The impact of Edward Snowden’s revelations is broadening in scope. When his initial leaks appeared in late May, they were greeted as a forcing event. Whether one saw Snowden as a patriot or a traitor – he’s certainly a lawbreaker – his revelations appeared to be an attempt to bookend the changes in intelligence policy that helped to define the “war on terror.” The first weeks of the debate focused on the costs to personal privacy of attempts to enhance national security. More recent leaks, however, have shifted focus from individual to commercial espionage, with new diplomatic, and perhaps economic, consequences.
EU leaders – particularly in Germany – cite of a breach of trust just as both sides begin negotiations for a U.S.-EU Free Trade Agreement this week in Washington. Differences between the U.S. and EU over data privacy standards pre-date the changes in intelligence practices that followed 9/11. The EU’s Data Protection Directive dates to 1995; Europe has been more hawkish than the U.S. on data privacy consistently. Data privacy standards were a point of negotiation on a U.S.-EU FTA before Snowden, and his news is sand in diplomatic gears just when they need to be greased. Domestically, the U.S. has dealt with the problem of equalizing the priorities of national security, economic competitiveness, and information security in the work of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). While not an ideal comparison, the CFIUS process has some parallels to the debate Snowden has raised.
German politicians who were once enamored with Obama have used the current crisis as an opportunity to display their total loss of faith in him. For his part, Obama made an honest, if impolitic, assertion that America’s European partners engage in and benefit from the same type of espionage, and have wrangled with the difficult ethics surrounding it in the same way. Still, the leading German newspaper Der Spiegel has pointed to the latest Snowden leak findings, involving U.S. eavesdropping on allies, as a bridge too far.
The differences in popular opinion on the issue in the U.S. and Europe are worth noting. Some Americans have been outraged, but at least as many have shrugged. If it helps keep them safe, many Americans who already post their lives voluntarily on Facebook are not too concerned. Bank bailouts sparked the “Occupy Wall Street” movement; no such grassroots campaign against the NSA policies seems to be forming in America (or at least not yet). Europe, as noted above, approaches this issue both from a deeper commitment to privacy protection and a history of governments perpetually spying on their own (again, in Germany in particular).
These cultural differences cause tension. Some analysts, however, see the real danger in the Obama Administration’s blasé response to the instances of commercial espionage within Snowden’s revelations. They undermine U.S. efforts to compel other nations – principally China – to abide by international standards on intellectual property protection. Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Edward Alden argues: “The United States remains the world’s economic and technological leader, and rising economies have much to gain by stealing secrets or other information of commercial value. President Obama’s ‘everybody does it’ response utterly undercuts efforts by U.S. companies and his own government to discourage such espionage by China and other countries. The United States should be taking the lead internationally in trying to stop commercial espionage, not using its advanced capabilities to carry it out.”
The U.S. has in place a system for dealing with the intersection of security, privacy and economic competitiveness issues. The CFIUS process was created to ensure regulatory oversight of foreign investments in the U.S. with potential implications for national security. Secrecy in the CFIUS decision-making process has been condoned in the name of protecting U.S. competitiveness; shielding proprietary information of proposed transactions from public view ensures that firms exploring investments in the U.S. will be protected. At times, as in the 2005 Dubai Ports World case, political objections to a potential investment shine a light on the CFIUS process and its Congressional oversight, and it is reaffirmed. CFIUS is an imperfect example: its means are protective rather than invasive, and far less controversial. It has, however, proven to be an example of when some secrecy in government operations is necessary and judicious.
The footprint of Snowden’s leaks keeps expanding. U.S. attention is focused on what intelligence capacities it will tolerate. Now, both U.S. efforts to compel other countries to respect intellectual property rights and its relations with the EU in general are affected. Can Snowden’s leaks stop a trade agreement? Did he want them to?
