Reports about the National Security Agency's PRISM program -- through which U.S. intelligence officials have access to the private communications of technology users -- have sparked fierce outrage in Europe, where leaders have long butted heads with U.S. security officials over where to strike the balance between safety and civil liberties.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to raise questions about the program with President Barack Obama when she meets with him next week, while other European leaders have said the news is disturbing enough to threaten pending EU-U.S. trade talks next month. Meanwhile, back in the country where the spying is actually taking place, a recent Washington Post-Pew Center poll shows that a majority of Americans "prioritize probes over privacy" -- or, put another way, that 56 percent felt the NSA's tracking of phone records was "acceptable."

Is there a yawning transatlantic divide when it comes to attitudes toward privacy? Consider some examples:

• In Europe, use of Facebook's facial-recognition software -- which can match users to their pictures -- is banned.
• Google has to alert Europeans in advance when the company is planning to send out Street View cars. (In Germany, people can also request that Google blur images of their homes -- maybe a good tip for GeoGuessr fans out there!)
• Earlier this year, a German court ruled against Google and on behalf of a German businessman who argued that the search engine's autocomplete function -- which associated him with "scientology" and "fraud" -- constituted a privacy violation.
• The EU Parliament is looking at a set of beefed-up privacy protection laws, including one that would require companies to delete all of a user's personal data upon request, and another that would require them to obtain a user's explicit permission before collecting and mining any of that data.

It's often argued that Europeans value privacy more than Americans do. And when it comes to giving companies access to personal data, Europeans -- or at least their lawmakers -- do seem more concerned than Americans.  

But in a 2004 article for the Yale Law Journal, Yale Professor James Whitman points out that there are areas of privacy that Americans tend to be more concerned about than Europeans.

"For example, continental governments assert the authority to decide what names parents will be permitted to give their children," he writes. "This is an application of state power that Americans will view with complete astonishment, as a manifest violation of proper norms of the protection of privacy and personhood.... Nor does it end there: In Germany, everybody must be formally registered with the police at all times. In both Germany and France, inspectors have the power to arrive at your door to investigate whether you have an unlicensed television."

What explains the contradiction? The two cultures view privacy in fundamentally different terms, Whitman says. He characterizes the European view of privacy as a right to dignity -- the right to control the public face you present to the world (thus, an unflattering Google autocomplete is ruled to be invasive). Americans, on the other hand, view privacy in terms of liberty -- the right to keep the state out of our lives -- hence the visceral distrust of national identity cards.

Europeans have a greater tolerance for intrusions by the state, Whitman argues -- a point that runs counter to arguments often made by Europeans themselves: that the Old World's premium on privacy stems from painful parts of its history, such as when Nazis and members of the Stasi used personal data to control the public.

But based on Whitman's characterization, one would expect the PRISM program -- in representing the state's overreach into our personal lives --  to trigger more outrage among Americans than it has so far.

On the other hand, under the NSA program it is -- in theory, at least -- non-Americans who are being watched most closely. It seems the notion of being spied on -- using data from companies Europe has long regarded with suspicion -- is enough to raise the hackles of even those willing to let government have a say in naming their babies.

Nelson Mandela is back in the news this week with the announcement that he's once again in the hospital and in fragile condition. And while the legacy of the former South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary leader is open to debate, there's no denying that he's often turned to as a source of inspiration. Apparently, that even applies to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's M23 rebel militia.

On Monday, a Twitter account that appears to be run by members of the rebel movement published a series of tweets quoting Mandela and hailing freedom and peacemaking -- not exactly what you'd expect from an armed group that has used violence to battle the Congolese government since 2012. 

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting themost nimble go out ahead, ~ Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.”?Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“As I walkd out Z door toward Zgate Zat wld lead2my freedom,I knew if I didn't leav my bitterness&hatred behind,I'd stillBin prison~ Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.” ~ Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” ~ Nelson #Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to hishead.If u talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.~Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”~Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”~ Nelson Mandela#M23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others” ~Mandela #M23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” ~ Nelson Mandela #m23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

Not surprisingly, the rebel army's decision to invoke one of the world's greatest peacemakers has ruffled a few feathers. 

#Protip: if you carry out human rights abuses, you don't get to quote Mandela as your inspiration.

— Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) June 10, 2013

So what explains M23's love of Mandela? It's not entirely clear, but M23 members have argued that they have Madiba's principles on their side in their struggle with the Congolese government. "I appeal to our brothers, the South Africans, not to allow an individual or a group of individuals to discard the values that have built their nation and for which values Nelson Mandela sacrificed his youth," declared M23 youth leader Ali Musagara last month, in urging South Africa not to support Kinshasa.

And hey, given that M23 leaders are currently trying to hash out peace talks with the Congolese government, maybe they actually are inspired. The group has already suggested that just like Mandela, who was once labeled a terrorist, M23 may one day be known for brokering peace, not waging war. 

Chinese activist Ai Weiwei has had his share of experience with heavy-handed treatment by the government, having been detained for 81 days by China's secret police in 2011. Now the Beijing-based artist says another country reminds him of China: the United States.

In a column in the Guardian this morning, Ai harshly criticizes the U.S. government for the NSA's PRISM Internet surveillance program -- a program the Guardian has been at the forefront of reporting on over the past week.

"Privacy is a basic human right, one of the very core values," Ai writes. "There is no guarantee that China, the US or any other government will not use the information falsely or wrongly. I think especially that a nation like the US, which is technically advanced, should not take advantage of its power. It encourages other nations."

In another comparison that Americans are unlikely to appreciate, Ai adds, "In the Soviet Union before, in China today, and even in the US, officials always think what they do is necessary, and firmly believe they do what is best for the state and the people. But the lesson that people should learn from history is the need to limit state power."

Praise for Edward Snowden, the leaker behind the PRISM story who was last seen in Hong Kong, has been widespread in China.

"This is the definition of heroism," wrote one Chinese blogger. "Doing this proves he genuinely cares about this country and about his country's citizens. All countries need someone like him!"

"This young fellow truly is a human rights warrior!" declared the well-known nationalist writer Wang Xiaodong. "He has now fled to Chinese territory, and must be protected. We must withstand U.S. pressure, and make a contribution to world human rights!"

Ai doesn't mention Snowden explicitly in his column, but the Chinese dissident may very well feel the same way.

When the Washington Post and the Guardian revealed the existence of the NSA intelligence-gathering program PRISM last week, they both relied on a set of horrifically bad slides reportedly prepared by the agency and presented to a group of senior analysts. As I wrote at the time, the slides continued the U.S. government's tradition of generally awful PowerPoint slides.

But now, Emiland De Cubber, a presentation designer, has done the NSA the favor of redesigning the slides. Have a look for yourself below. I'd say it looks more than good enough for government work.

Before defending the U.S. government's surveillance apparatus -- as he did last week -- Eric Schmidt wasn't so blasé about government snooping.

In an overlooked chapter of his recently released book The New Digital Age, Google's executive chairman described the battle for Internet privacy as a "long, important struggle" and depicted the emergence of Big Data surveillance tactics as a threat to a free society.

"Governments operating surveillance platforms will surely violate restrictions placed on them (by legislation or legal ruling) eventually," he wrote in a chapter on the future of terrorism. "The potential for misuse of this power is terrifyingly high, to say nothing of the dangers introduced by human error, data-driven false positives and simple curiosity."

Sounds like a familiar problem, right?

Little did Schmidt know that two months after his book's release, an intelligence contractor named Edward Snowden would carry out the biggest leak in the history of the National Security Agency, exposing its surveillance program PRISM and the cooperation of top technology firms including Google.

Now, Schmidt maintains that the media got PRISM wrong in terms of its scale and structural makeup. "Google does not have a 'back door' for the government to access private user data,'" he tweeted Friday. And other journalists have also disputed reports by the Guardian and Washington Post that PRISM offers the NSA "direct access" to the servers of Internet companies.

But while a definitive anatomy of PRISM remains elusive, what we can gather from the contradictory reporting is that -- at a minimum -- Google closely cooperates with the NSA within legal boundaries to provide the private communications of users to the government and -- at a maximum -- does this with little resistance and on a scale many orders of magnitude larger than anyone previously understood.

In either case, the fact that Schmidt knew about how much information the government was secretly collecting about individuals makes his book seem somewhat less prophetic and somewhat more grounded in the present day. But clearly, Big Data surveillance worries him.

"Fighting for privacy is going to be a long, important struggle. We may have won some early battles, but the war is far from over," he wrote, before describing something that sounds a lot like PRISM. "Perhaps a fully integrated information system, with all manner of data inputs, software that can interpret and predict behavior, and humans at the controls, is simply too powerful for anyone to handle responsibly."

Going further, he wrote ominously about how such a surveillance apparatus could grow beyond a free society's control. "Once built, such a system will never be dismantled," he said. "Even if a dire security situation were to improve, what government would willingly give up such a powerful law-enforcement tool? And the next government in charge might not exhibit the same caution or responsibility with its information as the preceding one."

Fortunately, Big Brother tyranny is probable but not inevitable, according to Schmidt. "The only remedies for potential digital tyranny are to strengthen legal institutions and to encourage civil society to remain active and wise to potential abuses of this power." But that raises a question: Is Schmidt now on the wrong side of ensuring that civil society is "wise to potential abuses of this power"?

Though Qatar is small -- tinier and less populous than the state of Connecticut -- it has established itself as a rising power in the Middle East. Its state-owned news network, Al Jazeera, influences the entire Arabic-speaking world (and beyond -- its American venture is slated to launch by the end of the year). And it's also become a destination for diplomats -- from the Afghan Taliban, which is looking to open an office in Doha, to the Brookings Institution, which is hosting its annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum with Qatari sponsorship there this week.

And now, Qatar appears to be coming under new management. Diplomats are reporting that the country's 61-year-old monarch, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is preparing a leadership transition that will begin with the prime minister stepping down and will culminate in Al Thani passing power to his fourth son, the Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The young crown prince -- he just turned 33 -- attended boarding school in Britain before graduating from Sandhurst Military Academy in 1998. He was named the next in succession in 2003, quietly replacing his older brother, Sheikh Jasim. In Qatar, he's taken on a diverse portfolio of issues -- his personal website lists titles from president of the Qatar National Olympic Committee, to chairman of the Board of Regents of Qatar University and chairman of the Supreme Education Council, to deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

By May 2005, U.S. diplomats in Qatar noted that Sheikh Tamim "has been increasingly invested with oversight and authority in the area of internal security," according to secret cables released by WikiLeaks. The cables paint a portrait of Sheikh Tamim as a conciliatory negotiator, eager for increased counterterrorism cooperation (including the extradition of U.S. citizens despite the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries, and help investigating a car bombing in Doha in 2005), though later cables note that "Qatar's record of sharing intelligence with [the United States] is the worst among" the Gulf countries. As the Sunni Awakening began in Iraq in 2006, he offered Qatar's network of ties to Sunni tribal leaders, telling U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Welch, "They still can help."

Sheikh Tamim appears to have been involved in many of Qatar's regional diplomatic initiatives, including moderating talks in Darfur, Lebanon, and Yemen. He personally headed the delegation to mend Qatar's strained diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2010. In diplomacy of another sort, he was also accused of exercising undue influence on French officials to sway the vote for the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup -- a vote that Qatar won. His efforts haven't always been successful, though -- in 2008, he described Bashar al-Assad as "a good person" and believed that Qatari investment could pluck Syria from Iran's sphere of influence. (Today, Qatar is one of the largest suppliers of weapons to the Syrian rebels.)

According to reports by Reuters and the Telegraph, analysts have speculated that Sheikh Tamim's close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood could push Qatari policy in a more conservative direction, possibly straining ties with the United States. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Qatar has strengthened its ties with Egypt and Tunisia, where Islamist political parties have swept to power.

Nonetheless, Sheikh Tamim has stressed Qatar's shared interests with the United States. In his private conversations with U.S. diplomats, he's expressed an interest in a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, telling Rep. Allen Boyd in 2007, according to a WikiLeaks cable, "that progress in the peace process requires relations with Israel.... Whether or not they agree with Israel, he said, the whole region should negotiate with Israel." He has also cited Qatar's potential role as an intermediary in U.S. talks with Iran. Doha maintains cordial diplomatic relations with Tehran and shares access to a lucrative gas field, but Sheikh Tamim has also expressed wariness about Iran's nuclear ambitions and influence in the region -- something U.S. diplomats have characterized as "a necessary balancing act."

Qatari officials have reportedly briefed foreign governments -- including U.S. and Iranian officials -- on the planned transition, which could occur before the end of the month.

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old NSA contractor behind the PRISM leak, broke his long silence last week because he wanted Americans to know just how completely their privacy has been eviscerated in the name of security. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," he told the Guardian in an interview. "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

But by detailing the mammoth electronic surveillance program that, as he told the Washington Post, "quite literally" allows the NSA to "watch your ideas form as you type," Snowden also hoped to make possible a legal challenge to the surveillance state -- one that had previously been hampered by the thorny question of standing. In that, however, Snowden may ultimately come up short.

On Feb. 26, the Supreme Court ruled in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA that Americans lacked standing to challenge an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorized electronic surveillance of non-U.S. citizens abroad -- but which inevitably resulted in the surveillance of persons inside the United States -- because, in essence, the snooping was classified and therefore couldn't be proven to exist. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, "respondents fail to offer any evidence that their communications have been monitored" under the expanded version of FISA. Theirs, according to Alito, was a "highly speculative fear."

The decision split the court 5 to 4, with Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by the remainder of the court's liberal wing, dissenting. In Breyer's view, the standard adopted by the majority -- that the harm to respondents (being snooped on) must be "certainly impending" -- "is not, and never has been, the touchstone of standing." And even if it was, he writes, "this harm is not 'speculative.' Indeed it is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen."  

Snowden's revelations would seem to remove all doubt that Americans have been swept up in the NSA's colossal dragnet. Even if we accept the vigorous protestations of both the Obama administration and the tech companies allegedly participating in PRISM, the surveillance program has at least been partially declassified and acknowledged to impact at least some unsuspecting citizens.

According to the fact sheet released by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the relevant provisions of FISA contain "minimization procedures" that "govern how the Intelligence Community (IC) treats the information concerning any U.S. persons whose communications might be incidentally intercepted and regulate the handling of any nonpublic information concerning U.S. persons that is acquired, including whether information concerning a U.S. person can be disseminated."

"Significantly," the fact sheet continues, "the dissemination of information about U.S. persons is expressly prohibited unless it is necessary to understand foreign intelligence or assess its importance, is evidence of a crime, or indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm." In other words, the government can, without an individual warrant, disseminate intelligence "incidentally" intercepted about American citizens living within U.S. borders so long as that intelligence implicates them in a crime, informs foreign intelligence, or represents a serious threat.

Yet despite such revelations, future plaintiffs seeking to challenge the NSA's surveillance program on First or Fourth Amendment grounds will still likely run up against the problem of standing, according to legal experts. As Lyle Denniston, a legal journalist and constitutional advisor to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, told FP in an email: "The near-universality of the surveillance here does not count as evidence of who was monitored, in a factual sense. These new revelations are not sufficiently different from the program at issue in the Clapper decision, so that decision very likely dooms any challenge."

"The Clapper decision rules out any reliance upon probability of being overheard, so it is difficult, given the secrecy of the program, to imagine that anyone can show they actually were monitored," writes Denniston.  

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor and the dean for scholarship at American University, had a similar take: "I don't think that the PRISM leaks will directly bear on the standing issue identified by the Supreme Court in Clapper, because even with what is now publicly known about the program, individual plaintiffs will still have the same problem -- proving that their communications, in particular, have been, or will be, intercepted," he wrote in an email.  

Still, Vladeck cautions, judges "don't live in a vacuum." Even if individual plaintiffs will still face an uphill battle, "courts going forward may not be nearly as skeptical of the possibility that this kind of systematic interception of communications is really going on." At the same time, he writes, the revelations "certainly makes it that much harder ... to buy into Justice Alito's rather rose-colored vision of the scope of governmental surveillance."

While Snowden's big leaks may not turn the legal tables on the NSA, we can be virtually certain that they will be at the center of future lawsuits seeking to rein in the surveillance state. Already, Larry Klayman, a former Justice Department prosecutor and the founder of Judicial Watch, has expanded his lawsuit against the Obama administration to cover the NSA's monitoring of Verizon call logs, disclosed by the Guardian last week. It's only a matter of time before PRISM is at the heart of a similar suit.