A version of this article appeared in the South China Morning Post, 26 June 2013



Expect Little Change in USG Policy From Snowden Leaks

After all the breathless commentary on the Edward Snowden cyberspying leak case is said and done and the hero-villain rides off into the sunset, critics of America will be left with an unsettling reality. Little will have changed in what many now see as a massive surveillance state in the US.

Like the military-industrial complex before it, the US surveillance and intelligence community is now a multibillion dollar industry with deeply entrenched interests, a robust government-business-private contractor revolving door, and a general acceptance by most Americans that certain activities are needed to protect the country.

The scale of the industry may astonish some, but the information has been in the public domain for some time. In just one example, a two-year Washington Post investigative report in 2010 revealed that some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies were working on programmes related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence across the US, employing millions of Americans.

More recent public information has highlighted the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the National Security Agency, given that both are now in the same business of looking for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data.

With such resources invested, reforming current practice is certain to be an uphill battle. President Obama has promised new checks and more transparency on US domestic surveillance and a national debate on the issue. But it will take a seismic shift in public and Congressional attitudes to fundamentally alter America’s foreign surveillance programmes. And opinion polls in the US say that such a shift may be a long time coming.

A recent Pew Research Center/USA Today poll showed that 54% of Americans supported a criminal case against Edward Snowden. When asked about the US government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, 48% approved, compared with 47% who disapproved. Such deep splits in public opinion often lead to inertia and support of the status quo.

And the more the US government comes across as being transparent, with open hearings and briefings about its surveillance programmes, the more the average American might feel less squeamish about personal data collection. For example, many Americans, after hearing that 50 terrorist plots were stymied, may conclude that collecting metadata is an acceptable price to pay, as most already feel the programmes have helped prevent terrorist attacks.

The revelations last week of specific NSA rules on how to deal with “incidental” intercepts of Americans’ phone calls or emails show that the bureaucracy is highly sensitive to the distinction between foreigners and “US persons.” The two sets of rules, each nine pages long, could do much to correct the image of a rogue intelligence agency wantonly intruding on Americans’ privacy.

Interestingly, foreign governments have been silent on the whole affair. This is because espionage and surveillance have been a reality for centuries. Remote-controlled spying is just its latest, unromantic version. In most countries, diplomats are trained from their early days they are going to be targets of spying. Big high-tech companies teach the same. Countermeasures are simply part of the daily routine, and if there are slip-ups, well, catch me if you can.

Another reason the Snowden leaks are likely to change little is that America is already by far the world’s most transparent nation on intelligence matters, and its spy services are the most closely and thoroughly overseen. The open Congressional testimonies following the recent leaks are just one example of such regular hearings on a range of intelligence matters, although critics have called for even closer scrutiny.

The Annual Threat Assessment that the director of national intelligence presents publicly to Congress is a virtual blueprint of US intelligence priorities and the main lines of US analytical thinking about threats. This year’s report prominently featured “cyber” threats. Few, if any, other legislatures get intelligence products approaching the scope of what US Congressional oversight committees see.

A democracy’s intelligence needs will always clash with its underlying values — that of an open, pluralistic, and free society. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. Effective intelligence depends on getting and protecting sensitive information. For the US and other modern democracies, getting that balance right remains a work in progress.

The big question is whether, in the meantime, we can all accept what Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously said in 1999, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

The author is a former US diplomat and was head of the Economic-Political Section at the US Consulate in Hong Kong from 2009-2012.

Recommended Links:

NSA Revelations All in One Chart, ProPublica

NSA Changes So Far Have Only Been Modest, NY Times

The US Will Not Enter Into a “No Spy” Deal With Germany, The Guardian

Why Obama’s Hints at Intel Reform Are Mostly Window Dressing, Foreign Policy

US May Never Know the Extent of Snowden’s Leaks, NY Times

NSA Decoded: What the Revelations Mean for You, The Guardian

Obama Panel Urges Reforms, But Will They Be Implemented? NY Times