Edward Snowden’s disclosures of US Government’s ANB espionage activities are still enjoying popularity with the world media. Intelligence gathering and the scandals which follow it have long become a key weapon for the Washington’s effort towards world domination. It’s unsurprising that George Bush and Barack Obama oversaw the process of the transformation of ANB into a digital panopticon intended to exercise surveillance over the lives of Americans, as well as citizens and leaders of other countries. It has become known recently that New Zealand spies on 20 Asian-Pacific Region countries on behalf of the US, including China — Russia’s strategic partner.

American companies came under surveillance too. Finally it became known that the global company Wikipedia joined a number of organisations suing ANB and the US Justice Department. The American society is seriously concerned with protecting its rights for the freedom of speech and individual privacy, trying to do something about it, but it ostensibly doesn’t seem to cope with this problem. At the same time the corporations — let’s not be naive — simply want to preserve their commercial secrets. The US receives intelligence which might be used for blackmail at important business talks and negotiations. It a ubiquitous and omnipresent technology we’re talking about, and before Snowden people couldn’t even imagine its scale and scope. If Snowden turns out to be right, then one of the key goals of ANB intelligence gathering is not the security of the USA but political blackmail. Washington nevertheless works to this end, investing billions of dollars and often losing the trust of its allies. This will adversely affect the leadership of the United States in the nearest future.