The PRISM Scandal or the Need for a Digital Airbus

The collection of Internet users’ personal data by U.S. intelligence agencies raises major political and economic questions. Europe needs to have a digital giant in order to counter these excesses.

Since its beginning and up until last week, this weekly column has treated the United States as a source of inspiration more than once. The capacity of Americans to rebound, their fundamental optimism and their taste for freedom with a capital “F,” are admirable.

Yet a few days ago, the U.S., particularly its political and economic leaders, is showing us another face — that of domination, home invasion and the deprivation of civil liberties in the world, all in order to secure its higher interests. This is the face of the PRISM program, revealed by Edward Snowden, an American consultant seeking refuge in China because he fears for his freedom and safety in the U.S.

PRISM is a program as efficient as any American enterprise. It costs only $20 million per year, according to a National Security Agency PowerPoint published by The Washington Post.

With this small budget, the anti-terrorist laws of George W. Bush — notably the Patriot Act — and the friendly help of companies that have endorsed PRISM — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple — U.S. intelligence services have guaranteed themselves permanent access to people’s privacy, personal and professional contacts, personal histories, complex thoughts, deep reflections, primal urges, telephone communications and video conferences, all “free” to about 2 billion Internet users worldwide.

The awareness of this permanent and global espionage for only $20 million per year, which exceeds the worst nightmares of George Orwell and the most beautiful dreams of Joseph Stalin, has moved some Americans, but not too many. Barack Obama took the lead during a press conference a few days ago, saying with respect to the Internet and emails, “This does not apply to U.S. citizens, and this does not apply to people living in the United States.” Thus 56 percent of U.S. citizens and residents, disarmed by their credulity, approve of the PRISM program, according to a Pew poll last Monday. Duly noted.

Columnists expected a violent reaction and outrage from those European countries most attentive to individual liberties, such as the U.K. The consent of the Cameron government, a beneficiary of the PRISM program, is troubling to say the least.

Aren’t we facing a new form of totalitarianism? According to the 1977 edition of the Petit Robert dictionary, a totalitarian regime is one “that encompasses or tries to encompass all of the elements of a given group” and thus the privacy of the citizens of a society. In any case, it remains up to France to organize resistance and propose an economic and political alternative. We hope and anticipate here that Germany and the European countries in the north and the east, past victims of privacy suppression during the era of the USSR and Nazism, will follow this initiative in order to give it a European dimension. The French initiative will consist of three parts, in chronological order of execution:

-A campaign of prevention and standardized warnings: In the past this has worked by compelling American tobacco manufacturers to place a “Smoking Kills” warning on their cigarette packages, which basically kill people. Users of services and programs like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple must also be alerted to the risks they will incur. Here we propose some messages for their home pages: “Service infringing on your privacy,” or “Use at your own risk.”

-A “law on personal data” — already proposed by this column on March 6 — which aims to create inalienable property rights and make personal data inviolable; require the servers of specific companies, such as Amazon, to operate in European territory; and to institute a “data tax,” a tax on the export of data outside European territory.

-The establishment and execution of a European industrial strategy, allowing for the development of digital services, which will bring future growth and jobs, of which Europeans will have full control and ownership. The emergence of Europe as champion of the Internet is not a chimera, but a strategic, economic and political necessity. Which company will take the initiative?

Many analysts believe that the primary French digital company has a failed strategy. Yet it has a long-standing culture of remarkable innovation and engineering; considerable material, financial and human means; and private and public shareholders. The possibility of a reconciliation with its German alter ego would create the backbone of a future European giant. We can also see that the management of this company, for good or bad reasons — justice will decide — is not able to fully dedicate itself to a project of such responsibility and industrial ambition at this time.

This company is called France Telecom. With Deutsche Telekom, among other possible alliances, it would become the global digital Airbus of tomorrow — that is to say, a pan-European enterprise that will steal a march on its American competitors, whose complicity with U.S. intelligence services is a danger, not only to our economic growth and future jobs, but also to our democracies.

In Europe we trust.