US spied on Japan government, companies: WikiLeaks | Hacker News Reader

US spied on Japan government, companies: WikiLeaks

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77 pointsbrobinson30 comments

If we want to live in a free society, we must do something about these heinous acts which imprison us all. Millions of people have, over the course of history, lost their lives precisely because men in power were allowed to abuse that power and cast their nets into the winds, to reap profit from the loss of the nation, their sovereign. If we want to continue to consider ourselves free, enlightened people, we must always work hard to uncover the secrets being laid as traps by those who would enslave us all. It is absolutely disgusting that the average American citizen is letting its government get away with crimes against humanity, and I look forward to the day when more American secrets are spilled on the altar of public opinion.

I am an American citizen. What would you like me to do about it?

Everything you possibly can.

Could you be a little more specific?

Renounce your citizenship and leave the country? Vote? Get active in public advocacy campaigns to inform people that their country is being used by criminals? I honestly do not know but one thing is for sure - we can't just give up and let this happen.

I don't see how leaving the country would help. I do vote, but my choices are either the crazy guy, the other crazy guy, or somebody who can't possibly win. Public advocacy campaigns? Maybe, but people by and large know what's going on and like it.

stop. paying. taxes.

No. I'm not going to go to jail over this. Part of the social contract is that you pay taxes even when they help to pay for things you disagree with.

That proves, that Mitsubishi is a terrorist organization.

This was probably downvoted for sarcasm, but it brings to light the scary power governments have in naming entities they don't like..

Mitsubishi under terrorism investigation for possible intentional deployment of dangerous airbags. The US DOJ and NSA are investigating whether or not these "faulty airbags" had a remote detonation device that could be used to target diplomats. [1] Literally the first google result with "Mitsubishi recall danger". Imagine how powerful the XKeyScore or PRISM is when they type "John HackerNews Author 3" "bomb". Congratulations, you're under investigation too!

[1] http://www.9and10news.com/story/27525884/subaru-mitsubishi-e...

https://wikileaks.org/nsa-japan/

The NSA even spies on domestic targets, and shares unredacted intercepts with the Five Eyes and Israel ;)

Obviously Japan should retaliate against the US.

That's bad, but it might have good consequences. Governments around the world might start to better protect their information and communications, thus providing better protection against both NSA, spies and other malicious entities.

This is legitimate as they do the same to us. They're one of the most capable countries doing espionage against U.S. military and industry. They've stolen plenty of I.P.. At one point, NSA intercepted a communication from Mitsubishi that contained President's Daily Brief. We have to spy on countries like this to even out the negotiations or else they become quite one-sided without us knowing why.

By this argument, basically every other country in the world should spy as much as possible on the US, since our surveillance is so ubiquitous. Do you agree?

Yes, I agree they should play by the same rules as us or pull even more stuff. A NSA proponent worded situation nicely: "most countries make espionage against them illegal while making espionage for them legal and even funded in form of intelligence agencies." That's the game. Better play it or competition wins.

Don't they already do this? Everybody spies on everybody, to the extent that they can. That's how the world works.

"This is legitimate as they do the same to us."

Can we talk about this not being okay (for a long term human future)? Imagine a world where groups of people didn't constantly put effort into undermining other groups in secret.

There it goes. The inevitable "What if utopia existed? What if U.S. and Japan didn't continue to provide a lifestyle to their citizens based on mass exploitation and harm in other countries? What if nobody cheated to get ahead? What if human nature itself was rewired and all of existence did a 180?"

I can't answer these because everything from my World History book back in school to the present news feed shows what you imagine has never existed. The only "What if?" I know the answer to is what happens when one side uses every tool to get ahead and one plays Scout's Honor: the side hustling ends up ahead. Best to focus our questions and efforts of changing our world on possibilities that might actually happen. Eliminating espionage isn't one of them.

Let's start with imagining how to make such a world come about. Until we have some idea of how to get there, there isn't much point in imagining what it would be like.

Whether something is "okay" just doesn't matter here. International relations are the ultimate anarchy. There are no rules and no law, just what the participants can get away with.

Exactly. Even with rules preventing most of it, esp industrial espionage, you still need spy agencies to peak at other side to make sure they follow the rules. That's what US claims they do. They did in fact catch numerous attempts to steal big contracts with bribery.

So, the game will continue to exist one way or another. And if public sector had total openness, they'd just use private contractors as they already do for some covert and especially criminal ops.

In other news, Japan spied on US government. Film at 11.

May seem like that now, but you were once labeled a 'crazy conspiracy theorist' for even suggesting that governments have secret spying agencies.

What? I think the fact that the NSA was spying on foreign nation's governments is pretty much in their mission statement

Until Snowden claims were dismissed as false and crazy.

When?

Pre-Snowden

I meant "specifically when," as in can you give an example? Part of the tongue in cheek aspect of "No Such Agency" was that everyone understood that that mysterious building in Ft. Meade was all about. We have had congressional inquiries (with mainstream media coverage) into things like MKULTRA and the phoenix program. The public was well aware of spy agencies long before snowden.

Did this ever happen to you or is this something that someone else told you abut the past?

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