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Comment by ufmace | Hacker News Reader

Are we supposed to be mad about this or something? I'm no fan of the NSA monitoring everything that every American does for no particular reason, but that isn't what we're talking about here. Every country in the world spies on its enemies, rivals, and allies to the best of their ability. There's no such thing as "Fair Play" in diplomacy.

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Obama promised spying on Merkel would stop. Should Merkel have looked at the fine print when she talked to Obama? Even if you agree to this premise, the leaks show that NSA is not competent enough to carry out this task.

I agree with Mr Scheiner[0] that the NSA ought to be broken up.

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/opinion/schneier-nsa-too-big/

All of which is pretty obvious. Of course we're spying on them, and I'm sure they're spying on us too. Somebody made one of the programs public, so of course we're going to promise to stop. What else is Obama going to say, "We're gonna spy on you and you can't stop us, nyah nyah!"? Thus the essential hypocrisy of diplomacy - that's obviously the truth of the situation, and it isn't going to change, but nobody can say it publicly. Clearly, he told them publicly to stop doing that, and through some back channel told them that he really wanted them to only obey the letter of that - keep on spying, just don't use this particular source in this particular way.

Germany is not technically able to spy like that on the USA. The german agencies don't have direct access to american telefon lines and communication providers, and not to that amount of internet traffic, nor the technical equipment needed to search through data of that amount. And they don't have the rights to operate like that on american ground (in contrast to the rights the USA still have from after the war). There are american listening posts in Germany, not german listening posts in the USA.

Or do you think that if the BND asked the NSA to send over a few million of the collected emails from american citizens, they would happily do so? No, that is of course a one-sided thing.

The "of course they are spying on us" is FOX-rhetoric, and wrong.

The US (and UK) have no right to operate listening posts in Germany either. Just because they have some secret contracts or whatever doesn't make it a right.

Contracts can be canceled. The current affair would be a very good reason to do so, and close all the military bases in one big swoop.

I think, the locals like the military bases well enough in most cases, because the military injects money into the local economy.

(I am not sure, whether Germany has to pay for the US bases, though.)

I'm pretty sure the US rents the land. You're definitely right about money injection. There are ~48k US Personnel in Germany.

Source: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/04/17/report-us-paying-b...

Yes, and as the article says, the locals are also paying. The parlance seems to be "costs and burden-sharing".

On the other hand a fraction of ten billion USD is not that much for the Germans to sacrifice for slightly more privacy. (A fraction, since ten billion USD is the total cost the US pays, and Germany is but one country they have bases in.)

The bases do provide security, though.

And so what? The world is not a fair place. We can and do spy on all countries using any means at our disposal, as do they. If their means aren't as good as ours, that isn't our problem. If they had better means than us, they would use them, and they wouldn't care that it wasn't "fair".

But if they could, they would.

Exactly. As an American I really do not see why I should care if we spy on our allies. We have everything to gain from gathering privileged knowledge and very little to lose.

The arrogance of lines like this is amazing.

You realise there will be a time when the U.S needs it's allies help... and spying on them, does not make them want to help.

Arrogant? Maybe. But it's the exact thing every country in the world has been doing ever since there was a such thing as nations and diplomacy. I think it's naive to think that anybody really cares about some objective notion of fairness.

As for their help, whether or not they want to help has never mattered. They will continue to either help or not help (or impede) for the same reasons they always have - whether it's in their own national interest to do so.

"it's naive to think that anybody really cares about some objective notion of fairness."

It seems that Brazil cared, to the tune of $4.5B in lost sales from an American company due to our eavesdropping.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2...

You're a sociopath. I'm an equal human being, despite not being born in the US.

You're a private citizen. You're not worth spying on and it would be wrong to do so. If you were the Chancellor of Germany, it would be ridiculous of you to expect not to be spied on by anyone with the capability.

NO! Please read up on the Belgacom hack.

Private citizens are now targets for the NSA and GCHQ because their personal vulnerabilities (and devices) can be used to compromise infrastructure that is used by "interesting" players.

Right and I'm saying that while that crosses the line, spying on Merkel or her cabinet does not.

You're clinically qualified to declare another person a sociopath? And even if you were, I'm pretty confident HN is no place for doing so.

The problem with saying "equal" is that there are two ways to achieve that.

Who is our allies? Who are our enemies? Do we spy on them equally?

Is the information yielded from spying only used for valid national concerns?

The answer is of course you cannot see why you should care, since any duplicity is hidden behind the cloak of good ole patriotic national security there is nothing for you to see. Continue on brave blind soldier.

We should spy on all foreign states equally. We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Please define what you consider a valid national concern.

All of this said - I am wholly opposed to any and all domestic spying without proper legal and constitutional authorization. Further, information learned about America citizens through foreign espionage must never be used and should be destroyed as soon as it is discovered.

You seem unaware that spying is a military aggression that doesn't have to be tolerated.

Except that no remotely rational state starts a war that involves killing real people over a little espionage.

Good luck taking on the U.S. military, which, even if you could defeat via some joint coalition involving the EU, China and Russia - the economic fallout from such a war would probably be globally devastating - much worse than whatever damage the US inflicts by blatantly spying on foreign entities.

> We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Why do you want to benefit the `American' shareholders of American companies vs the `foreign' shareholders of foreign companies?

Sail a carrier battle group down to Central Africa and grab some slaves while you're at it, why not?

I think it is up to you to define valid national concern. Since you are OK with it the onus for explaining how policy is carried out in action and why it is OK is with you.

As far as I can tell many resources both human and otherwise have been expended by the US govt to solidify US corporate grounding. Many of those corporations seek to maximize profit and revenues by offshoring labor and finances. I do not accept this byproduct of excessive lobbying as valid national concerns.

If the nation's sovereignty is a conduit for corporate profits, and immense personal profits by the few monied enough to lobby state actors, then the nation is not very sovereign at all.

I essentially did in the first sentence of my original reply - any foreign affair that could potentially involve our defense or economy is a valid national concern and therefore should be the reason we perform significant foreign espionage.

I do not follow where you are going with the lobbying/off-shoring concern? I do not have a position at this time, one way or another on the idea of whether a nation controlled by corporate-interests is sovereign or not... I could see arguments for both - I will say such a system is not democratic however - and I strongly opposed to non-representative forms of government.

There might be no such thing as "Fair Play", but having a reputation for fair play goes a long, long way.

So you don't support things like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...

Looks fine to me, but I only skimmed it. What in it do you think I should be opposed to?

International trade and cooperation is a fine thing. But don't harbor any illusions about it - both sides do it because the benefits to each country outweigh the costs to that country of not doing it. Nobody involved cares a whit about whether anybody thinks any particular part of the agreement is fair. Any claim made by anybody that something is or isn't fair is only a negotiation tactic, meant to try to get the other side to give something up without getting anything in return.

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