Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 23:47:11 +0200
Merkel spying claim: with allies like these, who needs enemies?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/23/merkel-nsa-phone-allies-enemies
Merkel spying claim: with allies like these, who needs enemies?
Is the negotiating edge that secret eavesdropping gives the US worth
the immense reputational damage it is now suffering?
For the third time in a week, Barack Obama has found himself trying to
placate the leaders of closely allied nations who have discovered the
extent of NSA surveillance in their countries. As the flood of spying
scandals threatens to engulf the White House, it has raised the
question over whether the negotiating edge such secret eavesdropping
provides is worth the reputational damage to Washington once it is
secret no more, mostly as a result of the revelations of former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
With each leak, American soft power haemorrhages, and hard power
threatens to seep away with it.
At the summit level, deal-making is personal. Now that the US under
Obama has acknowledged it cannot act alone on the world stage,
relationships between leaders can make the difference between success
and failure. The recent wrangling over Syria in the UN security
council is a recent and vivid illustration.
Yet nothing could be more personal for a foreign leader than to find
their own mobile phones tapped by a nation they considered an
essential friend and ally. That appears to be the case for Angela
Merkel, as it has been for Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto. The other
humiliating phone call of the week was on Monday with François
Hollande, whose phone was not bugged as far as he knew, but who
demanded an explanation for the revelation – once more from the
Snowden files – that the NSA had been recording tens of millions of
French phone calls a month. The White House was forced to admit that
the evidence raised "legitimate questions for our friends and allies".
Top of that list of questions is what exactly does it mean to be an
American ally in the 21st century. Germany and France are Nato
partners. Their soldiers have fought and died alongside American
troops in Afghanistan. Mexico is fighting a bloody battle with drug
cartels with America and on its behalf.
The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, whose phone was also
monitored by the NSA, was an American critic but by no means an
adversary.
The same sort of questions are being asked of Britain, after the
Guardian revealed that GCHQ spied on the delegations the UK had
invited to the lavishly staged G20 summit in London. It turned out
that the handy internet cafe laid on for foreign diplomats had been
rigged up specifically so that GCHQ could read outgoing emails. Among
the targets were the finance minister and other officials from Turkey,
another Nato ally that considered Britain to be its closest friend in
Europe, and a close partner over Syria. Turkish officials say their
faith in the UK is now far more guarded.
Belgium, another old ally, found evidence its main telecoms provider,
Belgacom, had undergone a powerful cyber attack apparently from GCHQ,
in a scheme codenamed Operation Socialist aimed at "better
exploitation" of Belgian communications.
It is clear from the trove of documents leaked by Snowden that the
only protection against NSA or GCHQ intrusion is membership of Five
Eyes: the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
New members do not seem to be welcome, and the lesson is that outside
that tight circle, it does not matter how senior you are, and how
close a friend you think you are to Washington or London, your
communications could easily be being shared among the handful of
white, English-speaking nations with membership privileges.
So far, most of the damage sustained by the US and UK has been
reputational and rhetorical. Some of the accusers, Hollande in
particular, are well aware that their own intelligence services are up
to the same tricks, if not quite so adept and well-equipped. Essential
national interests demand that the core relationship is maintained.
But there are signs too of deeper damage. Rousseff is calling for the
constructional of a national internet infrastructure that would lock
out US-based corporations, and is trying to rally other emerging
powers to the cause.
The European parliament, meanwhile, has this week passed legislation,
restricting the ability of US telecoms firms to export European user
data to the US, on pain of swingeing fines. Thanks to Snowden, the
advantages offered by American technological dominance and Britain's
position as European gateway to the world's fibre-optic cables, are
beginning to turn into burdens through overuse.
The NSA scandal puts Europe to the test
https://www.google.com/#q=The+NSA+scandal+puts+Europe+to+the+test&tbm=nws
EU member states have a duty to protect their citizens from snooping.
There is surely more to come\
On one level we should hardly be shocked by the revelations that the
National Security Agency has been tapping our phones and monitoring
our metadata. The thing about secret services that is not so secret is
that they all spy on each other. Some, like the Americans, probably do
it better than others. Countless Hollywood movies and BBC dramas about
spooks and covert operations have brought this reality into our living
rooms. Yet we probably laboured under the assumption that our spies
were only after the "bad guys" – those broadly falling inside George
Bush's definition of the "axis of evil" – not our friends and allies.
Angela Merkel's discovery that her personal mobile phone had been a
target of NSA hacking disrupted this week's EU summit. The
relationship she nurtured with the US president was suddenly
undermined by questions about the true level of trust she thought they
enjoyed. She was not alone, though. Leaked NSA memos revealed by the
Guardian suggest up to 35 world leaders have been similarly treated.
But this is not just an elite spying exercise. The NSA has been
trawling through 70m communications from French citizens in the space
of just one month. This is spying on a massive scale and clearly not
exclusively directed at combating terrorism.
A case can be made for secret services to monitor phone calls and
internet use of suspected terrorists or criminal gangs under the
supervision of a judge or a minister who can be held accountable, but
the systematic hacking of world leaders goes way beyond the bounds of
good behaviour; it would be a very ugly world if no one could be
trusted.
We should now be asking whether we have entered an Orwellian world of
"thought crimes" and "Big Brother". The anti-terrorism measures we are
taking are having a deleterious effect on our civil liberties – our
right to privacy and freedom to go about our business without fear
that we are being monitored. The Snowden revelations have pointed to
NSA "back door" spyware being implanted in devices at the point of
manufacture and of internet and social media giants being compromised.
Data stored on servers on US soil is no longer above suspicion, and
who knows what happens to our airline passenger data that is collected
every time we take a flight?
Only last week MEPs voted to recommend the suspension of a
controversial EU-US financial data-sharing agreement to assist with
the US terrorist finance tracking programme. The agreement allows the
US department for homeland security to access data from the Swift
database (the conduit for all global financial transactions).
Parliament had reluctantly accepted the agreement, following the
personal intervention of Joe Biden, the US vice-president, and on
condition of extra privacy safeguards. But allegations broadcast on
Brazilian TV suggest that the system was hacked illegally. In light of
all the evidence and new revelations, the US does not deserve the
benefit of the doubt.
The spying scandal will now put Europe to the test. It must show that
it is both willing and able to protect the rights of European citizens
and uphold its core principles. The European Commission and member
states should translate their indignation into a firm response, not
brush the scandal under the carpet, for there will surely be more to
come. Parliament's recommendation to suspend the exchange of Swift
data requires a proposal from the commission and backing from
two-thirds of EU member states. They should dangle this like a sword
of Damocles over the heads of the Americans: that co-operation will be
halted if the snooping on allies does not stop.
Second, no final agreement on a transatlantic trade and investment
agreement between the EU and US can be concluded until this issue has
been satisfactorily resolved. I would not recommend halting
negotiations since a transatlantic free-trade area is manifestly in
our own interests, but there will undoubtedly be chapters related to
data privacy and regulation of online services that would be
problematic in the current climate.
Third, the EU is updating its data protection legislation in light of
developments in digital and online technology over the last 15 years.
The legislation was voted at committee stage last week and is due to
be completed before the end of the current European parliamentary
mandate in June next year. Indeed, this legislation is urgently needed
so that nationals of all member states are equally protected from
unauthorised data gathering. The US spying scandals have also forced
the issue of extra-territoriality into the foreground. MEPs have
reinserted the "anti-Fisa" clause, enabling the blocking of
surveillance by foreign law-enforcement bodies, despite lobbying by
the US administration to drop it.
Guaranteeing national security is no easy matter and often pits one
right against another. There will always be those who want more
security or more privacy. What matters is knowing what is being done
to protect our freedom so we can judge for ourselves and hold our
politicians to account for the balance they strike. Without
accountability, the state becomes all-powerful and we slip from
democracy to dictatorship. The US (and possibly other countries
participating in their programme or operating similar schemes) have
been put in the spotlight and now have a duty to explain themselves to
those they represent and serve.
Governments have a duty to look after our safety, but in a free and
open democracy they also have a duty to look after our liberty. In
some countries, not least those in the Arab world fighting for their
rights and freedoms, many are prepared to risk their lives for
liberty. It is a sobering thought for all those who bear the
responsibility of government
Spying row hijacks EU summit, testing Europe's unity
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iqxEwMkK6u2lV1-bTF5ATE4-HxGw?hl=en&docId=9fc828a9-ceab-4f18-b796-2210644e8cf7&index=0
German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a tapping proof BlackBerry
mobile device at the CeBIT high-tech fair on March 5, 2013 in Hanover,
central Germany (DPA/AFP/File, Julian Stratenschulte)
Brussels — Mounting ire over alleged US snooping on its allies will
test Europe's unity at a summit Thursday after German and French
leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande demanded Washington
provide an explanation.
Initially expected to be "a routine affair", according to a senior
diplomat, the two-day talks from 1500 GMT between the European Union's
28 heads of state and government have been hijacked by the escalating
row over covert US surveillance of its allies.
As Germany summoned the US ambassador to Berlin over suspicions
Washington spied on Merkel's mobile phone -- a highly unusual step
between the allies -- a French diplomatic source said she and Hollande
will discuss "how to coordinate their response" on the issue.
Merkel on the eve of the summit called President Barack Obama
demanding answers, warning that proof of snooping on her phone would
be considered "a breach of trust".
It was Obama's second such embarrassing call this week after Hollande
too picked up his phone to demand an explanation over reports of US
spying on millions of phone calls in France.
Rattled by the latest exposure based on leaks from US intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden, the White House has said it is not now
listening in on Merkel -- but it also did not reject the possibility
her communications may have been intercepted in the past.
Washington also denied reports of eavesdropping on France.
In the wake of Snowden's revelations about the activities of the US
National Security Agency, several important allies have complained
about US covert surveillance and the White House is struggling to stem
the diplomatic damage.
The NSA affair has seen claims of US snooping on foreign leaders in
Mexico and Brazil whose President Dilma Rousseff last month cancelled
a state visit to Washington over the scandal.
As the row widens, the European Parliament on Wednesday asked for a
key EU-US bank data-sharing deal aimed at fighting terrorism to be
suspended.
But whether the EU leaders will come up with a common stand is less
than certain.
'Espionage is not an EU matter'
Many governments, notably Britain and Spain, see spying as a matter of
national interest firmly outside the remit of the 28-nation bloc.
"I don't imagine the (EU) Council getting into a discussion on
national security," said an EU diplomat speaking on condition of
anonymity.
"Espionage is not an EU matter, it's an issue of national
sovereignty," said another diplomat.
At the summit, officially themed around boosting employment and the
digital economy, leaders will also tackle a complex immigration crisis
highlighted by this month's death by drowning of hundreds of refugees
desperate to reach Europe's shores.
The two shipwrecks that saw over 400 refugees from Africa and the
Middle East drown off the Italian island of Lampedusa triggered a
barrage of calls for action to prevent the Mediterranean Sea from
turning into what French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has called an
"open-air cemetery".
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta is urging European leaders to
bolster the EU's Frontex border agency and bring forward Eurosur, a
planned satellite-and-drone surveillance programme to detect migrant
ships in trouble.
Frontex reportedly saved 16,000 lives in the Mediterranean in the last
two years but has seen its budget fall from 118 million euros ($162
million) in 2011 to 85 million euros this year due to crisis-era
belt-tightening.
Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his Spanish counterpart
Mariano Rajoy have added their voices to Letta's demand for the EU to
share the burden.
Italy says migrant numbers increased fourfold this year to 30,000
while Spain says the number of Africans who have tried to slip through
its barbed-wire territory of Melilla in north Morocco doubled to 3,000
this year.
Analysts say it is high time for the EU to define a common policy that
will address how to respond jointly to refugees from conflict and
migrants in search of a better life.
"Far too many people are dying every year at the EU's external
borders," said Yves Pascouau of the European Policy Centre think-tank.
With the unprecedented refugee flight from Syria's civil war, "EU
leaders cannot escape answering the remaining questions any longer,"
he added.
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