American Spying Has Become a Far-Reaching Ghost

In theory, if this wasn’t troubling, we would be inclined not to care: But why was the U.S. secret services wasting their time spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who — on the face of it — isn’t the most immediate danger threatening the United States? Was there nothing better to do? Was nothing more urgent and more obviously terror-related? That being said, there is the revelation of the scope of the systematic spying by the United States on allies and enemies, leaders and ordinary citizens — material to be outraged about, but also a call to come back to reality.

Was there outrage? It came out everywhere yesterday. The chancellor called the spying unacceptable, and, via Belgacom, it was denounced by [Belgian Prime Minister] Elio Di Rupo and [French] President [François] Hollande. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the [European] Commission, himself has stated that a respect for privacy is a fundamental value in Europe, spurned by the totalitarian regimes where that barely exists: a reference to the East Germany that Merkel once knew. Protecting privacy is a political fact that has nevertheless changed when the digital world asks for true liberty in order to become an acceptable place to nourish economies and exchanges, but also represents an area where the individuals who discuss, trade or reveal themselves on it are subject to daily violations.

The principal of reality requires no naïveté. The practice of espionage has been tied since the dawn of time to the exercise of power, and is today practiced by everyone, each in his or her corner, including those who acted like frightened innocents in Brussels yesterday.

Such is the veritable shock of the successive revelations on the Americans’ practices through the NSA. This organism suddenly seems disconnected from political power, out of control, practicing its know-how without anything more than the amount of technology of a sorcerer’s apprentice at its disposal. It’s like a machine that has escaped its creator and has gone crazy when there are no longer any clear and consistent objectives, seeing its life outside [the confines of] close supervision or accountability. Who controls American spying today? Obviously it’s not U.S. President Barack Obama. And that is, undoubtedly, unacceptable and truly worrying.