US battles anger over spying on friendly regimes
As the latest chapter in America's surveillance scandal unravels, with exiled ‘whistleblower’ Edward Snowden revealing that the US kept tabs on the private communications of at least 35 heads of state, causing much outrage across the world from Berlin to Brasilia, officials in New Delhi have been unusually smug: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh supposedly has neither a personal email address nor his own mobile phone. So, technically, there can be no question of the US directly spying on him (although his communications can still be monitored through his aides and assistants, but that is a slightly different matter). For now, the revelation has naturally amused many in this country, but in Washington, DC, the manner in which New Delhi has coolly bypassed the entire scandal has allowed many embarrassed officials, including Mr Barack Obama, to heave a sigh of relief. The US President has been taking fire ever since the controversy over international espionage emerged in the public domain, and his efforts to soothe tempers globally have failed.
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff was one of the first world leaders to register a strong protest against the US National Security Agency's surveillance programme. Following news reports that the NSA monitored her telephone calls and emails, spied on communications by her aides and targeted her country's biggest telecommunications company, Ms Rousseff rebuked the US policy at the United Nations General Assembly in September and refused to attend the October 23 state dinner in her honour. Though President Obama sought to personally allay her fears, she remained unconvinced. A month later, the situation has become worse for America. last Wednesday, instead of dining with Ms Rousseff at the White House, President Obama found himself still on the phone, trying to placate irate friends — especially those from Europe, where privacy issues are a big deal — who have made it clear that such behaviour is not acceptable. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is only the latest leader to hop on to the outrage bandwagon, where she is keeping company with French President François Hollande, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and some fuming members of the European Union. Interestingly, Ms Merkel was one of the few world leaders who had downplayed the NSA scandal when it first broke. But the latest revelations about her personal phone being tapped — President Obama assured her that her communications were not being monitored in the present and will not come under scrutiny in the future, but remained non-committal about spying in the past — seem to have pushed her over to the other side. Meanwhile, US officials are still trying to convince the world that every nation spies on its friends and foes alike, and that it has not done nothing out of the ordinary. They are not entirely wrong, except that they got caught and the others didn't.