Can Europe Save Snowden - or the Rest of Us?

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

04 July 13

et's admit it. When Russia and China refused, at least for now, to extradite the National Security Agency's whistle-blower Edward Snowden, those of us who have spent long years fighting the U.S. surveillance state enjoyed the moment. We took enormous pleasure in their dramatic reluctance to do Washington's bidding, even though many of us have long taken part in public campaigns to secure greater civil liberties and human rights for the Russian and Chinese people.

We will feel even better if Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, or Bolivia grants Snowden political asylum, though many of us will continue to write articles and sign petitions when needed to urge greater political freedom and an end to U.S. intervention in those countries. Sticking to principle has distinguished America's independent left going at least as far back as my grandmother's time in the 1920s, regularly irritating all sides during the Cold War. Our attitude definitely set us apart from the old Stalinist and Maoist left, and still separates us from many liberals, especially in the mainstream media, who cite the U.S. State Department and its government-funded Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy as the go-to authorities on civil liberties and human rights.

We would take even greater pleasure if one of the European democracies, say Germany, provided Snowden with travel papers, exercised the political offences opt-out from their extradition treaty with the U.S., and offered Snowden political asylum, protection from CIA rendition squads, and a paid post from which he could continue his campaign against police state surveillance. The Germans have suffered terribly from pervasive spying under both the Nazi Gestapo and East German Stasi and would take pride in fighting back. But, Chancellor Merkel's government and her Social Democratic opposition have gone out of their way to find "technical reasons" to reject Snowden's application for asylum, as have several other European nations.

Even more dramatic, did you see the speed with which France and Portugal stopped Bolivian President Evo Morales from flying over their countries, all on the false suspicion that his private airplane was carrying Snowden to asylum in the Andes? Principles are fine, but which European government will dare to step on Superman's cape?

Hypocrisy abounds. As quoted in Der Spiegel and other European media, most leading officials over here have howled with outrage over Snowden's latest revelations that American surveillance is currently targeting Germany and its partners in the European Union. But the articles carefully note that trade negotiators and other senior people in Brussels have long assumed that the Americans were monitoring the European Union's electronic communications. Which is it – shock and horror or we knew all along?

Of course they knew, and the Eurocrats went along with it. As the worldly French savant François Heisbourg wrote in the Financial Times, "There are faint echoes of Captain Renault in the film Casablanca, who professed to be 'shocked – shocked' to discover gambling in a gambling den." Heisbourg is too diplomatic to remind readers that Rick, the expatriate American owner of the gambling den, kept the French cop on the take.

U.S. spying on our European allies, their governments, industries, and commerce has gone on for decades, employing every tool from well-paid informants and implanted bugs to permanent taps on undersea cables and specialized networks of electronic antennae coupled with the most sophisticated mathematics. Journalists wrote about the Echelon system, which the U.S. created with its English-speaking allies – the British, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders – while relegating others to a third-party status. Whistleblowers confirmed how well-identified listening posts at Britain's Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, Germany's Bad Aibling, and elsewhere received information from spy and commercial satellites throughout Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Along with information on national security, the electronic intercepts included commercial and industrial items.

The Echelon crisis came to a head in 2001, when the highly-respected British scientific journalist Duncan Campbell presented a report to the European Parliament with evidence that the American company Raytheon had used intercepted information to outbid two French firms for a $1.4 billion contract with Brazil to monitor any environmental changes in the rain forests. The report told of similar efforts by European firms.

Little change resulted. European officials exercised their vocal chords without doing anything to slow down the surveillance on all sides. But if Snowden is right – and his details fit perfectly – America's industrial-strength spying has now grown even more extensive – and far beyond any mutual spying that the Europeans would have the capability to mount in response.

The immediate question is whether the current furor will derail negotiations on the Trans-Atlantic Trade Partnership, which has its own problems that I will discuss in a future column. The negotiations will now have to make a show of preserving Europe's hard-won privacy laws in the face of both the N.S.A. and commercial Internet companies. Until now, the Obama government has leaned heavily on the Europeans not to get in the way, and the Europeans have agreed.

A bigger question is political. Have Snowden's revelations created sufficient drama that ordinary Europeans will now push their embarrassed officials to do something real? A movement that democratic in the European Union would be highly uncharacteristic, but we can always hope. We can also do all we can to expand on Snowden's revelations and keep them alive for as long as possible. That is just what the Eurocrats fear most.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.