14 DAY TRIAL // Bill Clinton’s name hasn’t come up in NSA leaked files, but that doesn’t mean that spying wasn’t happening back when he was president of the United States, he admitted during an interview.
The former president admitted he had some serious reservations about listening to phone conversations or reading emails of other world leaders when he was in office. “Well, it depended on who they were. If we thought they were engaged in hostile acts against the United States… then we might do it. But – I’m not sure – we didn’t have the capability then to do a lot of what’s being done today,” Clinton told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos.
He is referring, of course, to the scandal of the US spying on at least 35 world leaders, including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, one of the American’s biggest European allies.
While Clinton believes there should be some very explicit rules on listening in on conversations of world leaders, as well as more transparency and more privacy and security, he still thinks the stories about data collection have had a damaging effect in Latin America, Europe and Asia.
“We’re getting in a position here where people didn’t know what was going on. And the way the data’s been handled, it’s not clear that it’s maximized our security, and it’s perfectly clear that it’s eroded some people’s sense of privacy. So I think the most important thing we can do now is have a really public discussion about what the rules should be,” Clinton said.
So, the former president wants a more robust public debate about privacy and the security concerns that the NSA leaks have sparked, something that everyone does ever since the Snowden files were first reported on back in June. US leaders have, alas, been rather reluctant to discuss the issues, passing the blame from one institution to another and using empty excuses.