I’m old enough enough to remember the tail end of the real cold war between the West and the old Soviet Union when we were waving nuclear missiles at each other. And threatening each other with nuclear annihilation.
So it is a bit of an exaggeration to speak of a new cold war when the threat is nowhere near as apocalyptic. But if you take a look at how the old cold war was fought – with espionage, and signals intelligence – you begin to realise we do have a new cold war. Intelligence agencies around the world are cooperating in fighting against a new enemy.
Us.
Oh, they’ll defend themselves by saying that it’s not the normal man or woman in the street they are worried about, but but the terrorists in our midst they are targeting. But to do that they have to spy on us.
They’ll say that they are not spying on the people in their own country; just on those sneaky foreigners. But when GCHQ spies on US citizens, they pass the information they obtain to the NSA; and the NSA passes information on their spying activities to GCHQ.
Which means that what little protection we have against our own intelligence agencies spying on us is effectively meaningless.