How did Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, tell Barack Obama that she was cancelling a state visit to the US? She sent herself an email. That joke about the backlash against American spying might have raised a wry smile in Washington a few weeks ago. But as the scandal spreads, the Obama administration is realising that the damage to US interests is no laughing matter.
The news that the Americans were apparently tapping the mobile phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel has provoked outrage in Germany. The French government, too, has protested loudly at stories of mass-monitoring of telephone calls in France. The reaction in the European parliament is also profoundly threatening to champions of American industry, such as Google and Facebook – which could yet be forced to choose between their business in Europe and their legal obligations to surrender data to the US government. America’s public reputation is taking a battering.
One former US official laments that the “Obama effect” is now over: “We’re back to where we were in 2004. Europeans think that it doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican, black or white, this is just how Americans behave.” The uproar could grow louder, with fresh claims that the US has monitored the calls of 35 world leaders.