Anger in Europe Over Scope of Secrets Kept by NSA

Bethany Bell

 There's widespread anger in Europe about the reports that the US accessed personal data from leading internet companies, if the fiery debate at the European Parliament is anything to go by. Commissioner Tonio Borg said the EU wants a "clear commitment" from the US to respect the rights of European citizens when it comes to data protection.

BBC News, Strasbourg

He said the commission would raise the issue with the US at a meeting in Dublin on Friday. The German MEP, Manfred Weber, said it was "completely unacceptable" that the US has different rules for its own citizens and those of other countries. A Dutch MEP, Sophie In't Veld, criticised the commission for failing to protect EU citizens.

She said the reports of surveillance cast doubt on the special relationship between Europe and the US. But the British MEP Timothy Kirkhope warned against knee-jerk anti-Americanism, saying "friends listen most when you talk and not when you shout.”

• The Liberation Daily in China has harsh words for President Obama: "Five years ago, Obama came to power waving an anti-George W Bush banner. Five years later, he is still exactly the same as George W Bush on invasion of privacy issues."
• Russia's Izvestiya compares the revelations to a dystopian novel: "The frightening reality of the 21st Century is that the world has become a house with glass walls, notions of 'personal secrets' and 'confidential information' are turning into fiction before our very eyes."
• India's Tribune is more forgiving: "The 9/11 terrorist attacks have changed the environment where cyber snooping is now defendable, even acceptable.”
• Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a whistle-blower memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures. She writes and speaks about ethical decision-making and civil liberties issues.
  (CNN) -- "Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that cannot bear discussion and publicity." -- Lord Acton
  The recent disclosures about the National Security Agency's massive and aggressive spying on the world, including U.S. citizens, along with other scandals showing Associated Press and Fox News reporters targeted in "leak" investigations, should make us realize that John Poindexter's plan for "Total Information Awareness" never died: It merely went underground and changed its name.
  When the TIA idea was first proposed by the Bush administration after 9/11, along with a "Big Brother" all-seeing eye logo, it was widely considered a crazy notion, resulting in an outcry. That data collection plan, which involved indiscriminate spying on Americans, was quickly squelched -- at least publicly.
  The truth, however, was that it was reborn under dozens of massive data collection and surveillance programs within each of our 16 highly secretive intelligence agencies, under a variety of cute acronyms.
  (Reuters pic, new NSA Facilities under construction)
  
  
  
  Coleen Rowley
  These programs falsely purport to get "novel intelligence from massive data." (In fact, NIMD is the actual, self-explanatory name of one such program). Few within the national intelligence community complained about the wrongfulness, illegality or ineffectiveness -- let alone the waste and fraud -- of programs that create billions in profit for private surveillance contractors, technology experts and intelligence operatives and analysts.
  But there's no evidence the NIMD theory has worked. Researchers long ago concluded that the NIMD-type promise of detecting and accurately stopping terrorists through massive data collection was simply not possible.
  {Opinion: Edward Snowden is a hero}
  Think about how Bush administration officials defended themselves from not following up on the incredibly specific intelligence warnings urgently going to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and National Counterterrorism Director Richard Clark in the months leading up to 9/11. Their common response back then was something along the line of: intelligence is like a fire hose, and you can't get a sip from a fire hose. There was apparently too much for top officials to even read the key memos addressed to them. the NSA leaker's endgame?
  But if intelligence was a fire hose before 9/11, it quickly became Niagara Falls.
  And now, with so much data (almost all of it irrelevant) that has been sucked into government databases and computers, one might liken the "intelligence flow" to a tsunami, with analysts asked to find just the right drop of water. Good luck.
  In fact, The Washington Post's well-researched series in 2010 on "Top Secret America" reported that the NSA was collecting and storing around 1.7 billion pieces of information every 24 hours, even back then.
  To switch metaphors, it does not make it easier to find a needle in a haystack if you continue to add hay. No one has ever explained why it was left to fellow passengers or alert street vendors, not the "intelligence" agencies, to stop the last four major terrorist attacks or attempted attacks on U.S. soil.