The NSA saga: Surprising turns and ominous allegations

Over the weekend, the fallout from Edward Snowden’s continuing NSA revelations took a surprising turn—and produced an ominous allegation that could haunt US high tech companies henceforth. First, the surprising turn: on Friday, out of nowhere the Republican National Committee, meeting in Washington, passed by voice vote a resolution denouncing the NSA surveillance as an “unconstitutional…intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundation of democratic society.” The committee also recommended the creation of a special committee to “investigate, report and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying.” The RNC resolution demands action to “hold accountable the public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.” RNC officials stated that the resolution was not a fluke but represented the consensus within the committee. The resulting National Journal headline: “RNC: We Hate the NSA, and Republican Lawmakers Should, Too.” One wonder what Chairman Mike Rogers of the House Intelligence Committee thinks of all this—or John McCain and Lindsey Graham? The only thing certain is that the ACLU has no doubt posted and circulated the resolution widely.

While there is an amusing side to the apparent disarray in the Republican response to the NSA revelations, US high tech companies were certainly not amused by the other occurrence: Edward Snowden’s direct accusation in an interview with the German television network ARD that the US government not only spies for security and diplomatic purposes but also to further goals of industrial espionage—including hacking into private networks of Siemens and other German multinationals. There had been earlier, incidental revelations that the NSA had penetrated the internal communications of Brazil’s Petrobras and Mexico’s Pemex. But Snowden asserted that such intrusions were not isolated. He stated: “There is no question that the US is engaged in economic spying. If there is information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security of the United States, they’ll go after the information and they’ll take it.”

What is missing here is a direct connection between whatever alleged NSA economic espionage is gleaning and a feeding system to individual US companies—which is what the US government believes is occurring routinely in China. But still Snowden’s claims have alrady had wide impact in Germany and Europe. They will only feed into costly (and futile) attempts by European and other countries to seal off their internet space and to exclude US companies that are deemed unfairly to be “in bed,” willingly or not, with pervasive US security operations.

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