Europe’s Faux Outrage on NSA Spying

Captain Renault of the European Union is apparently shocked, shocked to find out that the U.S. has been spying on the EU’s official communications. Some EU officials have called for suspending talks on a trans-Atlantic trade and investment partnership because, as Elmar Brok, chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, put it, “How are you supposed to negotiate when you have to worry that your negotiating positions were intercepted?”

Welcome to the modern world, Chairman Brok. If U.S. intelligence agencies weren’t monitoring communications of the EU and its member governments, they wouldn’t be doing their job -- just as the intelligence services of France, Germany, Israel and other U.S. allies wouldn’t be doing theirs if they didn’t try to keep tabs on the U.S. There’s a reason that staff members traveling with President George W. Bush in 2008 were told on arriving in France, for instance, to leave their BlackBerrys on Air Force One with the batteries removed.