NSA Makes Latest ‘Enemies of the Internet’ List

If any publicity is good
publicity, the National Security Agency (NSA) is just rolling in
it. The latest headline grabber is the high-profile electronic
surveillance agency’s ranking—along with its British counterpart,
Government Commmunications Headquarters (GCHQ)—on a list of
“enemies of the Internet” that otherwise features the usual scurvy
screw of thumbscrew-friendly authoritarian regimes. The listing
comes, of course, courtesy of the NSA’s widely publicized (by
Edward Snowden) spying on the communications activities of
Americans and the world at large.

Published by Reporters Without Borders, Enemies of the Internet
2014 lists the
NSA and GCHQ among such notables as
Cuba,
Iran,
Russia,
Syria, and a
cabal of western firms that sell surveillance technology to the
sort of governments that make decent people squeamish. Most of the
names on the list are no surprise. Cuba’s communist dictatorship
“denies most of its population free access to the Internet”? You
don’t say. Syria’s thuggish rulers “monitor the Web and trace
activists and dissidents”? Few of us thought otherwise.

But that’s exactly what makes the appearance of U.S. and U.K.
government agencies so…unpleasant. Those governments are supposed
to be better than that, though the realists among us know that
government officials tend to aspire downward when it comes to
respect for individual liberty. The NSA, the report notes, “has
come to symbolize the abuses by the world’s intelligence
agencies.”

But, if the NSA gets slammed both by the specifics of its entry
in the report and by the company it keeps, the U.K.’s government is
in for even worse treatment.

“The U.S. edition of The Guardian is still able to
publish information from Edward Snowden, while the British edition
is not,” the report asserts. That doesn’t seem to be quite
true, yet, though the British government is reportedly considering

reinstating censorship of such matters after
raking the the newspaper over coals over the Snowden
revelations.

More bluntly, the report quotes Snowden commenting about the
GCHQ, “They are worse than the U.S.”

Which might soften some of the sting for Americans. Or just make
it worse for Britons.