The Patriot Post® · International NSA Kerfuffle

America’s European allies are up in arms this week after it was revealed that the National Security Agency has been involved in widespread data collection in France, Germany and elsewhere on the continent. According to information stolen and made public earlier this year by former NSA employee Edward Snowden, the NSA intercepted over 70 million phone calls and text messages in France during a 30-day period at the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013. The personal communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel have also been intercepted.

Foreign leaders roundly criticized America and Barack Obama specifically for the data mining. Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have tossed around phrases like “deep disapproval” and “unacceptable.” Both governments made a show of summoning the respective U.S. ambassadors for further consultation, a rare, though not unprecedented action. EU leaders meeting at a regularly scheduled summit in Brussels are now reviewing Europe-wide privacy policies and to what extent they should continue cooperating with the U.S. on intelligence matters.

Spying on allies, however, is not exactly a new phenomenon. In fact, it’s about as common a practice as spying on enemies, and the U.S. isn’t the only country doing it. Israel, France, Britain and many other allied nations have active data collection efforts targeted at America, and while the scope of their efforts is probably dwarfed by our own, the U.S. does have in place significantly more stringent privacy and safety protocols. But, politically, our allies must be “outraged.”

This latest development is significant, though, because it exposes the growing lack of trust our allies have in Obama. We Americans have unfortunately become quite used to Obama saying one thing and doing another, but when our closest allies begin to question the integrity of our nation’s leader, it doesn’t bode well for political and economic relations, and it could be a severe blow to concerted international efforts to combat Islamic terrorism.