They've made up another boogeyman in the hopes to garner sympathy

Nov 7, 2013 11:01 GMT  ·  By

When discussing the Snowden leaks, officials started saying that publishing such information helps terrorists. Of course, even such claims are absurd, but in an effort to get citizens to back up the intelligence agencies’ intrusions in everyone’s privacy, the statements are becoming even more absurd.

The terrorism claims were the first boogeyman they used as a scare tactic. Then, US officials discussed about how the disclosures were going to aid foreign enemy governments. They even mentioned insurgent groups.

The British seem to be taking it to the extreme, however, making claims that bewilder everyone. Their stance towards the NSA leaks, and implicitly of the GCHQ’s role in the entire story, has been a lot more vehement than the one coming from the Americans.

In front of UK’s High Court yesterday, where David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was contesting the legality of his detainment under terrorism law in August, Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience at the Cabinet Office, made another effort to touch yet another sensitive cord by creating a new boogeyman.

Apparently, the disclosures of the Snowden files are making it easier for “pedophiles to cover their tracks online,” he believes. There were no details on how this could be done or how such criminals didn’t already know the police was on their tail, but the statement was thrown in there, along many other claims.

This is just another example of the ample efforts from the part of intelligence community to get citizens to support the surveillance programs and to push the media to stop publishing information about how the NSA, GCHQ and other spy agencies around the world are violating everyone’s privacy by collecting the entire haystack just in case there may be a needle in there somewhere.