Game of phones

It’s rare that the continent across the pond behaves harmoniously, but thanks to Edward Snowden, it has a uniting factor other than being mutually terrified of Vladimir Putin.

They’re all mad at us. Or, at least, at our government because you and I aren’t the ones tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.

But, according to whistleblower Edward Snowden, the friendly folks over at the National Security Agency tapped the personal communications of not only Merkel, but millions of French citizens.

Aside from the humor to be found in the idea of spying on French people — have they ever truly said anything worth listening to? — it is easy to dismiss this as functionally meaningless.

European citizens on European soil have no right not to be spied upon under our Constitution. They have, actually, no rights under our Constitution.

And it’s not like the Germans have ever given us a reason to be suspicious, right? Like two major, global reasons in the 20th century where they were clearly the bad guys?

And the French have admitted they have a serious Islamist extremism problem. It turns out that — much like gangs in America — terrorists in France use jails to recruit more terrorists.

Besides, what is Europe going to do to us? It’s a miracle the French haven’t surrendered already.

But European countries are some of our most valuable allies. We need their help literally all the time. And this brouhaha endangers all of that.

The Washington Post reports that “European officials on Thursday threatened to delay major trade negotiations, while officials in Germany launched a legal investigation and said the scandal could disrupt important U.S.-German counterterrorism collaborations.”

The trade agreement in question is worth at least $180 billion a year to the United States.

And German intelligence aimed at terrorist financing and Islamist extremism in Europe and abroad is some of the most extensive in the world. One German minister has called for the “suspension of a financial data-sharing program that targets suspected terrorists.”

And France is key not only to the international champagne trade, but additionally, Franco-American collaboration has already stopped at least one major terrorist attack.

We sacrificed all that to tap Angela Merkel’s phone? Did we think she made weekly calls to Bin Laden?

Weird — he hasn’t picked up for a couple of years. She’s starting to suspect he doesn’t like her anymore.

Merkel made a personal call to President Obama, who assured her that the U.S. is not and will not spy on her.

He apparently failed to acknowledge whether or not we had spied on her in the past. Instead, he chose to make static noises and pretend the phone was cutting out before hanging up.

This should be a wake-up call to our leaders who remain unbothered by the government spying on Americans, probably because it doesn’t threaten a trade agreement.

And if it is a wake-up call, the NSA will be listening.

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.