|
Dissidents in Asia
worry about US sharing PRISM data
Reuters, SINGAPORE, BEIJING and WASHINGTON
Dissident and opposition groups in Asia, including those supported by the US,
are voicing concern over reports that Washington may have monitored and
collected their conversations and e-mails.
Some of these groups include legitimate political parties, others are dissidents
given US assistance, but they are worried that data collected by the National
Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI from US Web giants like Google, Facebook and
Yahoo could some day be used against them.
¡§We share a lot of sensitive data, election-related data, using Google Docs,¡¨
said Ong Kian Ming, a member of parliament for Malaysia¡¦s opposition Democratic
Action Party.
¡§That¡¦s definitely something we are concerned about because we don¡¦t know what
kind of messages are being tracked and who these messages would be given to,¡¨
Ong said.
A Malaysian government spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
There was no word whether US agencies were sharing such gathered information
with allied governments, but British and US newspapers have suggested that the
NSA has handed over information on Britons gathered under PRISM, the name of the
eavesdropping program.
In Singapore, some people use encryption programs to avoid surveillance.
¡§If you are concerned about electronic eavesdropping, you can use pidgin IM ¡X it
has an encryption module for instant messaging,¡¨ said Donaldson Tan, editor of
socio-political Web site New Asia Republic.
¡§There is also Tor client for online anonymity,¡¨ he said, referring to two
popular free software programs developed by volunteer programmers to guard
against network surveillance.
Asked if he was concerned whether the US would share surveillance information
with Singaporean authorities, Tan said: ¡§The US is really hard to read.¡¨
A Singaporean government spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for
comment.
One nation where dissidents are relatively unconcerned about the snooping
revelations is China, where government critics view Washington as an ally and
domestic Internet servers as subservient to Beijing.
¡§I¡¦ve never considered abandoning Twitter, YouTube, Google, Gmail or Gchat,¡¨
said Hu Jia (J¨Î), a prominent Chinese dissident, who has to use a virtual
private network to get around China¡¦s ban on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
¡§These are the only weapons we have to get our message out and the only safe way
to do so. The US would never monitor us. They are using it to fight terrorism.
It¡¦s totally different to what the Chinese government does to listen in on us,¡¨
he said by telephone.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama¡¦s administration has launched an internal
review to assess damage to national security from Edward Snowden¡¦s public
release of top secret details of the NSA¡¦s eavesdropping programs, a senior US
intelligence official said. The review is separate from an initial criminal leak
investigation which has been opened by the US Department of Justice, the
official said.
Snowden¡¦s employer, Booz Allen, announced yesterday that it had fired him on
Monday for violating the firm¡¦s code of ethics.
Snowden reportedly remains in hiding in Hong Kong.
|
