Electronic Surveillance: We Are All Americans

It was the day after Sept. 11, 2001. Jean-Marie Colombani, then director of the daily French newspaper Le Monde, titled his editorial: “We Are All Americans.” The shock caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had broken (in)correct beliefs, the old hierarchies that had shaped ideologies. There were those who shared this same emotion, those who shared the continents for contradictory reasons and those who were finally forced to accept a world that they didn’t want to accept. America, the beacon of the world, the very same America that we had consciously or unconsciously believed would ultimately save us from the worst-case scenarios, had been struck at her heart. The planet had tears in its eye and fear in its stomach.

A Digital World that Belongs to America

Ever since, bombs have fallen from the Iraqi sky and drones have been scattered in the mountains of Afghanistan with known success. The American debt plunged its finances into chaos in less than 18 months. Then, and then … The America that seemed a somewhat rickety came out of it all not too badly. It is hated by much of the world, its diplomacy floundering, but America is there. It is newly strengthened with an immense power that it constructed in less than 15 years: It invented the digital world, and this digital world belonged to it.

Its major companies knew this like the backs of their microprocessors, knew how and where to lead it without any limitations. It was completely unlike the petroleum giants that had also caused both rain and shine in America. We were in a concrete, physical world then, technically intelligible in a certain limited way. Elsewhere, these companies’ domination, which largely exceeded even the scope of business, could be — partially — mastered.

The Law of the Patriot Act Is Imposed

With the digital world, we are somewhere else. The confirmation of the existence of PRISM, a program that revealed open links between the National Security Agency and the largest technology companies and social media networks has just reaffirmed this. The analysis can, of course, be sped up just by recognizing this is no big surprise: George Bush signed the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11 attacks, which allows the federal government to do more or less what it wants in the name of defending national interests, outside of the law. Since Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others are forced to transmit the data that is demanded of them, this transfer of data seems almost understandable. So be it.

But remember all the same, with a small bit of nostalgia, that these companies are built around several ideas; if not libertarian, then at least molded with generous intentions based on the ideas of sharing, universality and transparency. Experience should have warned us that beautiful designs have a time when their economic size becomes incompatible with all other goals. One could hope for some relief considering the very nature of this digital world, since it allows for checks and balances. This is true, but it is ultimately also false.

The World in a ‘Crunch’

The fatalism with which this news was received sheds a brutal light on this reality. The public and political authorities are discreet, or at least restrained in their comments — Brussels was “concerned,” which was not surprising. Firstly, because they know that they do not have the means to weigh in on the situation. In addition, they also “crunch” in on the profits: All Western services directly or indirectly benefit from this information … or they will one day.

The relatively timid reactions in the netosphere are more surprising. The slightest change in settings on Facebook reveal the bitterest suspicions. But then nothing happens or at least very little. Should we see in this reluctance a sort of nourished fatalism that is fed the same helplessness, reinforced by the certainty that our results are ultimately positive for all: The services, the pleasures given today, and even more so tomorrow, are worth a few slipups. Or even, more prosaically, Internet users — can we say today’s people? — are not alarmed by the usage of their personal data until it is used to “generate profit,” without them receiving the slightest compensation. Which is frankly, in the common sense of the market, very American.