Edward Snowden, a former CIA and National Security Agency employee spilled the beans on PRISM and Tempora Internet surveillance programs, which are alleged to intercept United States and European public telephone and Internet communications. Snowden is charged under the US Espionage Act.

He is accused of theft of government property and unauthorized communication of national defense information to others. Snowden, after arriving in Hong Kong on May 20, gave an interview to The Guardian newspaper in which he revealed sensitive information that generated a storm hitting the media headlines and debates on Internet and television.

According to Snowden, the leaks were an effort to inform the public as to that what is done in their name and that what is done against them. He is dubbed “traitor” and in response he says he is neither a traitor nor a hero, he is an American. Snowden is currently in Russia from where the US government is trying hard to get him extradited.

Earlier in 2010, Julian Assange, an Australian and the editor of WikiLeaks, who published thousands of diplomatic and military documents causing a big embarrassment to the US government and many diplomats and politicians across the world.

The leaks brought to the fore what generally transpires in diplomatic circles behind the scenes away from public eyes. In that episode a US army soldier was arrested on the suspicion of passing secret documents to the WikiLeaks.

Against the backdrop of these two episodes, there are two pertinent points that deserve to be mentioned here. First, The West is very proud of its freedom of expression and genuinely so, but all this culture of unbridled freedom of expression is coming back to haunt it.

You cannot give sermons on national security to an ardent believer of freedom of expression who has been brought up in an environment that allows blatant freedom of expression. This kind of freedom at times offends millions and millions of people in many parts of the world. So, it’s like what goes around comes around.

The second point is that also seems quite plausible is that US intelligence agencies must be considering the potential hazards of such leaks. Understandably, there are always some covert operations going on and some of these are of the nature, which cannot be made public. — Shaukat Ali, Dhahran