Differing Reactions to US Espionage

Yesterday, The Washington Post published information obtained from former contractor Edward Snowden and other sources with links to a National Security Agency project. The NSA now uses a system that is capable of processing any and all telephone calls made in any foreign country. A recorded conversation can be analyzed at any time during the one-month period following the date on which it was recorded.

The information was released a day after the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, indicated she has good reason to believe that the CIA had been spying on computers belonging to U.S. legislators who were involved in investigating the CIA’s overseas efforts to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Some nine months after Edward Snowden first leaked information about the massive U.S. espionage program, documented evidence continues to flow, revealing the extent of the criminal practices, which have had an impact on governments, businesses and citizens from around the world — including the U.S. — and even members of the legislature in a neighboring country. The program clearly constitutes a threat to both the balance and the separation of powers.

By sanctioning a massive abuse of the right to privacy and security among national governments, individual organizations and private citizens, Washington has been able to illegally obtain information and thus gain a disproportionate concentration of power in the geopolitical, economic, commercial, technological and financial spheres.

Although the reach of U.S. power remains considerable, disclosures about leaks — such as The Washington Post article — have meant a loss of global influence, image and reach by Washington. Sooner rather than later, this shift could produce a global reconfiguration of information exchange, thus causing the erosion of one of the major pillars of U.S. hegemonic power.

It is only fair that the German government — whose members have been victims of Washington’s espionage — has called for the creation of a European data network that cannot be accessed by U.S. telecommunications servers, and that some months ago the group of emerging economies known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — began pushing for the creation of an alternative internet platform known as “cable BRICS” that would sidestep the large telecommunications hubs in the U.S. and Europe.

It is in this context that the Mexican government’s obsequiousness — despite proof that the NSA engaged in illegal and intrusive surveillance of the highest levels of government, including the president of the republic — is inexplicable. The government’s position is not sustainable. On the one hand, espionage is a crime according to Mexican law; as such, violators should be pursued and sanctioned. On the other hand, its espionage practices have conferred on Washington any number of illegitimate advantages within the parameters of a bilateral relationship, which is already marked by asymmetry and interference in internal affairs that are solely in the purview of the Mexicans.