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President Joe Biden of the US returns to the White House on April 9 after a weekend at Camp David. (AP/Yonhap)

On March 30, the US and 10 other countries — including the UK, France and Canada — released the “Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware,” just nine days before news broke on Saturday that US intelligence agencies are still spying on allied countries. In the statement, the US and the other countries had called for a ban on spyware that steals text messages and mobile data, describing that as a tool used “to intimidate perceived opponents” and “enable human rights violations.”

That statement was spearheaded by none other than US President Joe Biden, who signed an executive order banning the use of spyware in the US federal government, promising to demonstrate US leadership on the matter.

Biden signed that order on March 27, shortly before the second Summit for Democracy, which was attended by some 120 countries. That issue was then taken up as a main topic of the summit, which began two days later. A senior official at the White House quoted Biden as emphasizing that technology needs to be used to benefit democratic society, rather than to oppose it.

But it turns out that even as preparations were being made for the summit, US intelligence agencies were illegally spying on South Korea and other allied governments, leaving the Biden administration wide open to criticism about hypocrisy in regard to its emphasis on democratic values.

The US has sought to ban telecommunications equipment manufactured by Chinese-based Huawei and block the use of TikTok, the video-sharing app owned by a Chinese company, on the grounds that sensitive information from the US and its allies could fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The US argued that the same technology is far more dangerous when used by an authoritarian government, which appears to have been a disingenuous and self-serving argument.

Moreover, former US President Barack Obama personally promised that America would not spy on allied governments after Edward Snowden, an employee at the US National Security Agency, leaked information about the spy agency’s indiscriminate surveillance in October 2013.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, whose phones had been tapped for more than a decade, were among the leaders who told Obama that the NSA’s actions were completely unacceptable. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff even called off a state visit to the US scheduled for October, rebuffing a personal appeal from Obama, explaining that the conditions were not right for a visit.

There were also suspicions that the South Korean Embassy in Washington, DC, had been wiretapped.

After apologizing to Merkel and other leaders, Obama made a public pledge in January 2014 that the US would not spy on the leaders of allied countries.

But the controversy over wiretapping didn’t end there.

In 2015, one year after the pledge, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US had spied on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others to gauge Israel’s opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran.

Then in 2021, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation reported that the NSA had worked with Danish intelligence agencies from 2012 to 2014 to spy on the phone calls and text messages of senior politicians and officials in Germany, France, Sweden and Norway. Merkel herself was named among the victims of phone tapping.

That implies that the spying continued even after Obama’s pledge. Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron once again objected that this was unacceptable behavior among allies.

These incidents show that Obama’s pledge not to spy on his allies was empty talk.

While this latest incident has eroded the US’ credibility, the White House has yet to express public regret. Rather than putting a stop to illegal surveillance, it’s more intent on tracking down the leaker and conveying the message that this is all a Russian plot to divide the West.

Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said Monday that the Pentagon “continues to review and assess the veracity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media sites and that appear in some cases to contain sensitive and highly classified material.”

“An interagency effort has been set up with a focus on assessing the impact these photographed documents could potentially have on US national security and on our allies and partners,” Meagher said, adding that “over the weekend and into today, US officials have engaged with allies and partners.”

By Lee Bon-young, Washington correspondent

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