We know that electronic spying has completely run amok when tiny Luxembourg’s prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, just resigned over a nasty scandal involving his nation’s tiny intelligence service. According to some reports, Luxembourg’s ruler, Grand Duke Henri, was bugged by means of a Dick Tracy-style watch. All this recalls the late comic Peter Sellers’s delightfully silly film, “The Mouse that Roared.” Europe, however, is not laughing. Recent revelations of massive, ultra-intrusive US electronic spying in Europe by fugitive National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden have ignited a firestorm of outrage – and hypocrisy – across the European Union. Germany, with sinister memories of the Gestapo and East German Stasi, is particularly incensed. The magazine “Der Spiegel” says documents shown it by Snowden show that NSA read half a billion phone calls, emails, faxes and bank communications in Germany alone – in a month. German officials called this spying “disgusting” and “intolerable.” France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, denounced the US for spying on a close ally. Russia and China rubbed their hands in glee over Washington’s acute embarrassment. Two points to keep in mind. First, dear old Uncle Sam indeed spies on everybody and everyone. His big electronic ears, and those of his very close allies, hoover up all electronic communications – and have done so for decades. Every foreign embassy in Washington is bugged; most secret codes are broken by NSA’s giant computers and math wizards. Now we learn that even our personal computers, cell phones and keyboards are bugged. It’s clear that surveillance technology has far outdistanced the restraints of law or good government. The giant security bureaucracy is out of control.ericmargolis/2013/07/spying-run-amok/
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 04:54:17 +0000
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