- The government is bulk collecting data on foreigners.
- Meh...
- They're also incidentally spying on US citizens in the processs.
- SAY WHAT?!
If the USA could try to acknowledge the human rights of non-US citizens, that would be really nice.
In short, the practical threat is much lower for you than it is for an American. The CIA spied on the Intelligence committee charged with the agency's oversight. The NSA and CIA and FBI all likely have dossiers on every state and federal politician in the country. That means a heck of a lot more than them doing legit SIGINT on adversaries across the world.
And frankly, even if I completely agree with you, we're still talking about the U.S. Constitution being blatantly ignored. I know canonical legal documents of a country aren't as big a thing in other places, but here, it tends to mean something.
But all of this together makes the famous words "all men are created equal" sound hollow.
You also stated their abuses against your government, and I agree that those are the truly worst offences they made, completely undermining your democracy. But that is off topic from my comment. US media react strongly to any US citizen being spied on, not just politicians, while implicitly condoning bulk collection of data on ALL non-citizens, not just adversaries. I presume adversaries are most targeted, but nobody really raises that issue or asks for that kind of oversight. Non-citizens are just not created equal.
P.S. Constitutions are a big thing in many other places, not just in the US. I hope your phrasing was just an accidental mistake, because you sounded as if you think no other country respects it's constitution...
Civilisation (broadly speaking) doesn't evolves hand-in-hand with technology. It is the major danger of our future.
If you asked anyone in The Netherlands 10 years ago if they thought their e-mail on Hotmail or GMail was monitored by authorities in the U.S. I am sure their answer would have been yes.
They are just worried that US citizens think the USA spies on them.
PS. The USA doesn't only spy on non-US traffic, they just hide the spying inside the US more secretive :)
PS2. Every country tries to spy though, not only the US :)
1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#European_Parliament_inv...
Yes, the NSA can monitor specific targets. Do they monitor all Internet traffic worldwide? No, such a task is absurd and technically impossible. However I have learned that people's opinions about the NSA are faith-based, and not open to reasoned arguments.
And, also: "technically impossible" - also: NOPE. Technically possible! In fact so technically possible it is a done deal. You cannot turn off the NSA, for to do so would be to turn off the entire Internet.. we get the copy, NSA gets the originals.
One of the few institutions that stuck their neck out for their citizens is the European Parliament. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the EU is now so enamoured with nationalism that they want to reduce the power of the EU or even leave the EU.
It was markedly different to Australia, where the politicians almost all support it, it was a minor TV news story (certainly not the lead headline like in Germany), and most people just don't care or understand. Germans are understandably cynical, but I wish Germans would have more pride in their country, there are some things that Germany does so much better than other countries right now.
She doesn't deserve any credit. As soon as she paid a visit to Obama, Germany went back to bending over for the U.S. All of the investigations in Germany were immediately shut down and they abandoned plans to have Snowden testify in court.
Maybe reptile people in government. But otherwise...
Pretty much a universal phenomenon.
It's not about human rights.
Of course the US government must only bow to its own people, and only US citizens can lead its policy, that is perfectly understandable. But we all deserve basic human rights and a country that is one of their biggest champions should, for the sake of its credibility, not ignore that!
It would be ideal if some oversight existed for ALL such surveillance. With allied countries, the US should try to work with their governments. With adversaries, it's reasonable to have more relaxed rules. But just bulk collecting data of all non-citizens, treating us all with the same lack of respect of our human rights, is not cool.
Perhaps the US government actually does do all this as I described, and cooperates with allied governments. Then it is just the US media and public that leave the impression like they don't give a fuck about the human rights of anyone other than US citizens... Not cool.
I hate the security state, but I'm okay with that. We've got hundred of millions of people here. There are billions of people in the world. It makes sense to me to spy on all the folks in other countries. I don't see how else you would honestly do a good job of governing.
Spying or digging into the affairs of the people who are voting to make choices in a democratic society? Screw that.
There is a really good reason we separate foreign intelligence from domestic intelligence. The moves the U.S. made after 9-11 to tear down the walls were extremely bad.
> It makes sense to me to spy on all the folks in other countries.
I'm not American, but I do live in a Five Eyes nation. I've had to come to terms that all my online correspondence for over a decade is stored in some data farm somewhere, for the sole purpose of incriminating me or someone I know.
I'm not at all a terrorist, I don't infringe on the privacy or comfort of others, and yet I am targeted under the banner "Not American". I'm at a loss of words to explain how violated and helpless I feel, and how deplorable such an act is.
Right, do you actually believe it has nothing to do with national security? Also it is funny how the home countries who have made intelligence deals with the US get a free pass. This is self fulfilling. Why don't you change your own country? Because you could actually do something, you know instead of just complaining. Maybe that is why?
I'm leveraging my skills to create a website to inform voters exactly the consequence of their vote, since many people can't believe their vote ends up in the hands of a party contrary to their beliefs; apart from that, I feel like I've exhausted most reasonable options available to me. Reasonable debate is only one small part in instigating change.
You've equated spying on me with good governance. This is fallacious (as well as offensive). I am not a threat to you or your country. Targeted surveillance is one thing but collating data on everyone just because you can is wrong. In some sense it flips the 'innocent until proven guilty' the other way around (I'm foreign, therefore I'm guilty of being foreign and should be watched).
What you've advocated for is simply a digital arms race where states vacuum up whatever data they can, as fast as they can, on everyone they can. If the states are friendly, then they can simply share all that information with each other. Everyone is 'foreign' to someone else so ultimately, everyone loses.
For the safety of myself and my family, it probably makes sense for me to shoot anyone who comes near my house (at least in the short term - but I think your logic also only works in the short term, as current world affairs shows). But I think we'll all agree that I shouldn't do this.
To ensure my own lifestyle I should also cheat on my taxes, sneak items out of the grocery store in the bottom of my cart, take credit for other people's ideas at work, and plenty of other things for which the chances of, or cost of, getting caught is low. Nevertheless, these are things that I ought not to do.
The reason why they won't be so easily spied on is not "screw that", it's because they are voters. Not because spying on voters is wrong - but simply because they can change the government when they get annoyed! So, as it is meant to, voting protects the human rights of a population.
But it would be nice if that population would actually believe in human rights. Particularly if they want to portray themselves champions of the matter. But if your attitude is an example, "screw that", huh?
edit - though admittedly here in the UK we are currently borrowing our citizenship and rights law direct from the pages of 2000AD http://usvsth3m.com/post/75158899178/the-uk-government-is-no...
But the worst part isn't that it's offensive to foreigners (which nobody cares about), it's that people so easily ignore that history knows no such thing as a unidirectional spy camera.
But this isn't related to the surveillance thing as such. Criticism of this racism, if it exists, should be targeted at some combination of the prejudice in the police agencies, the leaking of the data that's supposed to be locked in a vault, and at a stretch, the lopsided impact of the laws on various racial groups.
Still it's trivial to have algorithms to identify the race of the people they have data (heck, even just "call metadata" for). To give an obvious (if slightly non-PC example, if you're from a specific part of Baltimore and you're called Jermaine, you're in all probability Black). And Jesus Mandolito in Southern California is probably latino. And of course they can cross-corellate with databases, like social security info, police records, birth certificates, and the like.
Plus, not every population / race is targeted equally. Consider Middle-easterns vs Icelandish people for example. And not everyone is them is an equal target for later data use.