NSA spying on Europe gives the US more intelligence, but not
better
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/29/nsa-spying-europe-us-intelligence
European leaders' outrage is synthetic; we're all in this
game. But the NSA's data collection power is not necessarily an advantage
Peter Galbraith
theguardian.com,Tuesday 29 October 2013
As a US
diplomat and UN official, I operated with the certain knowledge that the host
country intelligence service – and, possibly, other services – listened to my
calls. And as for anyone else, many of these calls dealt with personal matters.
So, I have sympathy for Europeans who are outraged by revelations that the NSA
invaded their privacy by monitoring hundreds of millions of calls.
But how serious is the invasion of privacy? The NSA can
vacuum up huge quantities of data but that doesn't mean it is useful. Most of
us lead lives that are of no interest to any intelligence agency and, even for
persons of interest, most conversations and email are of no intelligence value.
I always felt sympathy for the Croatian analysts who reviewed recorded
conversations from my residence phone. Even excluding the conversations between
my teenage son and his friends, most of the calls would have been
inconsequential and boring. Even I fell asleep on some of my calls. For most of
us, the sheer volume of data gathered by the NSA is the best assurance of
privacy.
Europeans are mindful – in a way Americans, with their
different history, are not – of how totalitarian regimes maintained extensive
files on their citizens and, more importantly, how they used the data. An
unguarded comment in an intercepted phone call could lead to a concentration
camp or gulag, or worse.
And not only the speaker was at risk. A listener who failed
to report on the speaker might meet the same fate. And even those who informed
could be deported for consorting with a state enemy.
The NSA is a big, well-funded intelligence agency but it has
no means to deport anyone. And even if the NSA intercepts uncover criminal
activity, intercepts gathered without a warrant cannot be used in a criminal
proceeding in the United States
or any European country (except, possibly, Belarus).
I have less sympathy for European leaders who are
"shocked" to learn that the US is eavesdropping on them.
Europeans also spy on Americans and, in the case of the French, this is
well-documented. Some have suggested that European leaders are mostly outraged
because their collection capabilities do not match America's. (In this regard, British
officials have been tellingly quiet.)
But it may also be that European agencies do it quite well.
There is, however, no European version of Edward Snowden to tell us. And if
Angela Merkel uses an unsecured cellphone, she should not be surprised that the
NSA intercepts it.
But it may not just be the NSA: I suspect her text messages
and phone calls may be of far greater interest to Greek intelligence than to
the US.
(And I would be amazed if Germany's
intelligence agency, the BND, was not tapping the phones of the US ambassador and CIA station chief in Berlin.)
Europeans might imagine that this intelligence-gathering
gives the US
an enormous advantage in the conduct of its foreign policy, but that is not
necessarily the case. Phone calls, emails, and text messages have to be
interpreted in context. When Chancellor Merkel texts her defense minister, she
is communicating in a form of code. To break the code – that is, to comprehend
fully the meaning of the words – the analyst needs to understand the personal
and political relationship between the two, as well as all the previous
discussions and decisions on the issue. But the analyst is never someone who
knows Merkel or her minister and, however good their knowledge of Germany might
be (and quite often, it is not that good), this is not the same as knowing the
people involved.
Ironically, the more important the intelligence target, the
less experience those analyzing the intelligence actually have. One reason US
intelligence on Iraq was so dramatically wrong before the 2003 war is that the
analysts had never been there and therefore had no feel for the country.
Intercepts only tell you so much, but because the US government pays so much to get
this information, it has a weight in the policy-making process that is often
unwarranted.
I experienced this firsthand as US
ambassador to Croatia during
the Croatia and Bosnia wars. At
critical junctures in these wars, the CIA misestimated Croatian intentions and
capabilities. In making their assessments, CIA analysts relied heavily on the
NSA's electronic intercepts, as well as paid spies and other intelligence
sources.
Of course, I saw this information but I also relied on what
Croatian leaders told me and on what I observed on the ground. But because the US government paid billions for its
intelligence, I had a hard time persuading Washington that the intelligence was wrong,
even when it deviated from common sense.
In the field of intelligence, more is not necessarily
better. In order to collect, analyze and use the vast quantities of data, the US government
provides security clearances to hundreds of thousands of government employees
and contractors. The Obama administration is in its current mess because Booz
Allen Hamilton, a contractor doing billions of dollars of secret work for the
government, gave a troubled 29-year-old high school graduate access to a vast
array of secrets.
The system is in need of reform and the smaller, more agile
European services may be a model. After all, espionage is not just about
collecting secrets but also keeping them.
Peter W. Galbraith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_W._Galbraith
Peter Woodard Galbraith (born December 31, 1950) is an
author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former United States
diplomat.
Peter Galbraith is the son of John Kenneth Galbraith – one
of the leading economists of the 20th century – and Catherine (Kitty) Merriam Atwater,
and is the brother of economist James K. Galbraith.
After attending the Commonwealth
School, he earned an A.B. degree from Harvard College,
an M.A. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University
Law Center.
He has two children with Tone Bringa, a Norwegian social anthropologist.
Galbraith was a good friend of the twice-elected Prime
Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, dating back to their student days at
Harvard and Oxford Universities, and was instrumental in securing
Bhutto's release from prison in Pakistan
for a medical treatment abroad during the military dictatorship of General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Galbraith as the
first United States Ambassador to Croatia.
Galbraith was actively involved in the Croatia and Bosnia peace processes. He was
co-mediator and principal architect of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the
war in Croatia by providing
for peaceful reintegration of Serb-held Eastern Slavonia into Croatia. From
1996 to 1998, Galbraith served as de facto Chairman of the international
commission charged with monitoring implementation of the Erdut Agreement.
Galbraith helped devise and implement the strategy that ended the 1993-94
Muslim-Croat War and participated in the negotiation of the Washington
Agreement that established the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was
co-chairman of the Croatia
peace process (“the Z-4 process”) that produced several agreements between the
Croatian government and rebel Serbs and the U.S. witnessed at signing of Erdut
Agreement.
During the war years, Galbraith was responsible for U.S. humanitarian programs in the former Yugoslavia and for U.S.
relations with the UNPROFOR mission headquartered in Zagreb. Ambassador Galbraith’s diplomatic
interventions facilitated the flow of humanitarian assistance to Bosnia and
secured the 1993 release of more than 5,000 prisoners of war held in inhumane
conditions by Bosnian Croat forces.