Paris: Watchdog RSF has satated that ‘Shady agencies at the service of democratically elected governments are among the worst online spies in the world’
According to RSF, agencies such as the US National Security Agency, Britain's GCHQ and the Centre for Development Telematics in India embrace the worst methods of snooping in the name of governments that purportedly hold freedom of speech as a national priority.They have hacked the Internet and turned a collective resource into a weapon in the service of special interests that flout the freedom of information, freedom of expression and the right to privacy.
"The NSA and GCHQ have spied on the communications of millions of citizens including many journalists," stated the report. The methods used, many of which NSA contractor Snowden revealed to the world last year before going into hiding in Russia are all the more intolerable" because they are then used by authoritarian countries such as Iran, China, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia, the report said.
Also singled out by RSF are private companies that provide their most up-to-date powers of snooping at trade fairs that have become giant spying bazaars selling the best that technology can offer.It is at these shows that profit-driven spy-ware firms link up with government agents or nervous multinationals that are in search of the newest ways to observe and control the Internet.
RSF argued that the censorship carried out by the Enemies of the Internet would not be possible without the tools developed by the private sector companies to be found at these trade fairs.
