10 ms·

Isn't this the explicit purpose of the NSA, to spy on the communications of foreign governments? And aren't EU members' governments doing the same thing against

by uvdiv 13y ago

Isn't this the explicit purpose of the NSA, to spy on the communications of foreign governments? And aren't EU members' governments doing the same thing against the US?

lispm 13y ago
Time to rethink its mission.
- uvdiv 13y ago
  Has Germany banned its foreign intelligence agencies from spying on the US government? Is that also covered under its privacy laws?
  - sentenza 13y ago
    If they came out tomorrow and declared that they don't spy on the US, I would probably believe them. Do you know why? Because there is a complete trust asymmetry between the leaders of some states in Europe and the leaders of the US. When the last government was formed in Germany[1], a guy from the FDP (free democratic party) regularly took his notes and other inofficial documents from the coalition negotiations to the US embassy and presented them to US personnel there, while the negotiations were still going on. Guess what his punishment was, when it came out. Nothing. So it seems the leaders of Germany consider the US to be so trustworthy that its spying on them is not seen as problematic. Why would these same people even consider spying on the US, especially since, given the quality of German intelligence services, it is highly unlikely that it would go unnoticed by the US? http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutschland%2Fus-depeschen-fdp-maulwurf-der-amerikaner-outet-sich-a-732517.html http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=... [1]Germany has a coalition government, meaning that two parties govern together with thematic areas of government assigned to either party.
    - adventured 13y ago
      Germany as an ally has known for a very long time, dating back to the split between West / East, that the US was spying on it heavily. The only difference with the latest program revelations is, the German politicians have to pretend to be upset about it as a dramatic performance for the people they represent.
  - lispm 13y ago
    Germany spies on the US government? In what way are we doing that? In real life, the US has been always all over Germany with its surveillance. Easy, because of all the military installations and so many US personal here.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
DanBC 13y ago
Yes. I'd be disappointed if NSA wasn't trying to spy on other nations; or if GCHQ wasn't trying to spy on other nations. That's why they get all that tax money. If anything, we should be pleased that here are some government departments who actually manage to meet their obligations - gather a bunch of intelligence. What other people do with that intel is perhaps disappointing.
- dmix 13y ago
  Disregarding the national sovereignty of non-enemy combatant nations is moral because... that's what spies do? I hear that argument a lot on HN defending state vs state spying. I never really understood the moral basis of it. Or is national security not required to operate under a moral framework?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > I never really understood the moral basis of it. Or is national security not required to operate under a moral framework? What's moral amongst the nations is not necessarily what's moral between a state and its people. E.g. in this case bugging E.U. offices might reveal E.U. nations trying to conspire to gain benefit at upcoming international trade negotiations. The immoral measure of spying helps detect and defeat the immoral measure of conspiracy. There's a reason spies are part of what is called the world's "second oldest profession". I won't even try to pretend it's fully on the up-and-up... but neither is much of what nations do to each other.
  - adventured 13y ago
    The first responsibility for a nation is to the security of its people. Everything else is an extraordinary distance down the line. I know WW1/WW2 are a long ways in the past now, so it's sort of easy to forget the repeating cycle of nation warring, but history is routinely littered with civilization shattering wars. No sense in pretending everything is going to always be peachy, it's not. Knowledge is power, and at times far more valuable than standing armies. I think the famous quote: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure - is appropriate here.
maaku 13y ago
Perhaps, but the U.S. has also entered into international agreements not to spy on certain diplomatic channels, though. And even if it were legal, its revelation could do more to isolate and harm U.S. foreign relations than the good that might have come from it.
venomsnake 13y ago
Well yes. But we Europeans see ourselves as US allies and partners ... mostly because US tells us we are. Wanting to be informed what is going on is understandable. So intrusion in government networks and wide interception of the civilian population communication of a countries that are stable, democracies and partners in NATO and allies in the wars US is waging comes as a somewhat hostile stuff. US is doing too much spying right now. Too wide, too long a period, too broad. Europe has deep scars and trust issues. In a sense US should abandon SIGINT and stick to the good old fashioned HUMINT with its allies at least. If you want documents and info there are gentler ways to obtain them.
- dfc 13y ago
  Do you think "in a sense" that the EU nations should abandon SIGINT and stick to good old fashioned HUMINT? Or maybe a middle of the road position and just have the Five Eyes abstain from SIGINT?
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Well I have yet to see something about direct spying and intrusion in US networks by EU government agencies. Also yeah - the whole dragnets should be scaled back for various reasons. If you intercept and retain everything you have insane SNR that can prove counterproductive in the long run. Very intensive spying on allies is impolite at best.
    - dfc 13y ago
      The thing about intelligence work is that your failures are public and successes are secret. I think your last sentence is hopelessly naive.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        So make the successes public in full detail.
        13y ago
tripzilch 13y ago
> Isn't this the explicit purpose of the NSA, to spy on the communications of foreign governments? In what deranged world-view does being "the explicit purpose" of something make it right? (and it's not even their explicit purpose, otherwise they'd be called the International Spying Agency ...) > And aren't EU members' governments doing the same thing against the US? That's a childish argument. Frankly I don't care if Germany or France or whoever are spying on eachother too. An example from my work with kids, "but he's doing it tooooooo!" doesn't really fly with me, it doesn't matter, they shouldn't be doing it either, but I caught you, now clean that up. While two EU states spying on eachother is an internal EU matter, I do wonder to what extent EU states are spying on the US. It sounds risky, though. I mean, if we catch a US spy snooping on our diplomats, we can't really throw them in Guantanamo, or anything ...
- tetrep 13y ago
  I believe it was more of a comment on why we shouldn't surprised rather than a justification of the actions.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    Those two end up amounting to the same thing, in practice. The learned helplessness of the populace is what allows abuse of power to persist.
- gnaffle 13y ago
  Well, it _is_ their explicit purpose, or how else do you interpret their mission statement? Other governments doing the same is exactly why the NSA and the CIA can be justified. Not having them would put the US at a serious information disadvantage. A completely different issue is _what_ and _how much_ information gathering they should be doing. For instance, the US has been complaining about Chinese computer attacks for a long time, and it now seems that the US is at least as guilty in doing this. So the US certainly don't seem to have the moral high ground anymore.
  - calibraxis 13y ago
stackedmidgets 13y ago
Technically, the US is supposed to be allied with most of those EU member governments. Violating the security of your allies isn't exactly a friendly move.
belorn 13y ago
The outrage is not because NSA spies on foreign governments. The outrage is because the context of the spying. If a diplomat get caught spying, he gets deported. If the offending country continues, then the embassy might get closed. If a non-diplomat get caught spying, he gets jailed. Those are the common tools in dealing with spies. The outcry happens when the spying is on neutral grounds like the European Union offices, or the spying is done in intrinsic globally shared common resource like the Internet. Problem is, the previous tools are not suitable. You can't really kick out U.S. from ever enter the European Union offices as soon the U.S. is found to be spying. Nor can you isolate the U.S. from the Internet when the U.S. is found to be spying there. Thus the political outcry.

by uvdiv 13y ago

Isn't this the explicit purpose of the NSA, to spy on the communications of foreign governments? And aren't EU members' governments doing the same thing against the US?

lispm 13y ago

Time to rethink its mission.

uvdiv 13y ago
Has Germany banned its foreign intelligence agencies from spying on the US government? Is that also covered under its privacy laws?
- sentenza 13y ago
  If they came out tomorrow and declared that they don't spy on the US, I would probably believe them. Do you know why? Because there is a complete trust asymmetry between the leaders of some states in Europe and the leaders of the US. When the last government was formed in Germany[1], a guy from the FDP (free democratic party) regularly took his notes and other inofficial documents from the coalition negotiations to the US embassy and presented them to US personnel there, while the negotiations were still going on. Guess what his punishment was, when it came out. Nothing. So it seems the leaders of Germany consider the US to be so trustworthy that its spying on them is not seen as problematic. Why would these same people even consider spying on the US, especially since, given the quality of German intelligence services, it is highly unlikely that it would go unnoticed by the US? http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutschland%2Fus-depeschen-fdp-maulwurf-der-amerikaner-outet-sich-a-732517.html http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=... [1]Germany has a coalition government, meaning that two parties govern together with thematic areas of government assigned to either party.
  - adventured 13y ago
    Germany as an ally has known for a very long time, dating back to the split between West / East, that the US was spying on it heavily. The only difference with the latest program revelations is, the German politicians have to pretend to be upset about it as a dramatic performance for the people they represent.
- lispm 13y ago
  Germany spies on the US government? In what way are we doing that? In real life, the US has been always all over Germany with its surveillance. Easy, because of all the military installations and so many US personal here.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

DanBC 13y ago

Yes. I'd be disappointed if NSA wasn't trying to spy on other nations; or if GCHQ wasn't trying to spy on other nations. That's why they get all that tax money. If anything, we should be pleased that here are some government departments who actually manage to meet their obligations - gather a bunch of intelligence. What other people do with that intel is perhaps disappointing.

dmix 13y ago
Disregarding the national sovereignty of non-enemy combatant nations is moral because... that's what spies do? I hear that argument a lot on HN defending state vs state spying. I never really understood the moral basis of it. Or is national security not required to operate under a moral framework?
- mpyne 13y ago
  > I never really understood the moral basis of it. Or is national security not required to operate under a moral framework? What's moral amongst the nations is not necessarily what's moral between a state and its people. E.g. in this case bugging E.U. offices might reveal E.U. nations trying to conspire to gain benefit at upcoming international trade negotiations. The immoral measure of spying helps detect and defeat the immoral measure of conspiracy. There's a reason spies are part of what is called the world's "second oldest profession". I won't even try to pretend it's fully on the up-and-up... but neither is much of what nations do to each other.
- adventured 13y ago
  The first responsibility for a nation is to the security of its people. Everything else is an extraordinary distance down the line. I know WW1/WW2 are a long ways in the past now, so it's sort of easy to forget the repeating cycle of nation warring, but history is routinely littered with civilization shattering wars. No sense in pretending everything is going to always be peachy, it's not. Knowledge is power, and at times far more valuable than standing armies. I think the famous quote: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure - is appropriate here.

maaku 13y ago

Perhaps, but the U.S. has also entered into international agreements not to spy on certain diplomatic channels, though. And even if it were legal, its revelation could do more to isolate and harm U.S. foreign relations than the good that might have come from it.

venomsnake 13y ago

Well yes. But we Europeans see ourselves as US allies and partners ... mostly because US tells us we are. Wanting to be informed what is going on is understandable. So intrusion in government networks and wide interception of the civilian population communication of a countries that are stable, democracies and partners in NATO and allies in the wars US is waging comes as a somewhat hostile stuff. US is doing too much spying right now. Too wide, too long a period, too broad. Europe has deep scars and trust issues. In a sense US should abandon SIGINT and stick to the good old fashioned HUMINT with its allies at least. If you want documents and info there are gentler ways to obtain them.

dfc 13y ago
Do you think "in a sense" that the EU nations should abandon SIGINT and stick to good old fashioned HUMINT? Or maybe a middle of the road position and just have the Five Eyes abstain from SIGINT?
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Well I have yet to see something about direct spying and intrusion in US networks by EU government agencies. Also yeah - the whole dragnets should be scaled back for various reasons. If you intercept and retain everything you have insane SNR that can prove counterproductive in the long run. Very intensive spying on allies is impolite at best.
  - dfc 13y ago
    The thing about intelligence work is that your failures are public and successes are secret. I think your last sentence is hopelessly naive.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      So make the successes public in full detail.
      - 13y ago

tripzilch 13y ago

> Isn't this the explicit purpose of the NSA, to spy on the communications of foreign governments? In what deranged world-view does being "the explicit purpose" of something make it right? (and it's not even their explicit purpose, otherwise they'd be called the International Spying Agency ...) > And aren't EU members' governments doing the same thing against the US? That's a childish argument. Frankly I don't care if Germany or France or whoever are spying on eachother too. An example from my work with kids, "but he's doing it tooooooo!" doesn't really fly with me, it doesn't matter, they shouldn't be doing it either, but I caught you, now clean that up. While two EU states spying on eachother is an internal EU matter, I do wonder to what extent EU states are spying on the US. It sounds risky, though. I mean, if we catch a US spy snooping on our diplomats, we can't really throw them in Guantanamo, or anything ...

tetrep 13y ago
I believe it was more of a comment on why we shouldn't surprised rather than a justification of the actions.
- lukifer 13y ago
  Those two end up amounting to the same thing, in practice. The learned helplessness of the populace is what allows abuse of power to persist.
gnaffle 13y ago
Well, it _is_ their explicit purpose, or how else do you interpret their mission statement? Other governments doing the same is exactly why the NSA and the CIA can be justified. Not having them would put the US at a serious information disadvantage. A completely different issue is _what_ and _how much_ information gathering they should be doing. For instance, the US has been complaining about Chinese computer attacks for a long time, and it now seems that the US is at least as guilty in doing this. So the US certainly don't seem to have the moral high ground anymore.
- calibraxis 13y ago

stackedmidgets 13y ago

Technically, the US is supposed to be allied with most of those EU member governments. Violating the security of your allies isn't exactly a friendly move.

belorn 13y ago

The outrage is not because NSA spies on foreign governments. The outrage is because the context of the spying. If a diplomat get caught spying, he gets deported. If the offending country continues, then the embassy might get closed. If a non-diplomat get caught spying, he gets jailed. Those are the common tools in dealing with spies. The outcry happens when the spying is on neutral grounds like the European Union offices, or the spying is done in intrinsic globally shared common resource like the Internet. Problem is, the previous tools are not suitable. You can't really kick out U.S. from ever enter the European Union offices as soon the U.S. is found to be spying. Nor can you isolate the U.S. from the Internet when the U.S. is found to be spying there. Thus the political outcry.