CFR Daily News Brief 10/25 Europe Demands Limits to U.S. Surveillance

Daily News Brief October 25, 2013

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Top of the Agenda: Europe Demands Limits to U.S. Surveillance

The leaders of Germany and France said on Friday they wanted to hold talks with the United States as European concerns over American spying intensified with recent allegations that German chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone was tapped by the NSA (NYT). Brazil and Germany met yesterday to advocate for a UN resolution that would promote the right of privacy on the Internet (Foreign Policy). Separately, another report based on leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed that U.S. and British agencies monitored Italian telecommunications, targeting the government, companies, and suspected terrorist groups (al-Jazeera).

Analysis

"So far, most of the damage sustained by the U.S. and UK has been reputational and rhetorical. Some of the accusers, Hollande in particular, are well aware that their own intelligence services are up to the same tricks, if not quite so adept and well-equipped. Essential national interests demand that the core relationship is maintained," writes Julian Borger in the Guardian.

"The real battle—the NSA's war against sacred civil rights—will have to be won in Congress. Ms. Merkel would do better to call Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, than chastise the US ambassador. When Americans see the NSA as a threat to their own freedoms, they will act to leash it," writes Jose Joffe in the Financial Times.

"The perception here is of a United States where security has trumped liberty, intelligence agencies run amok (vacuuming up data of friend and foe alike), and the once-admired "checks and balances" built into American governance and studied by European schoolchildren have become, at best, secret reviews of secret activities where opposing arguments get no hearing," writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times.