( CNN ) -- According to NSA documents published in Glenn Greenwald 's new book `` No Place to Hide , '' we now know that the NSA spies on embassies and missions all over the world , including those of Brazil , Bulgaria , Colombia , the European Union , France , Georgia , Greece , India , Italy , Japan , Mexico , Slovakia , South Africa , South Korea , Taiwan , Venezuela and Vietnam . This will certainly strain international relations , as happened when it was revealed that the United States is eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel 's cell phone -- but is anyone really surprised ? Spying on foreign governments is what the NSA is supposed to do . Much more problematic , and dangerous , is that the NSA spies on entire populations . It 's a mistake to have the same laws and organizations involved with both activities , and it 's time we separated the two . The former is espionage : the traditional mission of the NSA . It 's an important military mission , both in peacetime and wartime , and something that 's not going to go away . It 's targeted . It 's focused . Decisions of whom to target are decisions of foreign policy . And secrecy is paramount . The latter is very different . Terrorists are a different type of enemy ; they 're individual actors instead of state governments . We know who foreign government officials are and where they 're located : in government offices in their home countries , and embassies abroad . Terrorists could be anyone , anywhere in the world . To find them , the NSA has to look for individual bad actors swimming in a sea of innocent people . This is why the NSA turned to broad surveillance of populations , both in the United States and internationally . If you think about it , this is much more of a law enforcement sort of activity than a military activity . Both involve security , but just as the NSA 's traditional focus was governments , the FBI 's traditional focus was individuals . Before and after 9/11 , both the NSA and the FBI were involved in counterterrorism . The FBI did work in the United States and abroad . After 9/11 , the primary mission of counterterrorist surveillance was given to the NSA because it had existing capabilities , but the decision could have gone the other way . Because the NSA got the mission , both the military norms and the legal framework from the espionage world carried over . Our surveillance efforts against entire populations were kept as secret as our espionage efforts against governments . And we modified our laws accordingly . The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ( FISA ) that regulated NSA surveillance required targets to be `` agents of a foreign power . '' When the law was amended in 2008 under the FISA Amendments Act , a target could be any foreigner anywhere . Government-on-government espionage is as old as governments themselves , and is the proper purview of the military . So let the commander in chief make the determination on whose cell phones to eavesdrop on , and let the NSA carry those orders out . Surveillance is a large-scale activity , potentially affecting billions of people , and different rules have to apply -- the rules of the police . Any organization doing such surveillance should apply the police norms of probable cause , due process and oversight to population surveillance activities . It should make its activities much less secret and more transparent . It should be accountable in open courts . This is how we and the rest of the world regain the trust in the actions of the United States . In January , President Obama gave a speech on the NSA where he said two very important things . He said that the NSA would no longer spy on Angela Merkel 's cell phone . And while he did n't extend that courtesy to the other 82 million citizens of Germany , he did say that he would extend some U.S. constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance to the rest of the world . Separating espionage from surveillance , and putting the latter under a law enforcement regime instead of a military regime , is a step toward achieving that .
Author Glenn Greenwald 's new book shows that NSA spies on many embassies . Bruce Schneier : Spying on foreign governments is what the NSA is supposed to do . He says what is dangerous is the NSA spying on entire populations . Schneier : We must separate espionage , a military mission , from broad surveillance .