Noam Chomsky has
praised the Guardian’s revelations about the activities of the National
Security Agency. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
The actions of the US government in spying on its and other countries' citizens have been sharply criticised by
Noam Chomsky, the prominent political thinker, as attacks on democracy and the people.
"Governments
should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever
technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is
their own population," he told the Guardian.
In his first public
comment on the scandal that has enveloped the US, UK and other
governments, as well as internet companies such as Google and
Microsoft, Chomsky said he was not overly surprised technology and corporations were being used in this way.
"This
is obviously something that should not be done. But it is a little
difficult to be too surprised by it," he said. "They [governments and
corporations] take whatever is available, and in no time it is being
used against us, the population. Governments are not representative.
They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are
dominant and rich."
Chomsky, who has strongly supported the Occupy movement and spoken out against the
Obama administration's use of drones, warned that young people were much less shocked at being spied on and did not view it as such a problem.
"Polls
in the US indicate there is generational issue here that someone ought
to look into – my impression is that younger people are less offended by
this than the older generation. It may have to do with the
exhibitionist character of the internet culture, with Facebook and so
on," he said. "On the internet, you think everything is going to be
public."
Other technologies could also come to be used to spy more
effectively on people, he added. "They don't want people to know what
they're doing. They want to be able to use [new technology] against
their own people.
"Take a look at drones, and what is developing.
You will find new drone technology being used in 10 or 12 years from
now. They are looking at [trying to make] tiny drones that can go in
your living room, like a fly on the wall."
He praised the Guardian's revelations about the activities of the National Security Agency, and the
whistleblower Ed Snowden, who has been taking refuge in Hong Kong. "We need this kind [of journalism]," he said. "We ought to know about it."
Chomsky,
a much-lauded academic and professor of linguistics, gained renown as a
political critic when he vocally opposed the Vietnam war. Since then,
he has written dozens of books on political power, capitalism and
democracy and espoused a variety of activist campaigns, most recently
the Occupy movement.
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