The Wall Street Journal reports: Revelations about the NSA’s surveillance operations are fueling international efforts to divide up the Internet by country, [Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA] said, which is a movement the U.S. government — and U.S. tech companies — have worked hard to prevent.

“This is threatening the existence of the World Wide Web,” Mr. Hayden said, adding that a Balkanization of the Internet is “a no-fooling danger.”

In the near term, Germany wants a “no-spy” agreement and has sought to insert tough data-privacy measures into a long-sought U.S.-European trade pact. Ms. Merkel told parliament last Monday the NSA affair was “putting to the test” Germany’s relationship with the U.S., and the trade pact negotiations in particular.