Out of Control

In recent years, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart have been conducting surveillance outside of any political or legal limits and without restrictions — a situation that has created a dynamic that threatens the state control and supervision of these tasks.

The monitoring of high-tech fiber-optical telecommunications was conducted with official or even unofficial subcontracting between the electronic monitoring services and the telecommunication companies.

In this way, the boundaries between national security and unsupervised entanglement with business profits have become subtle. In the secret services, emancipation from government control is more times the rule than the exception, which many times leads to a change in direction, rather than having the government’s choices depend on foreign policy and defense [alone].

Internationally, there is a severe lack of trust in every negotiation with Washington. This can be seen in the negotiations between the U.S. and the E.U. on bilateral trade, in the negotiations with Moscow and Syria, and even in the negotiations about Iraq’s nuclear program control.

The moment of truth is very important, as Washington is trying to start a dialogue with Moscow and, at the same time, to approach the Middle East in a new way. In other words, monitoring everyone creates a lack of trust that can lead to a short circuit or to the undermining of the attempted changes of the American strategy. Who can guarantee, for example, that a lobby that doesn’t want to normalize its relations with Tehran will not make public the confidential conversations of the religious and political leadership of Iran to set the negotiations scuttling?

The NSA’s deeds do not only damage the U.S.’s status globally, but they are also a time bomb for Obama’s attempt to set a new path for the country on the international scene.