Surveillance laws are being rewritten post-Snowden, but what will really change?

For anyone still in doubt about the impact of Edward Snowden’s revelations, it might be instructive to review what has been going on in the US Congress over the last few months, with legislators grappling with bills aimed at curbing the surveillance capabilities of the NSA and other federal agencies. In the end, in a classic congressional farce, there was a brief intermission in the NSA’s data-gathering capabilities, after which the Senate passed a bill to end the agency’s bulk collection of the phone records of millions of Americans.

At one level it’s a significant moment: one in which – as a Guardian leader writer put it – “an outlaw rewrites the law”. And in a few other countries, notably Germany, Snowden’s revelations do seem to be having a demonstrable impact – as witnessed, for example, by the Bundestag’s inquiry into NSA surveillance within the Federal Republic.

These are non-trivial outcomes, but we shouldn’t get carried away. The revelations have had close to zero effect on the way the British security agencies – and their political masters – go about things. And now that the Tories are liberated from the tiresome obsession of the Lib Dems with privacy and human rights, who knows what Theresa May and the spooks are cooking up? (The relevant passage in the Queen’s speech merely says that “new legislation will modernise the law on communications data”.)

On the other side of the Atlantic, although the USA Freedom Act does introduce a number of reforms, the surveillance landscape remains largely unchanged. Americans’ phone records will still be hoovered up – but now by the telephone companies, not the NSA – and access to them will require a warranting process. And elements of transparency around government surveillance and the operations of the secret Fisa court will be introduced.

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So while there is some good news for American citizens in the new legislation, the position for the rest of the world is that nothing changes. The US retains the right to snoop on us in any way it pleases – and of course to spy on any US citizen who has the misfortune to exchange a phone call or an email message with us. Edward Snowden’s revelations have thus brought about some amelioration in the domestic surveillance regime within the US, but so far they have done little to protect those who live outside that benighted realm and quaintly regard privacy as a basic human right.

All of which brings to mind a term much beloved of old-style Marxists, but now increasingly useful in understanding what is happening in a digital world. The term is “hegemony” – defined as “the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group”. The spectacular arrest of the alleged Fifa corruptibles in Zurich provided a startling example of hegemony in action. The Swiss authorities, who for decades have apparently ignored the exotic corrupt practices of an organisation within their jurisdiction, were suddenly jolted into action by pressure from a powerful US law-enforcement agency. And then they announced that they would be energetically investigating allegations of corrupt practices in relation to the contracts for the next two World Cups.

You could view this as just a routine example of international collaboration between two law-enforcement agencies. Except that this is not the first time in recent history that the Swiss found themselves dancing to an American tune. For the best part of a century, they zealously protected the secrecy of their banks. But in the end, that was rendered unsustainable by US regulatory agencies. Access to dollar facilities made smaller private banks engaged in tax evasion not viable, and two of the oldest simply closed their businesses. The coup de grace came in 2009 when UBS panicked and gave the Internal Revenue Service 5,000 names, after which the secrecy game was well and truly up.

All of which happened in the old world order. The modest legislative reforms approved by Congress suggest that the new world order will be much the same. The only difference is that the US is now using digital technology – and the “soft power” that comes from its huge internet companies – to police the networked world. And its rulers will make no apology for that: hegemony, after all, means never having to say you’re sorry.