NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY OF UNITED STATES DID BOUNDLESS CYBER CRIME WITH “BOUNDLESS INFORMANT”

From the last few days, the news highlighting Edward Snowden whereabouts was of main interest but what did he revealed to Guardian and washington post  is much more important as it relates to national security. I didn’t used the name of any country when I talk about national security because this is the worst form of crime ever did in the history of nations where national security of all the countries is at risk. Therefore naming any one country will not do the job. We are talking about boundless crime did by US-NSA data mining tool namely “boundless informant”. It would be not out of place to mention what Julian assange (founder of wikileaks) Lawyer, Michael Ratner said, "You have to have a country that's going to stand up to the United States".

 Edward Snowden, a system administrator born on 21 june, 1983, employee/contractor in the CIA who gave documents to “The Guardian” and “The Washington Post” newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information of American citizens. Through this tool officials have the ability to collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved. And more surprisingly everything was being done under an unconstitutional statute of united states i.e. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. American civil liberties union has challenged this act as unconstitutional and has also filed an appeal in the supreme court of United States which decided the matter namely Clapper Vs Amnesty International USA on 26^th February 2013.    

As a Pakistani, I am least concerned with the internal matters of US, but what about our law, our information, our privacy, does it allow any one to violate the privacy of information of our nation. You must be shocked to know that Pakistan was the second largest country whose information’s privacy was compromised and 13.5 billion intelligence was violated by the US NSA. When I saw the heat image generated by the data mining tool i.e. boundless informant, there were only two countries in red colour and Pakistan was one of them. It means that we were on top of the list. What sort of information has been compromised is really important and can this happen again is more important. 

There are a number of questions which sparked in my mind as I saw the image. How is it possible, are we not protected as a nation. Where is the defence budget going if the information is not protected in Pakistan. Todays wars are not of weapons but of information. And we as a nation has failed to protect our information. In my point of view we need to take extra precautionary steps to fight against such acts of international cyber crime. It is very very alarming that how all the information was compromised without the intervention of our government. I am here to discuss and criticize on each and every level of our government. Whether it is the army who is concern with the national security, or it is the Pakistan telecommunication authority who is responsible to “promote and protect the interest of users of telecommunication services in Pakistan” u/s 4 (1)(c) of Pakistan telecommunication re-organization act 1996.  where is the writ of government, for god sake we are in the cyber era and we are still fighting Talibans for nothing. We don’t have any foreign policy w.r.t cyber crime, we do not have laws for cyber crime.  We are not even properly equipped with the level of expertise which are needed to counter cyber crime in todays world of technology. Our government must take concrete steps.