Hong Kong may have compromised the national security of his country. The intelligence agencies must know what damage has been done to their own apparatus, but they are not telling.
What Snowden has done, as we know it from the media, was to disclose how Americans use sophisticated gadgets to spy on other countries and he claims to have known how they work and on whom.
Countries which have not been in good terms with America would want to find out how damaging the American network has been to their own apparatus. Perhaps, Snowden might help in this respect. As Putin said, Snowden is a Christmas gift to Russia. That’s one of the main reasons why several countries including those in Latin America have offered to take him in as a political refugee, not that they love him so much or for some humanitarian reason, but wanting to embarrass the United States and getting more information out of him for future reference.
While Snowden was in Hong Kong, it is inconceivable that China’s intelligence agents had not extracted all the necessary information from Snowden about America’s surveillance methods before they allowed him to slip out of Hong Kong.
The Americans wanted him extradited, to deal with him according to their own laws. In some other countries with poor human rights records, leakers of secrets like Snowden would have been eliminated or terminated by agents in the same intelligence fraternity without a trace. No big fuss all over the world’s TV channels!
Commercial espionage
Intelligence gathering including commercial espionage goes on regularly around you. This type of spying is not as risky as spying on army installations. The agents need no hidden cameras except photographic minds.
Several years ago, I met two girls from China who wanted to find out what my favourite alcoholic drinks were. Little did I realise then that they were doing a survey of the tastes of various people in Kuching so that they could tell their employers or clients that the people of Kuching prefer – Asahi beer (Japanese) or Tsingtao (China) or Carlsberg (Danish).
I liked them all when offered free – gratis.
Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].