What are the odds senators will debate the privacy implications of hacking routers all over the world (let alone stop them from doing it)? I'd bet almost zero.
> The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and US allies including Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported.
From the viewpoint of an American: hacking the EU trade institutions, and India, bothers me. The rest is exactly what the NSA et al /should/ be doing. Saudi and Pakistan are "allies" out of necessity -- there is no history of genuine mutual trust and support.
There certainly needs to be more control of who the NSA targets, and better constraints keeping them from targeting others, but pretending that all spying is bad is silly.
Saudi Arabia has done little to engender trust.
On the one hand, put every non-US citizen killed by the US.
On the other hand, put every US citizen killed by all other countries and terrorists combined.
Guess which number is vastly bigger than the other. 5-10 thousand dead in 9/11? That's peanuts, compared to the disproportionate responses that ensued. (I'm not saying it's peanuts in an absolute sense. It's still a tragedy, of course. Any death is.)
If we use this handy wikipedia page shown below we can see that US military casualties are at a touch over 1.3 million.
Let me know when you're done being facetious and/or have an answer for your number of non-US citizens killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualti...
You know when the US government tells you it's killing enemy combatants in Pakistan via drone attacks? What they don't tell you is they define any combatants as men aged 18-40 in that region.
Presumably better than bombing the men.
Trust is supposed to work both ways. Before dismissing countries such as these it's worth looking at the history of relations from both sides.
In the case of countries, any such asymmetry is meant with resentment. It is fine that the US spies on, say, Iran? Then it means Iran has lower status than the US. Then it means that an Irani citizen (denizen?) is worth less than an American citizen. While we're at it, why don't we show what we're made up of? Knocking down a building or two should teach them a lesson…
It doesn't really matter that it is right or wrong to spy on another country. But it sure is dangerous, should you ever get caught.