US calls on Internet freedom for spying

The latest revelation from Edward Snowden's vast collection of documents pointing to NSA malfeasance shows how the NSA, contrary to all protestations of innocence, hacks into the secure servers of foreign companies and electronically stalks its personnel; in this case, Huawei of China.

What makes this unbecoming act all the more insidious is that the US government singled out Huawei as a untrustworthy company on the unproven assumption that it was hacking other people's information, allegedly using backdoor electronic access of precisely the kind that the NSA was using against Huawei.

Looking back, one can only wonder, was the left hand of US government unaware of what the right hand was doing, or was it a diversionary tactic in which the thief accused the victim of stealing to blur the lines of right and wrong?

Edward Snowden was a run-of-the-mill NSA employee, the kind of person who signed up for the US military and US intelligence because he felt it was a higher calling until he saw too much, heard too much and had a Saul-Paul conversion.

At great risk to himself, he confronted his demons and become more human, and more humane in the process. He's no longer a cog in NSA's huge information-machine, he's no longer a professional peeping Tom or an electronic intruder.

But what about his tens of thousands of colleagues, contractors and "made men" alike who still work in slavish obedience to their NSA masters? Do they too have their doubts? Will they too step forward to blow the whistle and say enough is enough?

That day may come, but not anytime soon. Consider the latest sprawling epic by consummate filmmaker Martin Scorese. The Wolf of Wall Street is about the intoxication of wealth and power, fueled by unfettered greed of the kind that eventually brought the US economic system to the brink. It is an amoral world, incapable of self-correction because the distinction between right and wrong is blurred beyond recognition.

The stealers and keepers of secrets at the NSA do not get paid nearly as well as their Wall Street counterparts, but they live in a closed, hothouse world of intoxicating powers that makes it hard for them to see just how amoral they have become. Wolves of Wall Street move over, the Wolves of Washington are on the prowl.

Ever since the Clinton presidency, US Internet diplomacy has provided cover for NSA surveillance. More people on the Internet means more people on the grid, which in turn facilitates electronic snooping and spying, a field in which the US is undisputed world leader.

Edward Snowden has delivered a shot across the bow to a titanic, listing ship of state that bores full speed ahead in perilous waters.

The author is a visiting research fellow, Cornell University, New York.