Wow, that's a nice way of pulling HN quality down, grats !

Allow to offer a single correction

> That's what countries do - if they can.

It's not countries but spying agencies that need to justify their existence now that the cold war is over. Or governments.

But I sincerely doubt that worldwide a national referendum about "should we use our resources and power to spy on other countries and try to control foreign government" would get close to a majority of yes in most countries around the world apart maybe in the US and north korea and maybe a few others. And even for the US I'm not so sure.