Why do allies spy on each other

Christopher J. Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The spotlight must be an uncomfortable position for intelligence organisations that would far prefer to remain in the shadows. What else would we expect a national intelligence gathering agency to do? The fundamental purpose of such organisations is to seek out national advantage, in whatever field — whether it is political, economic, military, or otherwise. The former spy was referring to the uproar across Europe in the wake of news accounts that the U.

National Security Administration has been spying on the continent: on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's official cellphone; on millions of France's phone calls; and on millions of Spain's phone calls and its politicians and officials. The NSA also has eavesdropped on the Mexican government and hacked the public e-mail account of former President Felipe Calderon and his presidency's e-mail domain that also was used by Cabinet members, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.

It must be a nightmare. In describing the espionage among friends, Earnest referred to a famous quote by 19th century British statesman Henry Temple, or Lord Palmerston, who stated in Parliament: "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies.

Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. Before Congress on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged as a "fundamental given" that the United States gathers intelligence on foreign leaders. Now, to be sure, on occasion, we've made mistakes -- some quite significant," Clapper told the House committee reviewing the agency's surveillance activities.

Clapper has worked in intelligence services for 50 years. In other testimony to the committee, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, said media outlets misinterpreted the leaked documents. Some of the metadata on phones calls in ally countries came from those countries, and the remaining metadata was collected legally by the NSA, he said. NSA chief: Reports U. If not, the breach in trust would not be repaired and would not be forgotten.

Moreover, they noted the differences between the two continents on their respective orientations toward their own and other intelligence agencies and to a lesser extent even their own courts.

Americans and Europeans think differently about their security services. Europeans, especially in Germany and Central Europe, have had very negative experiences with their security services. Those services were used by the authoritarian state to spy on individuals in order to prosecute them for behavior which should never have been criminalized anyway.

Their courts did not intervene. If anything, their courts and judiciaries were complicit. The security state is foreign to the United States whose citizens look to their security services and their courts for protection. Americans worry about the possibility for abuse more than actual misuse. Europeans have seen malfeasance up close and very personal and quite recently. So they are much less likely to afford to them the benefit of the doubt.

Conversely, Americans suffered the casualties of September 11, , their neighbors jumping from skyscrapers. For Americans, the threat of terrorism is real, very personal, and quite recent. Moreover, one of the prime questions after the attacks was why the intelligence services had not detected the threat. Why, to use the parlance of the day, had they not connected the dots?

So the intelligence services were under the microscope for, implicitly, not doing their job. They were directed to integrate, get the information, and connect the dots, hence the new Department for Homeland Security. They clearly felt responsible for examining more haystacks and finding more needles, which is what they have been doing.

So what issues are now on the table and how can they be resolved or at least productively discussed? First, security and civil liberties, in this case privacy, are in constant tension. The balance between them is ever-changing, informed in part by technology and by basic orientations and experiences.

Prior to , Americans in general drew that line more toward the protection of civil liberties. After , Americans, tacitly if not formally, were willing to concede more of their civil liberties in exchange for greater safety. They always have and they always will. So all this outrage is either meant to drum up traffic in our attention economy I'm looking right at you, Guardian!

Well here's a simple reason: to make sure they're still allies. Of course, the need for information and leverage goes deeper than that, but that will do for today. Think about it. When you're out with your friends, do you always tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or do you sugarcoat, exaggerate, or omit little details? Sure you do. Now punch it up to the geopolitical level where national strategies and even shared weapons systems probably require knowing more than what's been bragged about at a cocktail party.

Hey, check it out! I made it through this entire piece without a single Sun Tzu reference.