Edward Lucas - The Snowden Operation

Every country with the capability to spy does so. Dictators like to control their subjects and bully their neighbours. Democracies want to stay safe, free and prosperous. In each case, decision-makers like to have the best available information, which includes where possible knowing adversaries’ secrets. Good intelligence minimises surprises, widens choice and strengthens negotiating positions. It can come from inference, from open-source material, from electronic snooping, and from human sources: getting people to break promises and betray secrets.

Intelligence is collected in the full knowledge that the other side is doing just the same thing. Complaining that intelligence officers steal secrets is like complaining that diplomats dissemble, or that journalists simplify and exaggerate: it is what they are paid to do. Big countries do it more than small countries, and America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, does it most of all.

When it comes to collection of electronic information about their own citizens, however, other countries adopt practices which leave America looking like a bunch of milquetoasts. Russia’s extensive and intrusive system of internet monitoring is both widely known and attracts little controversy. [19] From July 2014, for example, Russian ISPs may be obliged to store records of all data and users’ activities for a period of 12 hours, providing direct and immediate access by the FSB. This will be a costly burden on the ISPs, and will also raise security concerns. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, a brave husband-and-wife couple, have tried their best to write about the Russian security state. I strongly recommend their website, agentura.ru, and their book The New Nobility (Public Affairs, 2011). France allows surveillance of internet users, in real time and without prior legal authorisation, by public officials including police, intelligence and anti-terrorist agencies as well as government ministries. [20] http://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2013/12/10/adoption-definitive-de-la-controverse-loi-de-programmation-militaire_3528927_3210.html ; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/11/french-officials-internet-users-real-time-law A law expanding these powers was passed in December 2013, just weeks after France expressed outrage that the NSA had allegedly been engaged in similar activities there. Spying is necessarily conducted in secret, partly for operational reasons but also to save face (among victims and practitioners). Espionage is not glamorous, despite its Hollywood depictions. It is just another government bureaucracy—albeit one which involves behaviour that is always disreputable (telling lies) and often illegal (using false identities, bribing, bullying, breaking into buildings, tapping phones). Ruses, stunts, mischief and gadgets may look rather ridiculous in the cold light of day, so espionage is a tempting target for outside suspicion, investigation, denigration and ridicule.

Any politician or senior official involved in international negotiations knows that spying is routine. You have to be careful what you put in texts or e-mails, and what you say on any kind of phone, unless you have some advanced security measures in place. Even then, electronic communications are vulnerable to a sophisticated attacker. That is why serious governments have special venues for their important meetings. These typically have no windows (which are vulnerable to the use of long-range microphones involving the clever use of lasers). They are usually deep within secure government buildings. Mobile phones and other gadgets must be left outside in lead-lined lockers. This is annoying, but it is a fact of life.

Against this background, the fact that America spies on other countries, and that American allies spy on other countries, that America spies on its allies, and that those allies spy on each other, seems less shocking. Or at least it should. One of the most sensational disclosures in the Snowden material was that America’s NSA spied on Germany, chiefly from a listening post on the roof of the American embassy in the heart of Berlin: part of a network run by the agency’s Special Collection Service, which uses 80 foreign locations to intercept electronic communications. Among the targets was the chancellor, Angela Merkel, chiefly via an insecure old mobile phone which she uses for party and private business. Disclosed by Der Spiegel in October 2013, this caused outrage. [21] See http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html ; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/angry-european-and-german-reactions-to-merkel-us-phone-spying-scandal-a-929725.html ; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trans-atlantic-relations-threatened-by-revelations-of-mass-us-spying-a-908746.html See also Anton Troianovski, ‘Germany to Boost Anti-Spy Efforts’, Wall Street Journal , November 20, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304791704579209740311164308 ; Anton Troianovski, ‘Germany Warns of Repercussions from U.S. Spying’, Wall Street Journal , October 28, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579163760331107226 The American ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to be rebuked. Mrs Merkel phoned Barack Obama to complain. Germany cancelled an intelligence-sharing agreement with the United States and Britain. [22] Albeit a largely symbolic one: it had not actually been used since 1990: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/germany-nixes-surveillance-pact-us-britain The then justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for the suspension of the deal under which American counter-terrorism officials have limited access to European banking data.

For many Germans, the idea that America was spying on their country epitomised an arrogance and untrustworthiness which had rankled for years. During the Cold War, when the then West Germany needed America to secure its survival against an existential threat from the east, such grievances had to be swallowed. Now they erupt freely.

Yet the idea that American intelligence is active in Germany and other European countries is hardly surprising. Anyone with access to Google could find a pithy commentary in the Wall Street Journal written in March 2000 by James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, called ‘Why we spy on our allies’. It was prompted by a previous row about the Echelon programme, under which America and its close allies search international telecommunications traffic for keywords. A report to the European Parliament had alleged that America was collecting economic intelligence that was specifically used to stop European countries winning international contracts. Woolsey made his case with admirable bluntness:

Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it’s true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we’re looking for? [23] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB95326824311657269.html

European companies habitually win contracts by bribery, he maintained. In most cases their products are too backward or costly to win any other way. By disclosing the payment of bribes by Europeans, the American government levels the playing field. He added that America spies on European sales of dual-use technology to rogue states and on other sanctions-busting. And he pointed out that France is a mighty practitioner of industrial espionage. [24] French electronic intelligence is formidable and operates with what some might think rather scanty oversight. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/world/europe/france-broadens-its-surveillance-power.html ; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/world/europe/france-too-is-collecting-data-newspaper-reveals.html