Tools of imperialism

By Neil Harris

AFTER the overthrow of the Egyptian government, Robert Fisk writing in the Independent asked; “When is a military coup not a military coup?”  His answer was “When America says it isn’t.”

That hypocrisy is normal these days; Bradley Manning is in jail, awaiting a long prison sentence for whistle-blowing American atrocities in Iraq while John Kiriakou, a whistle-blower  and former CIA officer is the only person to be jailed as a result of the US torture programme. He has just started two and a half years in prison for revealing that a CIA officer destroyed the video evidence of the torture. She has since been promoted to head of “operations”.

With Julian Assange of Wikileaks holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Edward Snowden on the run for exposing the National Security Agency’s spying, you could get the idea that the American government doesn’t like whistle-blowing or internet activism. That isn’t always the case; the American government finds the internet very helpful as a tool for propaganda as this quote from “Radio Free Asia” shows:

“The Internet has emerged as a crucial platform for freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas and information. Access to an open Internet offers an opportunity for a global citizenry to freely communicate, collaborate, and exchange ideas. Unfortunately hundreds of millions of individuals’ online interactions are being monitored and obstructed by repressive governments. These government actions limit the ability for citizens to take full advantage of the powerful communications platform that the Internet has become.”

America has two “Public Diplomacy” programmes – these are the open, legal methods of destabilising governments and politicians that America doesn’t agree with. It never does this directly, it uses a series of “fronts” to hide the source of the money, although as we’ve shown in the past it isn’t that hard to follow the trail of the money back to base.

While US State Department activities often feature in this paper, “The Broadcast Board of Governors” (BBG) is separate and deals with radio and television propaganda broadcasts around the world – most of which were once funded by the CIA. It covers the old cold war stations; Radio Free Europe and Voice of America as well as “Radio Free Asia”

 “…the United States Congress recognised Radio Free Asia (RFA), through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), as an engine to empower a global citizenry to overcome governments that illegitimately block, censor, and curb the potential of the Internet as a free speech zone.”

The targets change with America’s foreign policy agenda – right now Cuba and the Middle East are top priorities while China is important too, which is where “Radio Free Asia” comes in. The BBG has also embraced the internet with enthusiasm:

“The Internet has emerged as a crucial platform for freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas and information. Access to an open Internet offers an opportunity for a global citizenry to freely communicate, collaborate, and exchange ideas. Unfortunately hundreds of millions of individuals’ online interactions are being monitored and obstructed by repressive governments. These government actions limit the ability for citizens to take full advantage of the powerful communications platform that the Internet has become.”

In order to expand its activities, the “Open Technology Fund” was set up last year, to exploit the internet and the new media by directing and organising the many well-meaning people who want to do “good”, but don’t look hard enough at the causes they are supporting.

Right now, the fund is advertising for new ideas and proposals, money no object as usual. To help prospective fundees get the picture, the fund helpfully lists some of the organisations it already supports.

Edward Snowden might have found “Globaleaks” helpful:

“GlobaLeaks is the first open-source whistle-blowing framework. It empowers anyone to easily set up and maintain a whistle-blowing platform. GlobaLeaks can help many different types of users: media organisations, activist groups, corporations and public agencies.”

The newspapers who reported the revelations about the National Security Agency may have found the Martus Project helpful:

“Journalists and human rights defenders face grave threats to themselves and to their sources that trust them with their stories. As more journalists use technology to store and manage their data, more perpetrators try to attack that technology. Benetech’s Martus is a tool aimed at providing journalists with a means of transmitting information, while protecting their sources and themselves”.

Journalists or human rights activists worried about their security might welcome help from the LEAP Encryption Access Project:

“LEAP is a non-profit dedicated to giving all internet users access to secure communication. Our focus is on adapting encryption technology to make it easy to use and widely available.”

No state is ever going to be able to get millions of people in other countries to do what it wants by being open about it – they need a lot of little organisations, all apparently “independent” and non-profitmaking to do the work for them. “Open ITP” seems almost too good to be true:

“Open ITP supports and incubates a collection of free and open source projects that enable anonymous, secure, reliable, and unrestricted communication on the Internet. Its goal is to enable people to talk directly to each other without being censored, surveilled or restricted.”

Of course, it is too good to be true, it’s another front for US law enforcement like “TOR” (The Onion Router), which the New Worker previously exposed as a website that purports to offer anonymity to those who want to hide their activities from governments but which was created and developed by the Office of Naval Intelligence and is currently funded by various fronts for the US Government.

The internet isn’t straightforward any more – in developing countries internet access isn’t easy, the cost of a computer is high and landlines are unreliable. Mobile phone technology sidesteps many of these problems and there is a stream of second hand phones and smart phones being sold to the Third World to satisfy the demand. As a result, the new media are just as important in poorer countries as they are in the West. RFA has realised the potential and is exploiting this with “The Guardian Project” which aims to:

“Create easy to use apps, open-source firmware MODs, and customised, commercial mobile phones that can be used and deployed around the world, by any person looking to protect their communications and personal data from unjust intrusion and monitoring.”

With all these projects, the only protection is from the governments that America does not approve of. The US government always ensures it has access to all this information and uses it to further its foreign policy aims and to identify individuals and causes it does not agree with. Use them at your peril.