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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

The US hacked and spied on Angela Merkel's phone and nobody really cared or did anything.[0]

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/germany-drops-...

They did care. Or at least she did. You're right, though, that they didn't do much about it, other than complain loudly.

The main story about that incident was that the US had been spying on regular German citizens for years (decades?), as per Edward Snowden's revelations, and the German Government knew all about it. They didn't care at all. In fact, at the time it was sort of understood they were quite ok with it. It was only after "one of them" were hacked, they, sort of, cared.

NATO exists to keep Germany down, and Russia out.

The Germans are not oblivious to this fact, so it didn't really come as a surprise when it happened. That's not to say they didn't care of course, as you point out.

The only ones surprised were the ones that actually believe alliances are friendships.

> Or at least she did

"Internet is new territory, uncharted territory to all of us." (the infamous Neuland).

Spoiler: all countries are surveilling each other.

No way. I doubt a single EU country dares to spy on either the US or Israel. They are too scared to attempt that.

Not so sure about that. Not all EU countries have shown a lot of deference to the US, for example.

I did a search and the only thing that I came up with is the Airbus/Boeing mutual industrial espionage.

Funny because I'd have said, if there would be any country to dare to spy on the US, it would be France. Anyway, the number of incidents going in the other direction are much more numerous.

In even EU country we have some parties that are more pro-West (pro-US) and others that are less, although nowadays, these latter are a minority. But openly criticizing US policy is not the same as spying on their dirty laundry.

How would you know what, for example, France is doing? Just working from public sources strikes me as quite insufficient (also given the often touted differences in approaches between US and European agencies).

Perhaps going by the "leaks" we know about we can have some idea? And as far as I know, almost all leaks point to the US doing the spying (and I would dare say the EU spying agencies are much less competent, so proportionally there should be more leaks from EU spies than US spies - but that's not what we observe).

Why do you think the Europeans are much less competent and how would differences in approaches impact leaks?

Scared of what, exactly? The optics wouldn't matter too much for the population, very few people seem to have any "reverence" to either of those countries. The militaries and intelligence agencies also know those are allied countries so very little would happen to punish them if found out.

I just can't see any real reason for countries in the EU to be scared of doing it, at most there could be some kind of "respect" but that concept doesn't really mean much when espionage is in play.

German intelligence spied on White House: https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...

> Prosecutors say they can find no actionable evidence to support claims German chancellor’s mobile phone was tapped by US National Security Agency

Who knows what happened; it's certainly possible, perhaps even plausible. But neither the absolute "hacked and spied" and "nobody really cared or did anything" are true, according to the article you posted yourself.

And regardless, there is no equivalence with the ICC case here anyway, for many reasons.

Well.. cared and could do anything differ. I think it's lovely we know. I suspect a lot of inter governments negotiated differently given strong evidence one doesn't do it in even the basic good faith manner. But, in state relations maybe good faith is a null concept?

Did they threaten her family too?

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