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Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

Well yes. But we Europeans see ourselves as US allies and partners ... mostly because US tells us we are. Wanting to be informed what is going on is understandable.

So intrusion in government networks and wide interception of the civilian population communication of a countries that are stable, democracies and partners in NATO and allies in the wars US is waging comes as a somewhat hostile stuff.

US is doing too much spying right now. Too wide, too long a period, too broad. Europe has deep scars and trust issues.

In a sense US should abandon SIGINT and stick to the good old fashioned HUMINT with its allies at least. If you want documents and info there are gentler ways to obtain them.

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Do you think "in a sense" that the EU nations should abandon SIGINT and stick to good old fashioned HUMINT? Or maybe a middle of the road position and just have the Five Eyes abstain from SIGINT?

Well I have yet to see something about direct spying and intrusion in US networks by EU government agencies.

Also yeah - the whole dragnets should be scaled back for various reasons. If you intercept and retain everything you have insane SNR that can prove counterproductive in the long run.

Very intensive spying on allies is impolite at best.

The thing about intelligence work is that your failures are public and successes are secret.

I think your last sentence is hopelessly naive.

So make the successes public in full detail.

I cant tell if this is a legitimate response or if you are being obtuse.

I'm being serious. HN is nothing if not ultra-rational (or so we claim). Evidence trumps all. Prove surveillance works, that it's necessary, works better than any conceivable alternative, and that the damage to society is worth it, and your empirical proof will be accepted.

Are you drunk? I never said anything like this.

How about if you two just stop?

My apologies. I did not intend to come across as argumentative.

"France is top industrial espionage offender [against Germany]"

http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espion...

And yet allies do it constantly. I'm skeptical that polite applies in this context when you consider history.

Here's the cable for that:

https://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/artic...

The US has no partners. It has two rivals, Russia and China. It does have allies but they are not remotely equals. The legal fiction may be of equality in international law but the reality is more like the old Chinese view of the world where there was China, Chinese tributary states and rebels.

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