Tempora - The British PRISM 2.0

O tempora o mores! 
Reading the articles which came out last night on yet another governmental spying scandal, I could not but think of one of Cicero's orations' most famous phrases: "O tempora, o mores!". The exclamation, which roughly translates to "Oh what times, oh what customs!", is intended by Cicero to deplore the viciousness, corruption and lack of justice of his age, and his frustration that despite a huge body of evidence compiled against his rival (Catiline) to overthrow the Roman government and assassinate Cicero, Catiline is yet to be executed. It also seemed appropriate as it directly alludes to the name of this newly leaked scandal: "Tempora".

I think that the vast majority of conscious, rational, and well educated people have, in recent times, felt the same frustration as Cicero's when confronted with the blatant abuses by individuals, governments, and corporations which, because of their power and influence, go unpunished on a daily and regular basis. I have no doubt that Tempora, whose existence would not be possible in any sane world, will turn out to be another example in which nobody will be held accountable and responsible for the infringements of the rights of citizens by governments and corporations.

What is Tempora?

So, what exactly is Tempora? Tempora is described as an "internet buffer zone" in which the data would pass through and be stored before continuing to its destination. The Guardian newspaper makes the analogy of a digital TV box which you can use to record video transmissions and data prior to it reaching your television screen. Since its creation by the British government, Tempora has been used (just as PRISM has) to spy not only on the population at large, but on diplomatic gatherings as well, and to gather all sorts of information from metadata as well as content, from telephone calls to facebook posts and e-mails. It seems that the United States is not the only government to have covertly spied on high-level government officials or diplomats at international gatherings.

Akin to the PRISM programme (on which I have written recently) Tempora was initiated by the British Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) and was intended to massively monitor internet communication as well as the creation of a huge database to collect, analyze and store this data. It is divided in two sections which reflect the agency's ambition and ability: "Mastering the Internet" and "Global Telecoms Exploitation". The former may have originated as far back as 2007 while the latter seems to have more recent roots dating to 2010.

The GCHQ is home to over 4,000 employees, housed in the agency's office complexes in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, known as "The Doughnut", which also is the site of the large data-collection system of Tempora. The website describes the agency as "one of the three UK Intelligence Agencies and forms a crucial part of the UK’s National Intelligence and Security machinery... [it] provides intelligence, protects information and informs relevant UK policy to keep our society safe and successful in the Internet age". Recently, Richard J. Aldrich, a British Author, has published a book called "GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency" in which he catalogs in detail the shady and questionable activities of this agency since the inter-war years. We will, however, only focus on this most recent scandal.

"The Doughnut" - Offices of the GCHQ

The rationale utilized for the justification for the existence of such a surveillance system is, as all other oppressive and highly questionable surveillance programs of the recent years, the fear of terrorism - a fear which the American and British and European public have been force-fed since 2001 by complementing political rhetoric, low-grade corporate journalism, and which has been reinforced in a myriad of ways, from the most trivial to the most essential, through societal relations and media propaganda dissemination. Despite its irrationality, this manufactured fear has been almost completely internalized as legitimate and justified by the population at large and, as such, is likely to be used as an explanation to cover the severity of this scandal, as has already been attempted.

The real rationale, however, was that early in 2009 the officials of the GCHQ found themselves at a disadvantage relative to the emerging new communication technologies, especially pertaining to the internet, nd their loss of surveillance control as a result. This is exemplified in an internal e-mail recently leaked by Snowden to the British newspaper The Guardian stating:

"The rapid development of different technologies, types of traffic, service providers and networks, and the growth in sheer volumes that accompany particularly the expansion and use of the internet, present an unprecedented challenge to the success of GCHQ's mission. Critically we are not currently able to prioritise and task the increasing range and scale of our accesses at the pace, or with the coherence demanded of the internet age: potentially available data is not accessed, potential benefit for HMG is not delivered."

How does it work

The GCHQ is able to access nearly all the information that originates from/to, as well as transits through, the United Kingdom, especially through the underwater fiber-optic cables that connect then to the island of Great Britain from neighbouring nations. These nations are Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Denmark. This was achieved with the installation of monitoring stations on each of these cables, "each with a capacity of 10 gigabits per second. In theory, that gave GCHQ access to a flow of 21.6 petabytes in a day, equivalent to 192 times the British Library's entire book collection."

A map of the major internet and phone communication cables into and out of the United Kingdom.

Through the documents leaked by now world-famous whistle-blower and former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, it is possible to assert that the programme was able to survey nearly all (1,500 of 1,600) high-capacity internet cables in and out of the United Kingdom, and could harvest information from at least 400 of them simultaneously. The information was intended to be shared with the British government, as well as MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies. Although conceptually established two years prior, the operation did not commence until May of 2012. Since then, for 18 months, roughly three-hundred GCHQ analysts and over 250 NSA employees dug through the data daily, examining the communication records of over 600 million people.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the NSA was also involved in the project, that the data collected by the Tempora project was shared with them, and that that the GCHQ and the American NSA collaborated in the analysis of the data? In addition, from the published leaked slides, it appears that the Canadian Communication Security Establishment, the Canadian government's national cryptologic agency, was also involved as part of a greater project amongst the "Five Eyes" electronic eavesdropping alliance nations of Canada, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia as the leaked report itself states. Information within that report also clearly states that the United Kingdom and the GCHQ had the "biggest internet access" among the "Five Eyes" nations, and that the Tempora program even outmatched its American counterpart (PRISM) - "We are in the golden age," the report states.

Detail of a published slide of the leaked presentation
 showing the logos of the Canadian Communication Security Establishment and the NSA.

G20 and Commonwealth Meetings

As previously mentioned, the programme was not only utilized to spy on average citizens as well as suspects of terrorist activities, but were intentionally and explicitly utilized to gather information from the GPRS networks of representatives at the G20 summit meetings held in London on April 4th, 2009. For this, the United Kingdom is currently experiencing a series of diplomatic incidents with countries such as Turkey, Ireland and Russia.

Proof of this are two of the slides of the aforementioned leaked presentation, which boast accomplishments in this regard and cite the fact that since "diplomatic targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones" they were able to exploit "this use at the G20 meetings last year [2009]...deliver[ing] messages to analysts during the G20 in near real time" as well as providing "timely information to UK ministers".

Published slide of the leaked presentation on the Tempora operation.

Published slide of the leaked presentation on the Tempora operation.

Should this not be enough, the leaked documents also point to the fact that the United Kingdom's government used resources associated to the MTI programme to spy on high government officials during the Commonwealth Leader's meeting in 2009. Revelations of the sort cast some serious doubts upon the official explanation that these would be measures utilized solely to ensure national security and spy on terrorist threats.

Collusion of Companies

It is yet uncertain whether the companies involved in this scheme were subjugated, threatened and/or forcibly pressured in some sort by intelligence officials into complying with this initiative or colluded with it voluntarily. The Guardian, however, has claimed to be unable to disclose the names of those companies citing the fact that "the exact identities of the companies that have signed up, are regarded as extremely sensitive, and classified as top secret. Staff are instructed to be very careful about sharing information that could reveal which companies are 'special source' providers, for fear of 'high-level political fallout'. In one document, the companies are described as 'intercept partners'"

Given the language describing the companies as "intercept partners" it could be likely, although far from certain, that these entities were at least complicit by inaction and that were considered as partners by the officials within the GCHQ. Although the blurring line between the corporate and governmental worlds continues to fade dimmer every day, and the vast majority of Europeans such as myself are deluded into thinking that "we are too smart for that, it won't happen here...", perfect example of this is at the doorstep of the European mainland. One fact is clear, given the precautions taken relating to the corporate involvement in this matter (apparently more precautions than in hiding the existence of the programme itself), the repercussion of such knowledge could be politically and economically disastrous for those involved.

Many actually ask and wonder how this differs from previous government sanctioned methods of surveillance and espionage. Well, the differences are mainly three-fold. Firstly, in the vast majority of past (known) cases espionage attempts have taken place in legitimate circumstances while the rationale of the the war on terror is, if not engineered, at least insufficient to warrant this type of surveillance. The second main difference lies in the magnitude and scope of the project - while most previous espionage attempts have been targeted, focused and based on acquiring precise information and following through, new technologies have forces, as well as allowed, intelligence agencies to rely on a "dragnet" approach. Lastly, this "dragnet" methodology means that unlike in the past, the recipients of such invasive intrusions of privacy are innocent, domestic, (perhaps too) loyal citizens of the state rather than real domestic threats or foreign enemies.

Far from being intended to benefit corporations, this programme is instead geared towards a function of social and societal control, to maintain the control of the potentially dissident population, and as such to prevent the breakdown of government functions that indeed serve such enormous private interests.

Germany next?

So, which country or agency will be next to be exposed in this falling line of dominoes initiated by Edward Snowden's leak? Nobody can be quite certain, but some strong indications are pointing at the next financial and communication European superpower: Germany. The link between German, British, and United States foreign affairs and communication policies since the end of world war two has been tightening at an increasing and documents leaked earlier this month show, through an analysis software called "Boudless Informant", that Germany is indeed one of the main sources of intelligence for the NSA. In addition, scrutiny has already begun into the operations of the German "Bundesnachrichtendienst" (Federal Intelligence Service) and EUR 100 mln. project of internet monitoring which would give it access, like PRISM and Tempora, to a large portion of domestic and inter-border internet traffic (about 20% of Germany's total). 

Spiraling Spying Scandals - PRISM, the NSA and Tech Giants

The United States under the Obama administration is undergoing yet another scandal related to the invasion of privacy of its citizens as well as members of the international diplomatic community.

Remember when diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle-blowing agency WikiLeaks made it public that the Obama Administration had spied on U.N. officials and even gathered bio-metric information on them?

Remember when huge tech of communication companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple and Verizon got some serious heat for releasing thousands and thousands of private user's data?

Well, the information we have learnt about the recently leaked PRISM program marks one of the most pivotal points in this grotesque series of events and almost burlesque infringement of people's basic civil rights and right to privacy - and this time it's the turn of the United States' National Security Agency (NSA). In a recent release of documents by former CIA operative-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden it was discovered that a secretive program known as PRISM could have been operating for as far back as 2008, during Bush's second term, and renewed under the Obama Administration in December 2012, collecting and analyzing the private and confidential information of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden

It should be noted that the law which has allowed for the development of the PRISM program not only grants the U.S. government and its agencies the ability to spy on its own citizens, but it also allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.


So, what exactly is PRISM and how does it operate?

PRISM is a secret government program that was intended to gather a gargantuan body of information "collect[ed] directly from the servers", on a large segment of the U.S. populace for analysis for reasons of criminal investigations or assessing threats to national security.

The existence of the programme was established following Snowden's leak of a 41-slide terribly designed Power-Point presentation which would have been used to train the NSA operatives. The program can be so successful in monitoring global internet traffic due to the simple reality that, whether directly or indirectly, the vast majority of that traffic passes by or originates in the United States. This very fact is capitalized in the third slide of the leaked presentation.

Global Internet Map.

Despite the fact that the presentation claims to have the almost complete cooperation of those firms involved in the scandal such as Google and Facebook, such firms have heavily denied any voluntary involvement in the scandal when approached for comments and continued claiming not to possess any knowledge about the PRISM programme. In any case, perhaps this lack of transparency IS the greatest tragedy of all, as it actually prevents us consumers and "normal" people from knowing to what extent the companies that we rely on for internet services and trust to maintain our privacy are colluding and cooperating with the NSA and other government agencies, and thus prevents customers and consumers from making an informed choice as to how to better protect their online privacy and anonymity. But then again, that's the whole point of prism, right?

So far, three of the total fourty-one slides of the leaked presentation have been released to the public. One in particular clearly indicated that through Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, Youtube, Skype, AOL and Apple the PRISM programme managed to collect (depending on the individual agreement with the company, but generally including) e-mails, video and voice chat, photos, stored data, VoIP, file transfers, video conferences, activity notifications (log-ins etc.), and online social networking details. Boldened at the bottom of the slide, however, there is an ominous last bullet point that states "Special Requests". Whether these "special requests" were acquired with the complicity of the aforementioned companies or not is yet to be determined.

Second slide of the leaked PRISM presentation.

In any case, both companies and government officials insist that the program is lawful and authorized both by Congress as well as the Courts under the FISA amendment act (H.R. 604) which allows for the monitoring of the customers of all companies specified. In addition a particular piece of the legislation, "Section 702", also makes provisions for  "targeting certain persons outside the United Stated other than United States persons" effectively authorizing the government to listen to the phone-calls and read the e-mails of virtually anyone virtually anywhere on the planet.

The only safeguard for such action is the judicial system which, knowing the gross miscarriages of justice and complete inadequacy of the U.S. Justice Department, should leave no person with a fuzzy feeling of safety inside. This is especially so when the NSA has clarified that it asks for warrants against whole groups and organizations, not identified individuals, and as they perhaps identify further individual targets they "attach" them to the original group warrant.

Despite protestations by government officials such as Jeremy Bash, Leon Panetta's former Chief of Staff at the CIA and his current one as Secretary of Defence, that there is extensive oversight of the judicial process, the fact that these lifetime and tenured federal judges are approved by the same senate that is bought by corporations should not put everyone at ease. It also effectively concludes the corporate infiltration in all three branches of government, the legislative branch with a bought-and-paid-for Senate and House of Representatives, the Executive branch with a president that was/will be dependent on corporate donations and "quid-pro-quo" actions to ensure his/her political success, and the judicial branch with judges who are ensured highly-paid consultancies and corporate positions or some other aspect of indirect remuneration.

Think of all the innocent civilians whose death by drone hellfire missiles was directly sanctioned by indeed that same congress and those same courts now deciding whether YOU or your children are to be judged as terrorists. The parallel goes even more in-depth when you consider that the vast majority of the targets that had been identified for elimination through drone strikes were, indeed, identified not by military professionals but by civilian for-profit firms.

Simply put - do you think that an American court should decide whether a Dutch (or Indonesia, or whatever other nationality's) citizen is to be eavesdropped on? Doesn't this go against any and all pretense of maintaining national sovereignty and the protection of individual privacy rights? Even more scarily, this blank-check measure creates a dangerous precedent as it has perpetuated an already developing culture of extreme state-corporate oppression in which everyone can be considered guilty until proven innocent.

Corporanistan 

So, despite the protestations of the CEOs of the firms and companies involved the possibilities here are two-fold: either the communication and tech-giants have colluded with the NSA and other security and surveillance agencies facilitating their access to our data, or the U.S. government has done so without their consent and knowledge, indicating that the companies' security systems are far from reliable - I am uncertain which of the two we should be more worried about, but the former scares me a bit more and seems more likely.

In the recent thirty years there has been a growing collusion between private interests and the government officials which, far from serving the interests of their constituents, instead serve the interests of their campaign financiers. We have seen this proliferation of cronyism and the "revolving door" phenomenon in virtually every single industry - Agrobusiness & biotech (Monsanto etc.), energy (Chevron,  Exxon etc.), security services (Booz/Allen, DynCorp, XE/Blackwater, KBR etc.), healthcare (Pfizer, Bayern, Merk Co. etc.).

The magical Revolving Door

The role of governments has traditionally been that of protecting the society at large from the negative effects that may derive from personal actions, even if such actions tend to benefit an individual. This is one of the principles behind the state's monopoly of force and control over what are known as "natural monopolies" - those industries that should they not be a monopoly of the state (and, as such, public) would be detrimental to the societal development and well being. Traditionally, higher education, healthcare, rails and roads, electricity & water, and the military have all been under the control of the state for the benefit of the populace. The past decades' privatization trends and the increasingly blurred line between business and government have created a surreal vicious circle in which governments will collude with corporations to maintain personal power and influence, and corporations will collude with government to ensure their preferential placement in the country's affairs. 

PRISM is the perfect example of this - far from being intended to benefit corporations such as Facebook, AOL and Google, this program is instead geared towards a function of social and societal control, to maintain the control of the potentially dissident population, and as such to prevent the breakdown of government functions that indeed serve such enormous private interests. The communication's industry is one of the most powerful tools of social control which, with the advent of the internet, actually threatens governments and corporations and may actually be turned against the very people who engineered it. As such, control of this incredibly tool of communication and information is essential (as it has always been) for the effective subjugation and pacification of a population. If you are ever in doubt of the potential of such an industry, always remember the words of Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

"We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about." - Eric Schmidt

Global American Empire

Perhaps even more worrying than the blatant subservience and continuous (self-)subjugation of the U.S. government to private corporate interests, there is perhaps one even more concerning aspect about the PRISM that often gets overlooked - the United States' self-granted authority to conduct an international war across borders with near-absolute impunity. This is the case with the DEA, which grants itself authority to operate anywhere on the planet in what is another trans-national and illegal conflict known as the "War on Drugs"; this is the case with the drone program which reserves the right to strike pretty much anyone, anywhere on the planet on the hypocritically and ironically called "War on Terror"; and this is the case with expanding and  U.S-led efforts to regulate the internet and to effectively castrate it of its neutrality, in order to render it a neutered and sterile pool of commercialism and state-corporate led propaganda and "entertainment"... Not to mention the myriads of actual military confrontations they sponsor and/or are directly involved in.

It would be unfair, however, to completely blame the U.S. government for its hegemonic and imperialist aspirations as they have been well known to the vast majority educated and rational persons. It would be fair, however, to equally condemn the governments of the rest of the world for allowing the United States to effectively and nonchalantly walk over the civil rights and liberties of their own citizens, as well as the state's sovereignty. This is not just coincidence, or cowardice, but a very strong indication that the process of corporate infiltration in the rest of the world follows the lead of that of the United States, and is slowly turning the globe into a border-less corporate cartel.

By granting itself the ability to spy on, hunt down, capture and prosecute or kill anyone on the planet that is perceived (or portrayed) as being an enemy to its national security (which, in essence, is the corporate economic interests), the United Corporate States of America have declared the entire world as their domain and theater of operations, they have effectively declared that they consider the entire world to be under their legal jurisdiction, and will act accordingly, and have reduced the concept of national sovereignty over land and citizens to nothing more than an inconvenient formality. In the words of the beloved (American) TV Series "The Big Bang Theory":

Leonard: What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis?

Sheldon: Screwed.

Leonard: There you go.

Democratic Debacle - Austerity Bites at Greece's Public TV Network

By now the vast majority of the world is quite aware of the current financial state of the Greek government, and the enormous loans that they owe to the cartel of private banks that make up the European Central Bank and European States.

On June 11th, one of the oldest Greek public broadcast network, ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation), known as the "Greek BBC" was closed by the Greek government as a penny-pinching measure in the continuing cuts to the public sector imposed by austerity measures, and in what the Guardian has dubbed "a cultural calamity". The company, founded in 1938, survived World War II and the fascist military junta that ruled from 1967 to 1974, but it and its 2,700 employees could not survive the democratic-strangling grasp of the European Union and its banking cartel. To many ERT was considered to be the most neutral of broadcasters and its international channel "ERT World" was a direct connection of information for the growing Greek diaspora on what was going on in their homeland.

It would be very appropriate, although not entirely accurate to label these measures as draconian, as the term derives from the ancient and extremely oppressive Greek code of Dracon (Athenian Law Code), which judged swiftly, punished harshly and prescribed death for almost any criminal offence.

Despite being as lethal, however, unlike the judgement passed during that period the austerity measures imposed by the European Union upon Greece are not based in morality or law, but instead seem to be intended as a punitive and disciplinary measure to be applied in the "West" where workers have become too empowered and where are no longer as easily exploitable. As such, austerity measures are designed to punish the working and middle class, forcing them to be more "flexible" and accept jobs with lower salaries and longer hours, lower working conditions, and lower benefits such as pension and/or healthcare. The heavy indebtment of European nations also allows for the banks and incredibly powerful private corporate interests, backed by the International Monetary Fund, to put pressure on governments to privatize those services and industries that have traditionally been under state control - public transportation, education, water, gas and electricity, healthcare etc.

Greece itself has been forces to comply to raising €1.8 bn from privatisation of government services by the end of September as well as the forced unemployment of more than 4,000 civil servants by the end of the year and the cutting 15,000 state jobs by 2015 as part of their bailout plan commitments.

Being so far removed from its direct consequences, the vast majority of people do not realize the severity of the measures that have been imposed on Greece over the past four years. Those measures have been directly responsible for the downgrading of the country from a "developed nation" to an "emerging market" by the MSCI index - the first of such occurrence in the world's history.

It is also important not to forget that the some of the same individuals running the banks which own large parts of the European Central Bank, are the same who are responsible for falsifying Greece's records. The perfect example of such a person would be Mario Draghi who was vice-president of Goldman Sachs and a member of the firm-wide management committee from 2002 to 2005 which are, coincidentally, the years in which most of Goldman's shady deals with Greek politicians took place. Draghi is now the President of the European Central Bank and former Goldman Sachs employees virtually control the financial sector of almost any European Union nation.

"The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday [November 16th, 2011], the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons." - Stephen Foley

It should be pointed that, far from being a conspiracy nut-head, Foley is actually a journalist for the British newspaper "The Independent", one of the most highly respected on the planet.

The Greek people have been blind-sided in allowing the collusion of their government officials with some of the most powerful private banking interests on the planet. Now, heavily in debt, those interests are adding insult to injury as they made huge sums of money from first aiding Greece cover its debt through derivative swaps, and are not making huge sums of money on interests of a debt crisis they themselves are responsible for engineering.

How can we expect people who have such strong ties to private interest to serve the interest of the public and, more to the point, to be in charge of such immensely influential public institutions? Aaah... I remember now, the European Central Bank is not public indeed. Until the people demand that the ECB be dismantled and replaced with a public bank, and that all public institutions are run by those who do not seek to serve private interests, the European Union will follow the course led by the Unites States in becoming a land in which corporations are people, and people will simply become tools.

The Bangladeshi Betrayal

In the past month and a half there have been a total of three collapses of garment production buildings in "developing nations". In this context, capitalism seems to be a veritable race to the bottom. Where governments are on the take and in the pockets of corporations, they will inevitably sacrifice the well being of citizens on the altar of the God of Profits.

The first took place on April 23rd in Bangladesh, killing a total of 1127 ad injuring over 2400 garment workers (and hundreds still "missing") of the Rana Plaza complex, many of them young women, making as little as US$ 10c per hour (US$ 1.2/1.3 per day - US$ 38 per month) for an industry run by western companies and that makes billions of sales worldwide, mostly in the "developed world". In Bangladesh alone the garment industry exports $20bn (£13bn) of clothes each year.

This incident came only a couple of months following a fire in another Bangladeshi garment factory which killed 112 workers. The building was old, did not match building codes, and was poorly maintained.

The second took place in Cambodia on May 16th, when the collapse of the roof of a shoe factory ended up killing two and severely injuring seven others.

The third took place in Rwanda, where a four-story building has killed six and injured over thirty as the owners of the buildings were attempting to bypass regulations to cut building costs.

In addition yesterday (June 6th, 2013) about 600 garment workers fell ill as the result of a suspected water contamination after drinking water from their well at the building at the Starlight Weather Factory in Gazipur.

These are but three of the daily and recurrent abuses and negligence of over-exploited workers in the developing world. These horrors are not the product of a "few bad apples" but are the direct result of a socio-economic system which is founded on the exploitation of an underclass. These are also exacerbated by processes of globalization which allow for the distancing of that underclass far from the eyes of the consumers who, should they be in direct contact with the suffering that their excessive consumption causes, would not be as eager to own an iPhone, a blood diamond, a pair of Nike shoes, or some cheap Primark apparel.

As a remedy to the most damaging of these incidents, the factory collapse in Bangladesh, a large number of companies who are involved in the garment industry in the country have signed a treaty to guarantee safe and decent working condition for garment workers, now commonly referred to the "Bangladesh Safety Accord". 

However, this seems to largely be an attempt to whitewash the crimes their are complicit in and maintain their reputations, and to prevent from taking any real commitments that may force them to establish proper working conditions in factories and provide reasonable wages, and consequentially erode their profit margin. As a matter of fact, there already exist numerous treaties and accords that stipulate companies' responsibilities towards their workers. Amongst these, the United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, (ICESCR) which has been ratified by 160 states - including Bangladesh - and has been in effect since 1976, as well as the conventions and decrees of the International Labour Organization (ILO): 

"If a country signs up to a convention of the ILO - for instance the convention prohibiting forced and child labour - they have to regularly report back on their progress. In case of complaints, the government is forced to give a formal answer... the organization is then forced to act if negligent, systematic and persistent violations come to light. "Then a commission can be set up which would closely examine the case and submit a case study.” - DW.DE

It is not surprising that such a bureaucratically intensive complaint process, and one which relies on the country's own reporting, is largely ineffective especially in those nations which are unwilling or unable to enforce it. Furthermore, the process allows for a de facto partnership between government officials - often owners of garment factories and/or with close ties to the garment industry - and the Western firms who are responsible for the abuses.

This is exemplified by the heavy repression and police violence that the garment workers experienced during their demonstration on June 4th, 2013. Workers, friends, relatives and supporters of the recently collapsed Rana Plaza factory gathered in Savar to protest the failed devolution of back-pay and compensation to the workers. 

Police opened fire with live bullets and tear gas when the protesters failed to clear the highway at the end of the three-hour concession time allotted for the protest. Although the police stated that they intervened to prevent damage to public transportation vehicles by the protesters many witnesses, including the protesters themselves, insist that any damage caused was an unfortunate by-product of the  defensive violence that resulted after the police's attack. 

Although this action was committed directly by Bangladeshi police forces for which they, and the political system that controls them, should be held accountable and were not taken by the corporations involved in the garment factory in Bangladesh one must not decouple the relationships that link the two entities and that make the entities responsible for these actions, corporations and government officials, one and the same.

The exploitation of workers in the developing world is often seen, and understood to be, the byproduct of corporate greed. However, most do not take a step further into realizing the infiltration of virtually all aspects of government and civil society, by international corporate forces with no allegiance or purpose beyond the accumulation of capital and the rhetoric of share prices, dividends and profit margins.

So, should one be under the illusion that a "commitment" such as the Bangladesh Safety Accord taken by firms who are legally required to maximize profits will have no other rationale than that, and that the governments involved are serving as facilitators for the enormous corporate powers in play for the exploitation of their own populations. We need to remember that, while the police may get kittens out of trees and enhance public safety, their social control function has been at the heart of the job from the beginning and should thus be seen perceived as a security force for the corporate/governmental elites and whose salaries are paid by the very people whose faces they are not afraid to trample under their boots.