The White House on Spying

[Commentary] The Obama Administration said that it was considering banning eavesdropping on the leaders of American allies. Is it really better for us to think that things have gone so far with the post-9/11 idea that any spying that can be done should be done and that nobody thought to inform President Barack Obama about tapping the phone of one of the most important American allies? We are not reassured by the often-heard explanation that everyone spies on everyone else all the time. We are not advocating a return to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson banned the decryption of diplomatic cables because “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” But there has long been an understanding that international spying was done in pursuit of a concrete threat to national security. That Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone conversations could fall under that umbrella is an outgrowth of the post-9/11 decision by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that everyone is the enemy, and that anyone’s rights may be degraded in the name of national security. That led to Abu Ghraib, torture at the secret CIA prisons, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, grave harm to international relations, and the dragnet approach to surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks.