untrusted

[patroclo]

Why americans spies european leaders ?

[Aberlour10]

Why americans spies european leaders ?

 

Do not trust anyone, not even your friends is the usual thinking in the state of paranoia.

[blackshoe]

Every nation spies on its allies.

[onoway]

Maybe it's easier to spy on friends than it is to spy on enemies. Also, governments never know when it's going to be advantageous to change an enemy to a friend, and vice versa, so they want to be ready, maybe?

 

or maybe it's like so much else with computers, just because they can.

[barmar]

There's spying going on here? I'm shocked!

 

[Vampyr]

There's spying going on here? I'm shocked!

 

I love that scene. Well, actually there are few scenes in that film that I don't love.

[Winstonm]

This is actually a good question and the answer most likely is quite a bit more complex than can be addressed in a single post in the WC. Entrenched bureaucrats would be a good starting point, though, bureaucrats who pass along shared ideology from the Cold War and find like-minded people to hire into the system and weed out any that oppose that thinking. Follow that with technological breakthroughs and a lack of oversight and you end up with a organization running itself to a degree, outside of the operational government and protected by insulation of onion-like layers of like-minded souls in leadership positions.

 

Whatever group controls the intelligence also controls the actions of the country - and that, in a nutshell, is how ths NSA came to spy on Europe.

[ggwhiz]

Personally I could care less if anyone accessed my personal communications because I don't reveal anything that I wouldn't state publicly but politics doesn't work that way.

 

I suspect it's 99% economic and has been going on forever.

 

Canada just signed a free trade deal with the EU but it will take a couple of years to be ratified. With a bit of insider knowledge as to what it will take to get it done we can concede this or that or it would take a decade to finish it. And/or we look for openings to make out like bandits in our national interest (more likely). The EU is doing the same thing or they are asleep at the switch.

[billw55]

The EU is doing the same thing or they are asleep at the switch.

Yep, I think that all advanced nations spy on each other all the time, and that their top government officials and intelligence agencies know this perfectly well. The rank and file citizen may be shocked and outraged by this revelation, but the only thing those in the know are surprised or irate about is that the information went public; and that is what the governments are going to work on preventing happening again.

[Aberlour10]

Yep, I think that all advanced nations spy on each other all the time, and that their top government officials and intelligence agencies know this perfectly well. The rank and file citizen may be shocked and outraged by this revelation, but the only thing those in the know are surprised or irate about is that the information went public; and that is what the governments are going to work on preventing happening again.

 

 

Surely, there was always spying on each other..and this is not what shocks the Europeans in such a manner.

 

The paranoide dimension of this what the NSA is doing, this makes so many people sick here.

 

It seems most americans do not care about this huge less controlled "octopus" growing over their country,

after 9/11 they are agreed with everything on this matter.

 

We have to find the way to stop this...said the boss of the NSA yeasterday.

And he did not mean the paranoia in his own organisation but the people of free media!

It's siginificant how the land of the freedom is turning in a "change".

[blackshoe]

It seems most americans do not care about this huge less controlled "octopus" growing over their country,

after 9/11 they are agreed with everything on this matter.

I think this is a serious overbid. As for the rest, well, I confess I'm wondering how it's all going to turn out myself. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Trinidad]

Yep, I think that all advanced nations spy on each other all the time, and that their top government officials and intelligence agencies know this perfectly well. The rank and file citizen may be shocked and outraged by this revelation, but the only thing those in the know are surprised or irate about is that the information went public; and that is what the governments are going to work on preventing happening again.

There is a little more going on that people in the USA may not see.

 

Before 9/11, international airline security was reasonably good. In contrast, domestic airline security in the USA was pretty bad.

 

After 9/11, the Bush administration took a lot of measures to improve security. Instead of focussing only on the domestic security problems, they also imposed their ideas on security on the rest of the world, to improve international airline security, which was already reasonably good.

 

Because of 9/11, the European allies of the USA went along with that - even if they were, in principle, opposed to this. The privacy of Europeans was sacrificed to the Americans, all in the name of preventing another terrorist act. It meant we had to get new passports (and in Europe, unlike the USA, almost everybody has a passport), we had to get fingerprinted, our lives and identities had to be databased. We Europeans found that way over the top, but if it made our American friends sleep good at night, okay, let's do it. The NSA got access to information about us from our phone and internet providers, in the name of US security. (These are data that the USA does not allow itself to gather about their own citizens.) But it was all in the interest of the US security... and, as the USA assured us, the European security as well.

 

Now comes the big "Yeah, right. Security, my foot!! You did it all out of economic interest. You misused our trust and our sympathy to steal from us.". This is where the "friends don't spy on friends" emotion comes from. The USA is seen as JR Ewing: The whole world knows he can't be trusted, yet we are all stupid enough to do business with him anyway, and he gets away with everything he does.

 

And no one understands the USA: "What nation wants to be like JR Ewing?". John Wayne isn't our type, but we can understand it if the USA wants to be like the Duke. Archie Bunker -though definitely not our favorite character- would be fine too. We can even live with Charles Ingalls, since we do realize that it would be too much to ask for Bill Cosby. But why JR?!?

 

WHY?!?

 

Rik

[y66]

The everybody does it, spies will be spies argument is totally lame. Everybody does what exactly? Put their relationships with their most important ally at risk to achieve what exactly? This is a case of incredibly bad judgment. And it is scary to me that organizations like NSA don't get this. Even JR used better judgment than this.

[Vampyr]

Even JR used better judgment than this.

 

Well...JR didn't get caught.

[blackshoe]

The everybody does it, spies will be spies argument is totally lame. Everybody does what exactly? Put their relationships with their most important ally at risk to achieve what exactly? This is a case of incredibly bad judgment. And it is scary to me that organizations like NSA don't get this. Even JR used better judgment than this.

I won't speak for anyone else, but when I said "every nation spies on its allies" I wasn't making an argument, I was stating a fact. I certainly did not and do not claim that spying on one's allies is justified because "everybody does it," or for any other reason.

[cherdano]

I won't speak for anyone else, but when I said "every nation spies on its allies" I wasn't making an argument, I was stating a fact.

Nope, you were stating what you (incorrectly, in my view) think is a fact.

[kenberg]

Help me out here. Is it a settled matter that the intercepts were for economic reasons or had economic consequences? If so, I totally agree with all of the criticism. The reason for all of this spying is to deal with (I believe real) threats to security. Any other use, whether directly planned or as a convenient by-pruduct, shows egregious lack of judgment. It is not just morally wrong it is, what is perhaps worse, incredibly stupid. Shooting ourselves in the foot wouldn't cover it, other parts of the anatomy come to mind.

 

Cyber-tech seems to be this century's atom bomb. Before Hiroshima, few people had any idea such destruction was possible. A good part of the effort for the rest of the century was trying to keep ourselves from blowing us all up. Now we have just all become far too good at doing bad things with cyber-technology. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

 

I completely agree that we, all of us, need to find a way to deal with it. A starting point is absolute agreement that spying is for security purposes and for security purposes only, and any violation of this is criminal. That's not likely to be enough. I suppose I really don't mind if someone, as the expression goes, touches my junk as I go through airport security but it's fair to ask where we are headed with all of this.

[y66]

And no one understands the USA: "What nation wants to be like JR Ewing?". John Wayne isn't our type, but we can understand it if the USA wants to be like the Duke. Archie Bunker -though definitely not our favorite character- would be fine too. We can even live with Charles Ingalls, since we do realize that it would be too much to ask for Bill Cosby. But why JR?!?

 

WHY?!?

 

Rik

Norman Mailer answered this question in 1967 in Why Are We In VietNam?.

[blackshoe]

Nope, you were stating what you (incorrectly, in my view) think is a fact.

Okay, I can't prove it, so it's opinion. But neither that nor your view makes me wrong.

[blackshoe]

Cyber-tech seems to be this century's atom bomb.

"They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction." -- Then US Attorney General Janet Reno, speaking of "a new breed of criminal" in a speech in 1998.

[cherdano]

Okay, I can't prove it, so it's opinion. But neither that nor your view makes me wrong.

Maybe that makes me sound naive, but I would be quite surprised if Germany was spying on government officials of its major European allies, and shocked if it went to the extent of tapping phones of their heads of governments.

 

Just to give an indication: the budget of the Bundesnachrichtendienst is public, at 460 million euros per year. It roughly compares to NSA+CIA. The CIA annual budget is 5 billions according to one of the leaks, and the NSA budget is secret, but estimated at 10 billions.

 

Meanwhile, from what I can tell the BND repeatedly has had more informed takes on Arabic countries than the CIA. Suggests to me that they are focussing their resources differently.

[Aberlour10]

Mr Snowden is a man of merit not only for this what he is already showed to the world, but either for that what he still keeps secret.

Obama's administration is so not in the position to lie in this affair, they say either truth or keep silent ( mostly). Every single lie could

provoke that another "jewel" from Snowdens collection will find the way to the world press and nail the lie.

[Trinidad]

Help me out here. Is it a settled matter that the intercepts were for economic reasons or had economic consequences? If so, I totally agree with all of the criticism. The reason for all of this spying is to deal with (I believe real) threats to security.

There are negotiations going on between the US and the EU about a free trade treaty. The USA has been spying on the meetings of the EU delegation. As a result they knew the EU negotiation strategy, before the EU leaders knew it. I don't think there were many terrorists among the EU delegation.

 

Now, it seems that phones of 35 European leaders, including Angela Merkel, have been tapped. One may have opinions on Angela Merkel, but I think it takes a very lose interpretation of the phrase "threat to the US security" to identify her as one.

 

The reason for all of this spying is to deal with (I believe real) threats to security.

 

After 9/11, the EU countries have literally opened their doors to the USA, to help them in identifying threats to the US security. That's what friends are for. The NSA knows that I call my mother every Friday evening. (They aren't allowed to know something like that about you.) When I call on Saturday instead, they can infer that I have been doing something else on Friday. We say that this is fine, if they can use these data to identify terrorist activity.

 

We are co-operating with the USA to have them tap phones when they have grounds to believe there is a threat (e.g. from all these phone and email data). But I really doubt that a German authority agreed to tap Angela Merkel's phone.

 

Any other use, whether directly planned or as a convenient by-pruduct, shows egregious lack of judgment. It is not just morally wrong it is, what is perhaps worse, incredibly stupid. Shooting ourselves in the foot wouldn't cover it, other parts of the anatomy come to mind.

 

I obviously agree.

 

Rik

[ggwhiz]

China may be the elephant in the room.

 

Their cyber hacking has probably been mostly industrial and if I'm not mistaken they came up with stealth technology that can only have been jump started this way but could well lead to the means to monkey with our power grid or cell communications since they are winning or going after contracts to provide many of the key components..... If they don't already have it.

 

A defensive capability is necessary and it is no surprise that the secrecy surrounding it would lead to abuse. Effective oversight would be great but cannot be public knowledge and I have no idea what that would look like but I guess we will find out.

[barmar]

Now, it seems that phones of 35 European leaders, including Angela Merkel, have been tapped. One may have opinions on Angela Merkel, but I think it takes a very lose interpretation of the phrase "threat to the US security" to identify her as one.

Isn't the meat of the Snowden revelation that the NSA has flipped the spying model around? Instead of identifying specific threats and tapping them, they tap everything they can and use software to search it, looking for evidence of possible threats.