Guantanamo and PRISM: The Perversions of Anti-terrorism

The Snowden affair has not finished resurrecting the trauma of 9/11. Nor has it finished demonstrating the erosion of public liberties that accompanied anti-terrorist policy in the U.S. and Europe.

Over the course of the revelations about the size of the American intelligence system and the active support that it found among certain allies of Washington, we take stock of the decline in vigilance of fundamental democratic values. Just as shocking is the habituation, even the indifference, to the matter by numerous European political leaders. Today, the U.S. and Germany are the only countries where the “shock” of Snowden has sparked a real debate on the balance to be found between security and freedom.

In France, few voices have been raised to ask for explanations, to look deeper into the question of a possible complicity between our intelligence services and an American security apparatus whose abuses continue to be uncovered. As if the fight against terrorist threats — of which France had cruel experience on its own soil in the 1980s and ‘90s, before the Americans — was worth a carte blanche on everything leaders have tackled since 2001 in reaction to the threat of al-Qaida.

By announcing several transparency measures on Aug. 9, Barack Obama, on the defensive, tried to re-establish trust in the surveillance methods used by the powerful National Security Agency. The American president has announced nothing about a shutdown of the PRISM program, thanks to which enormous masses of metadata have passed through a fine-tooth comb. He assures that the system will not be abused. According to him, the problem resides in the perception of the program, not its existence. American democracy consists of powerful countermeasures, which will be put to the test in this case as they have been before, strongly, during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The sinister posthumous victory of bin Laden is here, in this apparently indelible mark left by the “war against terrorism.” The “war of necessity” in Afghanistan and then the “war of choice” in Iraq produced two major corruptions: a step back in international human rights and the relevant protections accorded by the Geneva Convention. This gave birth to a military right of exception and denial of habeas corpus, and to emergency legislation, the Patriot Act, which is at the foundation of the NSA. American democracy has produced twin monsters: Guantanamo and PRISM.

The evolution of Barack Obama is spectacular. A brilliant theorist of the “just war” before the Nobel committee, he revealed himself as the great practitioner of secret wars: the drones and global eavesdropping. The proclaimed admirer of Martin Luther King seems endlessly plagued by inherent contradictions in the role of “commander in chief,” such that he is assigned.

Ten years ago, the American intellectual Robert Kagan described Europe as “Venus,” as opposed to the American “Mars.” This gives the impression of watching these dilemmas from afar, as if they wouldn’t concern Europe. It would be quickly forgotten that Europe has also been corrupted in its principles by years of anti-terrorism. Europe has welcomed secret CIA flights and hosted the secret prisons of the same agency, through which Guantanamo prisoners would pass. Europe has enlisted the least respectable regimes in its anti-terrorist operations, offering them a pardon and even ally status until some were overthrown by the popular revolts in 2011.

The “soft power” continent has given up a lot in this silent consent: The British in the role of the “mercenaries” of the Bush team, the Germans by flirting with eavesdropping methods of the former Stasi in the framework of a 2002 agreement with Washington by Chancellor Schroder and the French by welcoming a secret center, “Alliance Base,” into the heart of Paris, where the services of six countries (the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Australia) cooperated closely, as was described by The Washington Post in 2005.

In these conditions, could the DGSE [General Directorate for External Security in France] — which, as revealed by Le Monde in July, has a surveillance program similar to that of the NSA, though somewhat less powerful — totally ignore the downward spiral of Washington? Or even free itself from it? French leaders have chosen to be indignant over the American espionage rather than dwell on these questions.

An examination of the decade of transatlantic efforts in “anti-terrorism” is far from over; this is the main merit of Snowden’s revelations. How, indeed, do we describe this: a new dissidence of the digital age? A naïve man exploited by China and Russia, who offer him “asylum” and probably know nothing of his files? The new technological tools, the digitization of everything and of our lives, haven’t finished raising profound questions on information, freedom and democratic control over the surveillance carried out by states and societies.

Terrorism must be fought, but democracies are losing the battle if they sacrifice the requirement of secure safeguards, of control mechanisms, protecting everyone’s freedom to communicate without the fear of being watched for unclear reasons. These are the guarantees that distinguish democracies from authoritarian regimes. Obama highlighted this, bringing to mind the inclination of “certain governments” not only to watch without limits, but “to throw their own citizens in prison for something they said online.”* A useful and necessary reminder. But insufficient to relieve doubts about the practices of democratic countries who like to think they are exemplary.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.