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I'm sure the US spies on pretty much everyone, friend or foe... and it's probably the same the other way round too!

Sure. It's also a great way to get around domestic wiretapping laws. Assuming you can cooperate well enough with a foreign power, you can have a "I'll show you yours if you show me mine." sort of situation.

The US has some very close allies for sharing intel, and it'd be a massive incident if it got out that such allied countries were spying on each other. It happens to some degree, but if stuff gets out, the White House & State can make heads roll, so you'd only see pretty routine spycraft occur between allies (counter-intel, rumor mill, feelers).

The Pakistan/US relationship is a fascinating example of this.

The trick is not to get caught... and if you do get caught, then blame it in on the Chinese/Russians/flavour-of-the-month :D

In all seriousness, the spying may not be as hardcore or blatant(!) as say US/China or US/Russia but they are not looking for the same kind of intel between US/UK. I wuold be very very surprised if there was not some intel gathering at some level.

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