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"Electronic Snoopers Plunder Our Rights"

29 March 2000

[Thanks to DC.]

http://interactive.wsj.com/archive

Wall Street Journal, 28 March 2000

Editorial page/letters

Electronic Snoopers Plunder Our Rights

James Woolsey concluded his remarkable piece on the controversy in Europe about commercial espionage with an accurate rebuke: European politicians (and some others) cannot attack the U.S. for commercial snooping and expect to maintain straight faces ("Why We Spy on Our Allies," editorial page, March 17). He was right too to point out that comment on my report to the European Parliament, which he cites heavily, has been selective and misleading. But Mr. Woolsey has in turn been selective. My report cited three examples, not the two he claimed. In the third case, alleged bribery was not the reason for the U.S. targeting the communications of a European aerospace corporation.

A much more important point flows from Mr. Woolsey's forthright acknowledgment of spying on U.S. allies. Whether or not detecting bribery is the true motive, the occasions in which a foreign company behaves corruptly can be uncovered only if its communications are routinely under surveillance, including when it acts lawfully. These communications are tracked by means of intercepting the world's communications arteries, which also carry the private messages of U.S. business and those of the citizens of every nation. Such surveillance is both highly secret and quite lawless. Yes, Mr. Woolsey, the French do it too. And the Russians. And the Chinese. But whichever government is doing the snooping, it amounts to a frontal attack on privacy and constitutional rights.

That is why the same worries have recently filled congressional postbags, and may lead Congress to investigate communications surveillance and constitutional rights for the first time since Sen. Frank Church first exposed such activity in 1976. On this matter at least, the interests of U.S. and European citizens (if not our corporations) are easily aligned. It is time for the electronic snoopers to cease plundering the privacy of international communications.

Duncan Campbell Senior Research Fellow Electronic Privacy Information Center Washington

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