The latest twist in the revelations that the US, its Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropped on billions of phone calls and e-mails of millions of people around the world, is becoming surreal: The NSA now claims that it was the Europeans who listened in on their leaders and it was these who passed the information along.
Now also comes word that the overseas servers and fibre-optic cables carrying trillions of bytes of data to Google and Yahoo were intercepted and trolled through by the minions who work at the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
What’s also surprising is that the intelligence officials themselves are now openly discussing and divulging details of activities that are normally conducted behind closed doors and in the shadows of secrecy. And it’s even more unusual for the US to so openly point its fingers at its long-time European allies.
In effect, the excuse seems to be: “Ok, we spied. We’re were caught. But every one else is doing it too ...”
What needs to be remembered is that this entire sorry and sordid affair only came to light because of the whistle-blowing revelations of Edward Snowden. He remains a wanted man by US authorities for revealing the NSA and governmental nexus that has existed for years both in the US and at the British GCHQ operations in Cheltenham.
It’s easy to paint the White House as being the culprit in this entire network of international eavesdropping and espionage. And yes, officials at the highest level in Washington and across its intelligence operations deserve to be lambasted for their actions. But what’s also equally evident is that officials in security agencies across Europe — Spain, France and Germany in particular — did not act alone and certainly seem to be both compliant and complacent in the business of trading information, telephone records and e-mails to their allies for mutually beneficial outcomes.
The world is a small place. Business is globalised. And so too is spying.
