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Comment by impossiblefork | Hacker News Reader

No, and it isn't normal at all.

Notice that this has literally led to the expulsion of diplomats, or, I suppose, spies sent out under diplomatic cover.

That's extremely unusual between allies. Spying on allies, trying to bribe or blackmail their personnel etc., is not normal. It makes you a security threat, and making oneself a security threat isn't really compatible with being allies.

Presumably this is why there is now this very public declaring of diplomats persona non grata-- both to remove the people in question and to signal that what has been done isn't okay. Seen another way-- normally, the person who becomes persona non grata is a Russian.

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It's 100% normal and it's an open secret that every country's embassy doubles as an intelligence headquarters. Every country spies on every other country. Allies spy on allies. What was unusual here is how clumsy they were and that they got caught doing something so dumb that Spain couldn't quietly sweep it under the rug.

I'm pretty sure the Australian and New Zealand governments don't try to do so against each other.

Both are members of Five Eyes and one is in bed with China. It would make sense for Australia to be keeping an eye on things.

Does spying have to be “against” the target? Perhaps allies spy on each other to make sure they are still allies.

I highly doubt the opposite party would even want to be allies if their promises mean nothing and it takes the reports of moles to create trust in their sincerity.

It seems like a self-defeating exercise.

Alliance is not about love and trust. It’s about interests. Indeed, for an alliance to be possible, trust is needed, but only to a certain extent. Don’t mistake alliance for friendship. The former is between political entities, while the latter is between people.

A bonafide alliance must necessarily entail sometimes acting faithfully even to the detriment of one's interests.

If the 'allies' are only faithful and only believe each other until the moment that threshold is crossed then it's just regular diplomatic relations.

e.g. Nearly every country cooperates with nearly every other country on such terms in the areas where they share bonafide mutual interests.

No, it's not at all normal-- when directed at the government of the target country it can be a threat to the sovereignty of that country.

After all, the expulsions are happening for a reason. The Spanish clearly do not see it as you do.

It might be possible for the US to avoid many consequences of this kind of thing due to its clout, and I can see that as something which would make it feel normal from a US point of view, but from the other side I imagine that it feels like someone trying to infiltrate your government to do things against your interests and to harm you-- something warranting a very high level of concern, comparable to a planned coup.

As many are now informing you, yes, it is normal, as is PNG-ing spies whose diplomatic cover is blown.

It's so normal that the term "diplomatic cover" exists to describe non-clandestine spies who are given a position in their country's embassy.

More commonly, local intelligence agencies try to identify and follow the spying activity of spies with diplomatic cover, rather than PNG-ing them (or more rarely, as in this case, outing them) because that's easier than the unknown quantity that would replace them.

Yes, that part is indeed very normal.

But the fact that the country is a formal ally makes it, in my view at least, slightly different.

Of course, seeing as the US is in a defence pact with Turkey, I can understand that being ally can't mean absolute non-interference, but I feel that it gets problematic when we're talking about actual infiltration of a country's security services.

I think at least the Germans expected some restraint. I suppose if one thinks back, the Germans had a different view, being opposed to giving Turkey bad crypto; and I suppose that can be seen as them restraining their activities in an unreasonable way, at the same time, I can't accept that bribing/blackmail people on the other side is compatible with an alliance. Rather, with enough bribes/blackmail the result is a secret coup of the state whose personnel is being bribed or blackmailed, and I think if you view these things as 'normal' then you might even be blind to such a coup against yourself.

Normal is a descriptive word, so the way to settle this debate isn't to provide reasoning about why something couldn't be normal because it's so threatening.

Usually if/when you identify a spy from an allied country, you just try to keep really close tabs on them and otherwise let them go about their business. If they start crossing some boundaries, then you quietly and firmly let them know it's time to fuck off.

You don't publicly expel them unless you really want to weaken the alliance, and you certainly don't torture them like some of the commenters in this thread are suggesting. They watch too many movies.

> Usually if/when you identify a spy from an allied country, you just try to keep really close tabs on them and otherwise let them go about their business

LOL. I bet the US never does this.

> it can be a threat to the sovereignty of that country.

Those countries are already not souverane anymore. Notice how the external, and even internal politics of those countries are dictated by the US ?

Spying on allies, and all that espionage entails—including bribery and blackmail—is done by every government in the world. It has always been done, and will continue to be forever. It is absolutely par for the course. Remember that ally does not mean friend, and that friend doesn't even really mean friend in the context of international relations and realpolitik.

I wanted to write something similar, but you did a much better job!

Snowden leaks showed it is normal and coordinated between countries to bypass their citizens' procedural rights. Among the Five Eyes countries, they each needed warrants to spy on their own domestic communications, but each could spy freely on foreign countries. They then mutually spied on each other and by agreement shared the intelligence, bypassing the warrant process.

Wrong, allies spy on each other constantly.

When did the US last expel a French, or Spanish or German diplomat? I'm pretty sure it's never happened during the NATO era.

So either these countries don't use diplomatic cover or they don't spy on the US.

Why would the US bother? Unless they propose not to engage in diplomacy, the replacement diplomat is going to spy on them too. It isn't like these are rogue actors, the spying is sponsored by their state.

The only reason to even talk about it would be if they want to roll a particular diplomat who is hard to work with or if it was convenient to gin up a diplomatic incident so that they could pretend to be unhappy.

The US does expel diplomats who engage in spying. For example, in 2022 they expelled twelve for spying in ways that threaten US national security.

Even if you try to keep an eye they will of course try make keeping an eye on them difficult. The US feels it can spy-- with people having been found with wigs and whatnot, so to imagine that others can't, even if they are allowed to do things very freely is a little bit strange.

When you say "in 2022" do you mean the ones listed on this page [0]? The "Diplomatic expulsions during the Russo-Ukrainian War" page? I'm sensing there might have been issues at play other than the espionage, which is routine and everyone does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_expulsions_during_t...

Notice though that the US specifically chose to give a reason for the explusions as espionage activities. Spain expelled those it expelled over 'Russia's terrible actions'.

I think we can take the reasons for the expulsions as correct.

The reasons are honest insofar as yes, the Russians expelled were involved in espionage. That part that has me tagging you as naive is you seem to believe that this was news in 2022.

It is the Russian embassy. The US spooks are monitoring it very closely. It is not a serious position to say that they suddenly discovered that espionage was afoot a few days after the invasion. I mean, it is completely plausible that the invasion made them say "we're about to hit the Russians hard, now is the time to disrupt their espionage activities". But the existence of those espionage activities has been a given since for the entire history of Russian diplomatic missions in the US.

The US is certainly not going to expel diplomats for spying under ordinary circumstances. We can see that because places like the Chinese, French and British and whatever other embassies are still allowed to exist. Maybe there are some African or Pacific Island embassies that are incompetent and just exist to chat, I dunno. But we know how the serious players use embassies this has been a thing for centuries.

The US doesn't expel allied diplomats, because they don't care if the French and Spanish and Germans are spying on us, _in general_. Most of the time countries get annoyed at allied spying, they'll make some quiet calls to their ally and have people quietly reassigned, rather than make a big deal about it. As long as the country knows who the allied spies are, that's good enough. What happened here is that the US spies were very clumsy and got caught committing crimes.

You're asking to prove a state secret. That the spanish were caught expelling allied spies is almost as much a faux pas as it is for your spies to get caught.

Also so t forget literally the entire Snowden era. Literally the biggest event geopolitical event between allies in the 2010s. I swear you guys choose to forget these things

'Caught expelling'?

The US tried to infiltrate Spanish state security. That's a direct threat to Spanish sovereignty. Imagine if they had succeeded and it led to a manipulation of Spanish policy, against the interests of the Spanish people.

It is really something incredibly bad.

What can Spain realistically do if the USA actually becomes hostile to it? The whole EU has already relinquished its full sovereignty a long time ago. The USA does as it wants and at most, the EU can expell some spies caught in the act as quietly as possible to not anger Big Uncle Sam.

A lot.

There are many countries to which the US is actually hostile, and which are much weaker than Spain. Venezuela, Cuba, etc. Places like Russia and China also of course exist.

Spain could start trying to compete with the US in South America, they could push some kind of EU South America expansion, some kind of EU analogue of BRICS-for-South-America-but-not-BRICS; and of course, if it truly became a problem they could decide to go much further than that and start being actually hostile themselves, joining with the whole RIC part of the thing.

> some kind of EU analogue of BRICS-for-South-America-but-not-BRICS;

I suppose you don't know this already exits (and has for decades), it's called Mercosul[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercosur

Spain is not involved in Mercosur. It's something South American.

It is completely normal. I once read an interview with a, I think french diplomat who commented on this that it is as important to know what your allies do and think as your enemies.

From the article: "The case is a very serious matter, since recruiting secret agents of a host state to betray their own country is considered an openly hostile act. Such actions may be taken with enemy or adversary governments, but never with friends and allies."

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