By Rachel Marsden
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden fled the
job he held for three months, taking four laptop computers full of U.S.
intelligence with him to Hong Kong and Russia, other countries have become
"outraged" by the Snowden disclosures about American intelligence
practices. What, exactly, is so alarming? Apparently, the fact that spies
actually spy. Give me a break.
The average person might be excused for being surprised
at what spies actually do and by Snowden's revelations about passive data
mining -- even though such programs have existed for years. The fact that most
people didn't even know about data mining supports the notion that the program
hasn't been misused to undeservedly target the average citizen. And despite
Snowden's revelations about PRISM data collection, there is zero evidence to
suggest that the government won't remain steadfastly disinterested in the
banalities of people's private lives.
Michael Hayden, the former director of both the NSA and
CIA, thinks the solution is greater transparency with regard to spying. Really?
American spy agencies are overmarketed and overexposed as it is. Keeping the
American public, along with the rest of the world, more thoroughly informed
about America's intelligence-gathering methods can't possibly outweigh the
benefits of secrecy.
Not that it isn't a tricky equation. I'm generally in
favor of transparency. I like having access to as much data as possible. Every
time a batch of classified WikiLeaks documents was dumped, I found myself
rifling through it for info treasure, and there were some gems that eventually
led to new information about the role of intelligence think tank Stratfor and
about the wheeling and dealing done by the British government to secure the
release of the Lockerbie bomber in order to protect a deal between Libya and
British energy giant BP.
But I also realize that national security generally isn't
served by transparency. Even though I appreciate access to such information, so
do the enemies of America and its allies.
European governments have been expressing faux outrage
over American intelligence activities in the wake of a 2010 document released
by Snowden indicating that the U.S. bugged European reps in Washington, D.C.
Look, government intelligence agencies spy. That's their
entire raison d'etre. And it's particularly acceptable to spy on foreign entities
-- both friendly and hostile -- especially on their own turf. If you're in a
role that's important enough to warrant being actively targeted by
surveillance, then you should also be savvy enough to take responsibility for
yourself and adopt counteractive measures to minimize your exposure.
Funny that no one seemed to care about Russia's
capabilities for such things when the U.S. ambassador to that country, Mike
McFaul, tweeted last year: "Everywhere I go NTV [Russian television] is
there. Wonder who gives them my calendar? Wonder what the laws are here for
such things?" He added: "I respect press right to go anywhere and ask
any question. But do they have a right to read my email and listen to my
phone?"
We're talking here about a diplomatic chief of mission
protected by the Vienna Convention from such things. But no one's ever going to
stop Russia from spying itself silly -- so why handicap every other nation
involved in the game?
Spies are gonna spy, and no one knows that better than
the governments currently whining the loudest about it: Germany and France.
A German-language document from 2006 obtained by
WikiLeaks -- hey, I just said that I wasn't above rifling through the leaks --
detailed the extensive collaboration (58 meetings, in the case of one
journalist) between Germany's secret intelligence service, the BND, and agents
within the nation's mainstream media to identify sources and provide useful
coverage. Yet German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger had
the audacity to refer to the monitoring of foreign representatives on U.S. soil
as a "Cold War" tactic. Meanwhile, Germany is planning to invest
another $130 million over the next five years in its own online surveillance
program.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called the
American surveillance of visiting diplomats "completely
unacceptable," which is utterly laughable. Fabius served as the French
prime minister during the presidential tenure of Francois Mitterrand, who had
once ordered a special counterintelligence cell to tap numerous phone lines,
including those of journalists, political opponents, writers and entertainment
figures. It was also reported by Peter Schweizer in his 1993 book Friendly
Spies: How America's Allies Are Using Economic Espionage to Steal Our Secrets
that the French tapped the calls of foreign companies with French subsidiaries,
with the express purpose of passing the competitive intelligence to French
competitors.
Either the representatives of these nations are
experiencing amnesia, or they're straight-up hypocrites.
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