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Cuban activists poked fun at ‘Tio Sam’ (Uncle Sam) after learning that the U.S. was behind their social networking tool and planning to use it to instigate a ‘Cuban uprising.’When is humanitarian aid from the U.S. a cover for espionage? And should the U.S. agency in charge of humanitarian aid ever be a conduit for spying? Those are the questions being raised in Congressional hearings investigating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) about its involvement in a social media program in Cuba designed to undermine the Cuban government.
Simply put, the program was to create a “Cuban Twitter” called ZunZuneo (operational from roughly 2010 to 2012) that would allow Cubans to use cellphone text messaging to circumvent Cuban government restrictions on the Internet. Although created and funded through USAID, ZunZuneo subscribers were not to know that the network had been created by the U.S. government, nor to know that USAID contractors were collecting subscribers’ private data. Initially, it would be used for non-controversial, non-political content, but when the network reached a critical mass, the U.S. contractors running the network would introduce political...