Catriona Law

On March 24th 2016 I attended the Sadat Forum on The Consequences of Cyber Spying

for US Foreign Policy. The event specifically held importance to future journalists and foreign

affairs specialist. I am a Government and Politics and Persian Studies double major, so the event

interested me greatly. In relation to our course this forum mostly related to the lecture on

counter-terrorism. Cyber spying heavily increased since the terrorist attacks on September 11th

2001. It is now considered normal for allied and non-allied countries to be spying on each other.

This has been an important topic after the information leaks by Edward Snowden. When this

topic was touched on it reminded me of my visit to the Spy museum with Global Communities in

the Fall and the curator discussing how Snowdens worst crime was not releasing information

about the United States spying on its own people, but on its allied countries. Following the Paris

attacks and the Brussels attacks, a current controversy between intelligence communities are

intelligence relationships between allied countries. The problem is that European intelligence

agencies are not actively sharing intelligence with one another; however, they are sharing

information with the United States. The US is a valuable ally because our country has an

incredibly strong intelligence agency, plus the United States being across an ocean does not

present as much of a threat as the countries they share borders with. The European Union also

has an interesting model where the Union is in charge of all countries commerce and privacy,

but matters of security are maintained by the sovereign state. These broad privacy rules made by

the EU have actually gotten in the way of American-European intelligence sharing.

The most interesting point brought up though in my mind was that Turkey, a member of

the EU, warned Belgium of an imminent terrorist threat against them. Belgian Intelligence

Services dismissed the tip. This is where the idea of reforming Belgian intelligence comes from.
A lot of people are saying Belgian Intelligence is not very competent because they had many

terrorists living in their capital city. One of the main reasons why these men and women were not

captured sooner is because Belgian Law Enforcement is not allowed to use cyber espionage.

There is a structural flaw in the EU because privacy and security are separated. In America they

are in the same room, which can create some problems, but ultimately makes for a more solid

intelligence service. At this point in the forum is where the question came that if our country is

obviously listening in on our allied countries then why are we not using our capabilities to listen,

as ISIS is a global threat? The United States through Meta data collection is constantly spying on

our allies, but with the enlarged digital intelligence of today it is not an easy task. There is also a

shrinking electronic intelligence because of the demands for privacy. So, there is a possibility

that when sifting through this material the US will find information about these terrorists in

Brussels. However, this also creates a problem that was mentioned in our lecture about counter-

terrorism. The strength of the United States intelligence service creates a free-rider problem with

smaller countries like Belgium. Unfortunately, Belgium may feel that they do not need to invest

a lot in security because they have the United States and other allied countries watching their

back.

All countries are spying on one another, so when news broke of the US spying on

Germany it may have been more theater for the people than actual outrage. It is important to spy

on all countries for the safety and liberty of our country. A good intelligence service always has

to be aware of the whole picture. That means knowing when one country is purposefully

misinforming you or one of your allies. Basically, we would suffer as a nation if we could not

listen to good and bad countries. As we learned in class one of the largest goals for counter-

terrorism is prevention. Counter-terrorism strategies create a trade-off between privacy and

success. Another important topic brought up was the FBI vs. Apple. Breaking in to one of the

San Bernardino shooters phones would make Americans less secure. It would undermine security

and make Apple products in particular easier to hack. While not consenting to it means losing

ground in counter-terrorism in the long run it means the country is less likely to be subject to a

cyber attack, which is possibly our biggest threat at the moment. All in all, cyber spying makes

the United States better informed and is therefore important, even if it bruises relations with

allied countries.