The new statement reignites fears that the Internet is breaking up into pieces

Apr 25, 2014 07:13 GMT  ·  By

Experts have been warning about this for a few months now, but it seems like it’s finally starting to become a reality – the NSA surveillance is breaking up the Internet.

After the signals given out by Brazil and Germany, which have suggested building local Internet networks that would shield people from eventual surveillance efforts coming from the United States or other forces, Russia is joining the party too.

Vladimir Putin was as clear as day that big things were coming when he dubbed the Internet a “CIA project.”

The Russian president made the statement during a media conference organized in St. Petersburg. During his intervention, he also said that America’s intelligence agency originally set up the Internet and had been continuously working to develop it ever since.

This isn’t the first time that Putin has hinted to the fact that he’d like Russia to have its own alternative, separate from the global network that makes its communications susceptible to espionage.

Germany and Brazil are another two countries that have similar plans, especially following the revelations regarding the National Security Agency and its mass surveillance efforts, especially considering the agency’s programs involving the infiltration of popular networks such as Facebook and Skype, as well as other social media.

Many critics are blaming Snowden for the consequences of revealing the NSA’s inner works and for the way the world’s governments have reacted to the newly available information. The tendency to close themselves off to international espionage threats is only natural, after all.

However, Snowden’s supporters are pointing out that none of this would have happened if the NSA hadn’t tried to spy on everyone and to damage the trust in the world’s biggest Internet players.

In the meantime, Snowden has put his newly found freedom at risk just last week by asking Vladimir Putin on national TV about Russia’s own intelligence activities.

Most specifically, the whistleblower asked Putin whether the country’s intelligence service performed mass online surveillance as the United States and whether he believed that to be morally correct – to violate the privacy of so many with no actual reason.

Putin skirted around the subject and said that Russia didn’t have as much money as the United States to invest in such practices. At the same time, the Russian president talked about how such surveillance was only done with a court order and that everything was done by the book.

Of course, that’s exactly what Obama said a few months back, before all hell broke loose.