Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

"Spying on foreign leaders is something done by any Intelligence Agency that has the will and resources to do so."

Lets not debate that again- we've argued over that ad nauseum.

That's true, but I think you'd agree that that's a separate issue than the issue of intelligence agencies spying on their own people, even if you think that both are wrong they are still separate things. Right?

Well, foreign spying should be subject to a cost/benefits analysis taking the consequences of getting caught into account, while domestic spying should be illegal without prior cause and court order, so yes.

Why are they so obsessed with spying on Merkel? Of all leaders she is possibly one of the least in need of spying on, she's pretty pro-US.

The US needs to make sure the EU poodles stay faithful to the masters.

In a nutshell? Trust, but verify.

Because she's the least predictable of the three "big" European nations. Britain is reliably pro-US, France is reliably pro-itself, but Germany is harder to gauge.

Yeah, that too, of course.

Though I wonder if Germany having presided over the EU constituted the perfect motivation for spying, in order to obtain information about potential deals between the EU and non-Western countries to advance the interests of the US [administration and the various corporations/companies in various areas].

It's probably also a lot to do with economics, Germany has a big economy and while they don't need to spy on the UK due to us being firmly pro-US (and the no spying on each other agreement, that I'm still waiting on evidence of it being broken) that only leaves France out of the big European nations, maybe they just haven't got caught with the French? Or maybe it's that because the German's are anti such things they don't have as good a defences as say France might.

More likely than them not getting caught by the French is the French have already caught them and told them to cut that shit out.

Obama has a crush on Merkel...

I'm not against spying on foreign leaders, or foreigners as such. I just don't think anyone should be surprised if once you've been outed as spying on a "friend" the "hey, no biggie, everyone does it" defense doesn't work and they are no longer friendly.

Yeah that's a pretty big deal. Yes, the NSA is an organization specifically dedicated to spying, but I'm not sure information on people whom we already know practically everything about really worth their ire. Although given Germany's done practically nothing about it, maybe there really is no point in changing policy on that front.

Eh, not really. Governments that find out they've been spied on make lots of noise to appease their angered constituents, and probably beef up their internal security efforts, but the effect it actually has on foreign policy is virtually nil — precisely because everyone does it to everyone else, and everyone knows that, too.

Spying is one of many ways military policy is, ultimately, a Prisoner's Dilemma.

Getting everyone to stop spying is like getting everyone to stop making weapons and demobilize their militaries; in an ideal world, we wouldn't be living with guns and missiles pointed at each other, secret wiretaps in each other's phones, etc. A vital step of getting to that world is letting all of that go.

But nobody's willing to be the first to lay down his weapon, because every military leader knows that those who are not willing to go to lengths to defend themselves are quickly subsumed by those who are. So it becomes a case of, "Sure, I'd be happy to swear off the spying forever, if you guys do it first." And even then, everyone would keep doing it because spying is one of those things that, if it's done well, you don't know it's being done, so other people swearing it off has to be taken as a matter of faith.

There are some methods that we've been able to let go of, such as chemical and biological warfare, only because we feel assured in our ability to use the other methods we have at our disposal to achieve the same ends; for instance, we don't need chemical warfare because we have more guns, tanks, and bombs than most of the world, so we can agree to illegalize chemical warfare - which has an added bonus of making it harder for other countries to compete with us.

But we cling to the spying, because it serves a purpose that is really hard to come by with other methods. We don't really have a way of knowing what other leaders are saying behind our backs that doesn't constitute spying.

edited 7th Apr '14 7:50:15 AM by TobiasDrake

There have been some successes when it comes to spying, but it requires a very close relationship alongside a need to spy on somebody else more. The 5 Eyes agreement is one example of that, but it only works because the countries involved are very close, share pretty much all intelligence anyway and are unified by their desire to spend their money spying/counter spying on other people.

edited 7th Apr '14 8:36:54 AM by SilasW

It's physically and financially impossible to spy on everyone simultaneously. Who you choose to spend resources on says something about your foreign policy objectives. Spying on Angela Merkel could not possibly pay off in terms of our official gov't policy goals, so the obvious suspicion is that we are doing it to gain an edge in trade talks. In other words, we are spending taxpayers money on helping private American interests gain an unfair advantage in the market place. It's legit for the Germans to call foul.

But is it unfair if everyone else is doing it?^note  China definitely is, Britain obviously does, France — of course; Germany, too I bet. Probably the Japanese too, in their own way (there's very little around how they do their intelligence — and knowing their society, you're not going to find much).

Russia, can't forget them.

Yes, because how powerful your home gov't is says nothing about how desirable your goods or services are (ie, its inherently unfair to consumers).

Soft power?

With great soft power comes great soft... hmm.

US government spied on human rights workers.

I'm thinking of a Not So Different situation between the US, Russia and China right now...

Human rights workers get in the way of corporations wanting wage slaves, corporations have a ridiculous pull in gov't.

Well, that's got a clear basis in national security.