Under fire about disclosures of
broad National Security Agency snooping on global
leaders, President Barack Obama is offering a two-
pronged response: You do it, too, and we'll make some
changes.
Thousands of documents leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden have portrayed the vast
reach of U.S. surveillance activities, keeping tabs not
only on U.S. call data but also global Internet and e-
mail traffic.
But Snowden's NSA documents, published recently in
the Guardian, Der Spiegel and other publications, also
describe spying on foreign leaders and that has now
complicated U.S. diplomacy, the Obama administration
acknowledges.
Lisa Monaco, Obama's homeland security and
counterterrorism adviser, said in an op-ed published in
USA Today that the president ordered a review of
surveillance programs "including with respect to our
foreign partners. We want to ensure we are collecting
information because we need it and not just because
we can."
It's not clear what changes will come from the review
and even if they'll be made public. These programs are,
after all, secret.
Or they were before the Snowden
disclosures.
U.S. ambassadors in Europe and Latin
America have been summoned by host
countries to be scolded about the spying
revelations.
On Friday, European leaders ended an EU
summit in Brussels with a stern warning to
the United States about the spying
activities: "A lack of trust could prejudice
the necessary cooperation."
The EU leaders didn't mention curtailing
any spying activities directed at the United
States or elsewhere.
Among the leaders in the European
response is Angela Merkel, the German
leader who is in talks to form a coalition
government following elections.
Merkel called Obama and raised the
sensitivities of Germans related to
government spying, because of the activities of the
former East Germany's Stasi.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that
the United States understands the sensitivities but
defended the activities.
"There are real threats out there against the American
people and against our allies, including Germany,
including allies around Europe and around the world,"
he said.
The spying activity is part of what's expected around
the world, U.S. and foreign officials say.
For years, U.S. government officials have been required
to leave behind their laptops and phones when they
travel to China, Russia and Israel, U.S. officials say.
To thwart expected spying they bring specially
formatted devices, the officials say.
A former senior U.S. counterintelligence official says the
United States contends with economic spying from
allies, including France, Israel and South Korea. China
and Russia remain the top countries with spying
operations in the United States.
In the 1990s, former French spy chief Pierre Marion
acknowledged the activity.
In a U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks and
published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftonposten,
Berry Smutny, an official with the German satellite
company OHB Technology, is quoted as saying: "France
is the evil empire (in) stealing technology, and Germany
knows this."
France was among the countries who summoned its
U.S. ambassador to protest the reported NSA activities.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox, speaking to
Spanish-language media during a visit this week,
expressed surprise that his country's current president,
Enrique Pena Nieto, had protested spying by the NSA.
"There's nothing new about the existence of spying by
every government in the world, including Mexico," he
said, dismissing any offense taken by Mexican
authorities.
He said he knew as president that he was being spied
on by the United States. But he also recalled that
Mexican spies had him under surveillance when he was
running for president in 2000.
One Latin American ambassador told CNN this week
that he wasn't surprised at the reported NSA snooping
activities, because all government's spy.
But he was astonished at the scale, which he attributes
to the money and technical abilities of the United
States.
"They do it because they can," the ambassador says.
"My country doesn't do it because we don't have that
kind of money and we don't have the technology."
Stewart Baker, a former senior U.S. homeland security
official in the Bush administration, says the outrage in
Europe appears to ignore the scale of hacking from
China, most of it believed to be state-sponsored.
"The difference is the Chinese have never leaked
documents," he said.
He also noted that protests by Merkel now are different
from 2007 when the German leader traveled to China
shortly after revelations that Chinese hackers had
infiltrated German computer networks.
News accounts then said only that Merkel smiled as she
met Chinese leaders.
"When she had a chance of take on some real
communists for hacking into her computer, she
swallowed her objections," Baker said.
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