NSA Chief Keith Alexander is weathering an international shitstorm. Via the Army
One of the great absurdities following Edward Snowden's NSA PRISM revelations has been the way in which Obama, and other US officials, have said with straight faces that surveillance is limited to non-American communications. In other words: don't worry, Americans, we're not spying on you—we're spying on those suckers.
This absurdist argument, however, is typical of spy tradecraft. And really, it should be expected that every nation surveills friend and foe alike, or at least makes the attempt. It's the paranoid mindset so perfectly lampooned in Stanislaw Lem's Memories Found in a Bathtub, in which espionage has become a state of being; so much so that it serves as the entropy signal of a dying system.
So, when political leaders and diplomats from Europe, China, Russia and beyond express an opinion on NSA's PRISM, they are engaged in one of at least three things. If they support the NSA's surveillance programs, as Vladimir Putin did, then they acknowledge the preeminent role of total espionage against friend and foe. If they express shock, on the other hand, then they either don't understand the essence of spycraft (hard to believe in some instances), or they do. In the latter case, they're playing a political game for public support. In the former, that ignorance has the potential to change the status quo through a public debate.
We should never forget the value of political expediency, both on the domestic and international fronts. If a leader questions the NSA program, they enhance their power at home, but also on the world stage. If, however, they support the NSA, they maintain an ally, but also serve their own domestic surveillance efforts. When viewed through this lens, foreign reaction to Snowden's NSA leak becomes rather entertaining.
One other thing to keep in mind when looking at the various international responses to the NSA program is that each country's political leaders will have a different response to the revelations. Support or opposition sometimes falls along party lines—those who are currently in power, and those seeking to upset the status quo.
"We want to know what the government knew about it and whether there was any benefit for the German authorities in what the US authorities did."—Michael Hartmann
Germany's Chancellor Andrea Merkel, for instance, noted the need for telecommunications surveillance, but with "due diligence" undertaken to ensure privacy. “Free democracies live off people having a feeling of security,” Merkel said. Choice words. Secure from foreign aggressors and terrorists, as well as the eyes of Big Brother. This might have been a good discussion to have before the Snowden leak, when Germany—like other European countries—was benefiting from America's dirty work.
Not convinced of her pandering? “It’s necessary for us to debate these issues,” she said. “People have concerns.” Well, indeed, people had concerns about NSA surveillance even before Snowden's leaks. What we can learn here is that Merkel didn't seem to have any concerns pre-Snowden; or, at least she didn't express them publicly. Michael Hartmann, spokesman on domestic issues for Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), echoes this sentiment.
"We want to know what the government knew about it and whether there was any benefit for the German authorities in what the US authorities did," Hartmann told the Guardian. "We can't accept this although we know that after 9/11 there were new rules and we have to be careful and well informed, but you can't defend our free society by destroying it."
Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, is of the same opinion. "So far, the US has no adequate level of data protection guaranteed in law and with independent oversight, like in Europe," Schaar told the Guardian. "It's essential for me that we cannot ignore anymore the question of what happens with the data of the private sector if it's collected by US or third-party companies and public authorities want to surveill this data."
"I don't know how far European governments are informed over the details of US authorities to the data," Schaar added. "[B]ut one problem might be that the data gathered by the US authorities comes back from the US to Europe and is used by European authorities. We have to discuss this with our governments."
This is in direct opposition to Germany's interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich's don't ask-don't tell surveillance policy.
"We get very good and reliable information from our American friends and partners that has played an important role in the past in preventing attacks in Germany," Friedrich told reporters in a Berlin press conference. "The Americans don't tell us, and we also don't tell our partners ... where this information comes from. That's the business of the respective agency."
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a surveillance fan. Via a Kremlin release
Putin, likewise, has also been fairly supportive of the NSA's surveillance programs.
"[Snowden] told us nothing we didn’t know before. I think everybody has long been aware that signals intelligence is about surveillance of individuals and organizations," said Putin in a long, wide-ranging RT interview. "It is becoming a global phenomenon in the context of combating international terrorism, and such methods are generally practicable."
"The question is how well those security agencies are controlled by the public," added Putin. "I can tell you that, at least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism with modern-day technology. As long as it is exercised within the boundaries of the law that regulates intelligence activities, it’s alright."
Here, Putin both supports surveillance and takes the US government to task, bragging about Russia's constitutional safeguards, which are probably disregarded anyway on a consistent basis. In short, Putin's posturing makes him look like a reasonable domestic and international leader.
The UK government's ties to the NSA are quite close, as we've seen with the fallout over the 2009 G20 summit surveillance scandal. Snowden's leak established the friendly relationship between the British signal intelligence service GCHQ and its American equivalent. In the British Commons last week, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague stated he didn't want to "trawl the contents of people's phone calls" and internet metadata. Then he proceeded to tell the BBC that law-abiding citizens would "never be aware of all the things … agencies are doing to stop your identity being stolen or to stop a terrorist blowing you up." As if that excused GCHQ's state snooping.
Hague, in full damage control mode, also intimated that those who distrust GCHQ and its involvement with the NSA suffered from paranoia.
"The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful," Hague told BBC's Andrew Marr on June 9th. "Of course we share a lot of information with the United States... but if information arrives in the UK from the U.S., it’s governed by our laws."
UK Foreign Minister William Hague is embroiled in the PRISM scandal via Britain's signals intelligence service GCHQ, via the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Labour party’s spokesman for foreign affairs, Douglas Alexander, called on Hague to be more open about GCHQ's relationship with the NSA, saying, "It is vital that the government now reassures people who are rightly concerned about these reports."
Israel has been mum on the subject. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that two of its country's companies, Narus and Verint, supply the NSA with spyware for its signals intelligence gathering efforts. Whatever the case, the Israeli government hasn't weighed in on the NSA's PRISM program. It would probably be international political dynamite for the country to touch the subject.
French President Francois Hollande hasn't weighed in on the NSA program, but French Socialist Euro MP Françoise Castex had this to say in a Guardian interview:
We in Europe had been arguing that personal information of our citizens should not be freely used by American businesses. We felt this should not happen; we should not say yes to this. We were under a lot of pressure and lobbying from the American Chamber of Commerce and giant American companies like Google, Facebook and Apple to ease the restrictions over the use of personal data. And there they were taking it anyway.
I suppose we cannot say we are terribly surprised but it's still a shock. A shock that they have gone outside all agreements, even before those agreements are reached."Of course you can try to justify these things by saying 'well, if you're not a terrorist you have nothing to worry about' and of course there are security concerns that require some information. But you and I know full well that as soon as this information is gathered it won't be used for security or defence ends, it will be used for commercial ends.
Personal data is the material of the 21st century and is worth a lot. People who say it doesn't matter are being naive.
Franco Pizzetti, a former data protection authority chief and current chairman of Internet Alliance (an internet development group) and Italy's former data protection authority chief, expressed concern over PRISM in a letter to Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta. He called for a response to the NSA's metadata surveillance, writing, "If what we are reading is, either partially or wholly true, this is a question of very serious violations of Italian and European citizens' basic rights."
Australia's ruling Labor party, by contrast, has downplayed the impact of the NSA's PRISM program on its citizens, even after it was revealed that a massive data storage facility is being built in Canbarra. "We’ll examine carefully any implications in what has emerged for the security and privacy of Australians," Foreign Minister Bob Carr said on a Network Ten interview on June 9th.
The country's Greens party is out for blood, though. On June 12th, Australian Senator and Greens communication spokesperson Scott Ludlaum stated:
The Australian Government has denied any knowledge of the NSA's widespread online surveillance of people around the world since it was revealed by Edward Snowden. It is now clear that the ‘hear no evil, see no evil' routine is a sham.
The Australian Government was aware of the spying, and collaborating to circumvent due process through receipt of vast amounts of surveillance material from the United States.
Next week I will move an Order for the production of documents in the Senate to finally get some disclosure from our Government. This will be a test for the opposition as well; it is essential they support this motion.
The Labor party's Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, "I think Australians have always understood data housed on US servers is subject to US laws such as the Patriot Act, but the... so-called PRISM program suggests there is extensive surveillance and interception of foreign citizens' data without a court order, and indeed without the knowledge of the internet companies themselves."
Keep in mind that Turnbull's Liberal party is likely to win a majority in the Australian parliament this September. Making the Labor party look bad is good electoral politics; but, Turnbull also doesn't want to sound like a hypocrite if the Labor party engages in similar surveillance activity in the future.
The foregoing is just a sampling of the international response to the NSA's PRISM program. There is sure to be additional opinions and commentary in the coming weeks and months, not to mention various investigations. And though Snowden's NSA leak and the political fallout is big news, things could very well change. With the way media and governments constantly cycle into other issues, causing memories to fade, the public furor could dim by the end of 2013 or sooner.
You can bet that many politicians, in whichever country they call home, are probably waiting for it all to blow over.