Hacker News Reader

Comment by tinco | Hacker News Reader

Because for non-US countries nothing has changed. It's been a publicly known fact that the US spies on non-US citizens by monitoring internet traffic for over 20 years. Ask any hacker aged over 24. There's simply hardly anything worth being surprised about as a foreign national.

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.

View on HN

Hacker aged over 24 here. Sure, we all knew. But it's one thing to "know", it's another entirely to have tangible proof. Whenever I spoke about this to people 10 years ago the reaction was "there's no proof, you're paranoid, you're a conspiracy theorist". Now we have proof the reaction is "so what, everyone knows that, I have nothing to hide". There's some serious goalpost shifting happening here.

Isn't that one of the worst things to come of the Snowden leaks so far? There aren't many conspiracy theories I can, with full conviction, point at and laugh anymore.

Maybe reptile people in government. But otherwise...

What's your definition of 'reptile'? Just asking...for no particular reason...

Maybe not reptile, but certainly invertebrate.

Pretty much a universal phenomenon.

I agree, I find it way more shocking that my government (the Netherlands) is so laid back about all this than the "revelation" that Americans care about America spying on Americans. Yes, the dutch government announced a Dropbox alternative that is open source (http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97793/overheid-werkt-aan-opensour...) but I believe it is the wrong approach. They should publicly denounce NSA spying and swear to not cooperate with them (!when it comes to Dutch civilians at least!). All they do is empty gesturing. It annoys me to no end that my government is so afraid. It also annoys me that they are so adamant in pleasing the US in the sanctions against Russia, they only damage our economy, not to mention Russia's (hey, the Russians love their children too!) We are so the US' lap dog.

It's not that they are afraid, it's that they are in bed together. Dutch intelligence relies on US intelligence and visa versa for 'the war on terror'. The situation in Germany is similar, the German government was only offended when it turned out that they tapped Merkel's phone. When it were regular citizens, most politicians shrugged their shoulders, some put on a small show for their electorate.

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.

The Merkel thing was just a political show for the up-coming elections IIRC. Anyway, we (the citizens) suffer the same fate no matter where we are, since we're using their services.

I think Merkel deserves at least a little credit for speaking out in public, even if some of it was for the elections. When visiting Germany it was amazing how much news coverage there was about Snowden & how aware everyone was... you couldn't avoid it, his face was even on digital billboards in train stations.

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.

>I think Merkel deserves at least a little credit for speaking out in public, even if some of it was for the elections.

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.

Well the narrative that "the entire West works together on intel" doesn't work very well does it. What are people supposed to do, hate the entire West?

The Dutch secret service is at least as bad as the NSA. They just lack the scale, the budget and the opportunity.

Think about it. You're saying that the USA spies on all non-US internet traffic. Does that make any sense? Is there any evidence? No and no.

I'm from Belgium and he is right - i do think that USA spies on everyone, it makes sense and USA had admitted it multiple times.

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 :)

Yes[1,3] and yes[2]. Have you been in a cave for the past two years?

1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#European_Parliament_inv...

2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files

3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

"Yes[1,3] and yes[2]. Have you been in a cave for the past two years?"

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.

Sorry, but "absurd" - yes it is absurd - THAT THEY DO IT.

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.

So, let's at least try to do this in good faith...what makes you think it's technically impossible?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com