The United States, Big Brother

I spy, you spy, he spies and the NSA spies on everyone. That should be the preface in the basic manuals of the world’s secret services. The scandal over the leaking of confidential documents from the NSA has shaken Washington for several months, and every day new revelations deepen the problem. Last week, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — traditional allies of the United States — found out that Washington was rummaging through the communications of its friends as if they were enemies.

“Trust no one and you will triumph” seems to be the NSA’s motto. Its global surveillance network covers many concentric circles. In the middle is the Five Eyes Alliance, a group that brings together the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This English-speaking group agreed to share information and not spy on each other.

In a second group, a group of 19 countries including Spain, Germany, Japan, South Korea and many European countries, there is “focused cooperation.” They are partners, but not so much, since nothing exempts them from being bugged. The next group, with France, Israel, India and Pakistan, consists of “limited cooperation” in the words of the NSA — in other words, they are not adversaries, but they do have to be careful. In the outer circle, only for “exceptional cooperation,” are the outcasts — the enemies of the White House.

For obvious strategic reasons, the NSA’s spying priorities are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They also have their eyes on China and Russia, while Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, the European Union and the United Nations are all in the background.

There the NSA is looking for everything, from identifying possible conspiracies to sweeping through the communications of millions of anonymous people, to even recording country leaders. The NSA has 21 principal areas of surveillance, including foreign policy, arms trade, nuclear programs, food security, cyberwar and financial threats.

For its operations, the NSA depends on programs that intercept information directly into its fiber-optic cables. It also employs agents in 80 embassies around the world who operate sophisticated equipment that intercept cellular and satellite communications and Internet networks. According to the agency, the French and Spanish secret services supported these interventions.

The international scandal is of enormous proportions. In public, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and others cried out indignantly, demanding explanations and threatening to take measures. But last week, the Europeans gave up negotiating a reform to shield data protection. Barack Obama tried to calm the storm with the classic “they went behind my back” excuse, which no one believed, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that they “totally opposed” spying on allies and promised changes.

In fact, the U.S. will not stop acting this way. As General Charles de Gaulle once said, “States do not have friends, they have only interests.” And Washington, where paranoia is state policy, has a monopoly of power. If it spies on its own citizens, why not do the same with foreigners?

People like Rep. Mike Rogers think that Europeans should almost thank them, since the NSA “saved thousands of lives, not just in the United States but … throughout Europe,” and that “you can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated, right?” Besides, the basic rules of counterintelligence indicate that everyone is spying on everyone. It’s just that the NSA broke one of the commandments of espionage: “Don’t get caught.”