The Edward Snowden saga resembles a radio serial form the 1940s that tells about an impending doom in the hopes listeners will tune in, and that is what Glenn Greenwald seems to be doing. The problem is the vast majority of people around the world are not as naïve as Snowden and Greenwald thought they were. Most people in developed countries are computer literate and to some degree they probably are aware the intelligence services in their countries monitor the Internet and mobile communication. Considering a major terrorist attack has not taken place in quiet sometime, they probably have come to the conclusion the monitoring has something to do with it.
This time around WikiLeaks has released the name of the country which is being monitored by the NSA, while it said, "The Washington Post and The Intercept stated that they had censored the name of the victim country at the request of the U.S. government." The request by the US government was because the disclosure could significantly jeopardize national security and lead to loss of life.
Regarding the possible loss of life, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks said, "To this day we are not aware of any evidence provided by any government agency that any of our eight million publications have resulted in harm to life." This fact might have eluded Assange, but revealing the loss of life by any government agency would further jeopardize more lives.
The country in question is Afghanistan and according to WikiLeaks there has been a systematic monitoring of almost all phone conversations under a program code-named MYSTIC. The program was formed in 2009 so NSA analysts can playback phone conversations that have taken place in Afghanistan within 30 days.
According to The Intercept, MYSTIC is part of a bigger NSA program called SOMALGET. It was apparently being used to record calls, metadata including the numbers dialed, and the time and duration of the calls in the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya and the Philippines. The program was used to find international narcotics traffickers and special-interest alien smugglers.
Whether it is the NSA, Chinese military hackers or Easter European and Russian crime syndicates, if you are online or talking on a mobile phone you run the risk of having your data compromised. But, that is not going to stop most of us from continuing with our lives, and hope the world will one day be a better place.
Edited by Maurice Nagle