The Five Eyes have built a sufficiently valuable asset that the security services of other rich countries all want in.
Denmark is in Nine Eyes, so they’ll happily sell out members of Fourteen Eyes (like Germany) to get closer into the circle.
Denmark is in Nine Eyes, so they’ll happily sell out members of Fourteen Eyes (like Germany) to get closer into the circle.
What I like about the signals-intelligence-only focus is that I can leave my phone at home, hop on an ebike with a legally mandated helmet obscuring my face from cameras, and I'm completely invisible to the state. I just don't exist. Unlike East Germany there's no HUMINT apparatus in the west or in China.
Nobody telegraphs their intentions like the Stasi did, but to believe that no state has developed coordinated efforts to get people to snitch on each other (the most effective Stasi tactic) is...let's say seeing things through an extremely rosy lens.
I think I wouldn't want to rely on that assumption
You are very mistaken. Just because HUMINT are more discreet does not mean it does not exist.
Also, some of the stuff they do are very blatant. Just look at cases like Assange and Jake Appelbaum. Clearly HUMINT efforts.
Can you link to the bike helmet you are referring to?
https://www.dw.com/en/parliamentary-report-finds-spying-by-b...
> German media later reported that the NSA had provided German intelligence services with spying software in exchange for data sharing. Consequently, the BND and it domestic intelligence couterpart, called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), were accused of assisting the NSA in its global surveillance programs.
> ...
> More than two-thirds of all 3,300 targets monitored by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) foreign intelligence service were on diplomatic representations of EU and NATO member states around the world, according to a parliamentary committee report seen by German news agency dpa.
> The report found a "low two-digit number of people" - including heads of state and government, ministers and members of their offices and military institutions - were spied on until October 2013. That same year, Chancellor Angela Merkel had complained to US President Barack Obama that spying on friends was "not done."
> The BND was also found to have spied on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the aviation and space industries, as well as the arms trade, transport, media and consultancy.
The truth is that allies spy on each other all the time, it's not just normal but prudent to do so.
Thank you for the sanity. I certainly have problems with the surveillance state and authoritarianism in the US, but this is the most relevant take on this report. All spying is not all bad. Western countries give each other intel all the time. I would be more concerned if there were only one or a few set of eyes on things rather than more.