The tens of thousands of classified documents taken by National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden before he absconded to Moscow, via Hong Kong, earlier this year, continue to yield headlines around the world.

This week in France's Le Monde. Snowden's revelations are fascinating in their detail of the advanced methods used by the American listening service but despite the obvious public and journalistic interest, they don't really say anything new to the average news junkie with eyes in their head.

Every government with electronic surveillance capabilities is spying against other governments, including ostensible allies, and after civilians and commercial companies. What puts the NSA in a class of its own are the sheer extent and impressive capabilities the American superpower's reach.

Against this background, the hypocrisy of the French government which issued a diplomatic rebuke to the Obama Administration is breathtaking. France may not have the NSA's capabilities but it is hard to believe that if had, it would not make even more aggressive use of them.

Ironically, the extensive use the French make of industrial espionage against other countries, not only for its own security purposes but to help private corporations, was revealed two years ago by WikiLeaks, Snowden's current ally. In one of the U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, a German CEO is quoted saying that "France is the evil empire when it comes to industrial espionage," and that France has caused more financial damage to Germany through industrial espionage than Russia or China.

Also when it comes to spying on citizens, French or foreign, they are no different from the NSA. Le Monde itself detailed the activity of French external intelligence agency DGSE only three months ago. According to the report, the DGSE collects phone calls and emails in France and other countries, breaking French law with the authorization of previous presidents and the current Francois Hollande.

Hypocrisy reigns, especially when the media forces governments to publicly defend the actions of their spy agencies. It's hard to excuse anyone of hypocrisy, certainly not WikiLeaks which demands transparency from western governments but is itself an opaque organization looking out mainly for the interests of its founder Julian Assange who has been tainted by his ties with regimes that are certainly not supporters of freedom of information. As tainted as Snowden himself who found refuge in Russia which just this week announced new restrictions on internet privacy.

The Snowden documents and their wide publicity have set off an important debate regarding the right and duty of government to defend their citizens from terror at the price of their right to privacy, the lack of public scrutiny on the activity of intelligence organizations, the exaggerated intrusion into private domain and the possible abuse of information gathered. This is a debate on crucial democratic principles which has begun in American and Britain and should take place in other countries including Israel. The hypocrisy of the French government which uses such similar methods and not just for security, yet is quick to openly chastise a friendly government does nothing to help this debate.