It is unlikely that there will be effective retribution for US global spying, since Washington is the one dictating the terms of the game, Caleb Maupin, from the International Action Centre told RT.
The NSA was forced to release a statement on Sunday, denying the
latest media reports that suggested President Obama was aware of
the intelligence gathering operation against German Chancellor
Angela Merkel since at least 2010.
And if Obama indeed did not know, that would be an even more
frightening development, Maupin believes.
RT:Conflicting claims about whether President Obama
knew about the tapping or not - how plausible is his denial of
prior knowledge to you?
Caleb Maupin: The very frightening thing is that Obama
might be telling the truth because we’re seeing all over the
world a trend where the policing agencies and the military are
giving orders to the civilian governments and while the civilian
government is supposed to be the face of power in representing
the population in a democracy, we’re seeing a lot of cases,
police agencies have the authority.
It is very frightening to think that the head of the executive
branch of the government, the commander in chief of the military
would not know whose phones are being tapped. But that could very
well be the case seeing this trend we’re seeing all over the
Western world.
RT:Chancellor Merkel is being clear about her
displeasure, so are other EU leaders. What are they going to do
about it though?
CM: It is very unfortunate. If some other country say Cuba
had been tapping the United States or Iran have been tapping the
United States, there would definitely be sanctions and
retaliation, but in this instance – what is going to happen? Who
is going to hold the US accountable? The same goes for the
civilians that have been killed by drones, what are they going to
do.
The US is the force of economic power in the world and military
power and they are the ones that get to punish people. It does
not seem to be the other way around. And it kind of blows away
many illusions people have about international order and
international law.
RT:Germany and Brazil are working on a UN initiative
to curtail global US surveillance. How potent a tool would that
be in privacy protection, you think?
CM: It can certainly raise awareness and serve as a
rallying cry of many countries that disapprove of what the US is
doing around the world and its surveillance policies as well as
its other policies that violate the rights of other nations. As
far as actually holding the US accountable, I doubt that it’s
going to be really any retribution for this action.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.