MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / June 12, 2013) – Youth group Anakbayan expressed its support for former Central Intelligence Agency specialist and National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden who exposed the existence of a massive U.S. Internet surveillance program, and called on Philippine government employees to do the same regarding Internet and communications surveillance conducted by the Aquino administration.
Snowden has revealed the existence of PRISM, a computer program which directly accesses the information databases of online service providers such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, and Skype. According to the original report from the British newspaper The Guardian, among the information collected by PRISM are emails, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP, Skype, for example, chats, file transfers, social networking details.”
“Snowden is a hero for exposing this act of war by the U.S. against the peoples of the entire world. There is reason to believe that the U.S. will use the data from PRISM to launch more wars of aggression against indepedent countries like what they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. PRISM will most likely be also used against opposition movements in U.S ‘semi-colonies’ like the Philippines,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
“We call on all organizations and individuals who believe in freedom and democracy to protect Snowden from being brought back to the U.S. What he did is not an act of crime but he will certainly be treated as a criminal by the Obama administration and the American military,” he said.
Snowden is currently seeking asylum in Hong Kong.
Anakbayan also called on the public to revive the clamor for the rejection of the Cybercrime Law, calling it the Philippine version of PRISM.
“While much public attention has been given to the Cybercrime Law’s provisions on online libel, the truly terrifying provisions are those that allow warrant-less surveillance or the collecting of any information on the Internet regarding our activities without the permission of the Courts,” Crisostomo said.
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