Transparency.

Issues of eaves-dropping have been in the center of public attention over the past week; the US is listening not only to conversations of residents of other countries but to their leaders’ conversations as well. Surprise! Or is it? I believe this is one of the unspoken topics under consent. It is common knowledge that countries “secretly” gather information on each other and will continue doing so. Now it has been brought out to broad daylight, putting the US under scrutiny. But every detail presented to us must be questioned for its authenticity and wholeness. US’s allies that supposedly were/are under surveillance are expected to react in a certain way (as they do) to “protect” their citizen’s privacy while, I think, they are burying their own misdoings even deeper. We do not get the whole truths and people are naïve if they think that the US will actually shut down all these programs, as there are many we are not even aware of.

In relation to our discussion in class, this is a matter of transparency. The media represents it as new knowledge, but it has already been revealed that the US listens to its own citizens, so it was known that the ability exists. We are audience to a show of the involved (and uninvolved) countries as their leaders make their demands and we are reported of alleged conversations between them. How much can we believe?

In addition, I think that Edward Snowden, the leaker of the documents that have brought to this latest scandal, can be compared to Susan and Coetzee himself. He has revealed many incomplete stories/scandals, bits of information without context, and let the media attempt to complete the missing pieces, to create context, not necessarily in accordance to his intentions in revealing the classified information.

*Thank you Kevin for reviewing my post.