It has been 10 years since the revelation that former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former German head of government Angela Merkel were being spied on by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
Such was the annoyance that President Rousseff, at the 68th UN General Assembly in 2013, denounced that “Brazil was the target of intrusion and espionage, and personal data of citizens, companies and institutions of high economic and strategic value were indiscriminately intercepted. Such interference in the affairs of other countries is an affront to international relations, especially if they are friendly countries”.
In 2015, WikiLeaks also revealed that the US NSA had spied on French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande between 2006 and 2012, according to the leaked documents.
In 2021, it emerged that Denmark’s secret services helped the US National Security Agency spy on European officials.
The latest known leak, in April this year, suggests that the US has also been monitoring events and unrest in Israel and has apparently had access to the movements of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, MOSAD, which in a document classified as “top secret”, according to El País newspaper, is accused of “encouraging protests against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu”.
Also, according to the New York Times, the leaked Pentagon documents “reveal the extent to which the United States has penetrated Russian security and intelligence services, enabling Washington to warn Ukraine about planned attacks and to know the force of Moscow’s war machine”.
It, therefore, came as no surprise when Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine’s attack on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol on 22 September was carried out “in close coordination with British and US intelligence”.
In this, it is also worth recalling that President Joe Biden, on the conflict in Ukraine, had on the table of options, according to NBC News, the possibility of massive cyber-attacks designed to disrupt Russia’s capabilities.
“US military and intelligence cyber warriors are proposing the use of US cyber weapons on a scale never before contemplated,” against Russia, the sources told NBC News.
It is clear that friends and foes, countries and individuals, are the targets of surveillance by US intelligence agencies. In this context, where hybrid warfare is the order of the day, no country or authority or person should believe that their communications are oblivious to US spying and monitoring. US spying and intelligence work is vital to overtly or covertly harm our nations when necessary.
The United States, the country that spends the most on defence, that has enormous resources, that has the printing press to make “dollars”, and the world’s largest army of military and civilian employees, the Department of Defence and others, is “preoccupied” with each of our countries. It is clear, they do not want any country, friend or foe, to be truly independent: dependent is much better.
Cyberspace and the new communication technologies have long since become a marketplace on the one hand, and a battlefield on the other.
The big American corporations, while offering us what they know what we like, with advertising, are disseminating political information, lies, and propaganda against ideas, proposals, governments and countries, which are not dominated by the United States.
More than once, surely, you have watched a video of your favourite artist on YouTube, or you go through the Shorts or Facebook, and so many other sites, while, on the one hand, advertising what you have said or written that you like or need appears, on the other hand, news and information that seek to format and shape your opinions to benefit the interests and narratives of large corporations and the United States will also “innocently” appear.
There we have the whole huge list of lies about the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine and, now, about the conflict in Russia and Ukraine. Bad and good, as always. Business, greed, and the US military-industrial complex are behind it.
It is striking, no doubt, the enormous advances in technology. Smart” televisions and mobiles capable of being activated remotely and where, day by day, billions of data or information about each and every one of us is being collected. Big Brother, who does not want anything to change, uses everything to maintain the status quo, power and privilege.
