Spying on your allies, part two

[Dreadnaught]

"Those in glass houses..."

Hopefully this helps mark the end of the "OMG spies have been spying" shockfest

I continue to find this to be the most objectionable aspect of Snowden's argument. He seems to actively believe that all espionage is wrong. The problem is preventing espionage against domestic citizens in an electronically-interconnected world, not that the US and Chinese guvment spend tons of resources spying on each other.

[Loki]

http://www.the-american-interest.com...on-allies-ngos

[LittleFuzzy]

To borrow something else from our German friends, something not proprietary this time, schadenfreude.

As I said last year, "From an IR angle, it's not really/necessarily a big deal. We all spy on each other, we all know that we're trying to collect information that our friends would prefer to keep to themselves. As long as we don't use snooped information for nasty things, it should be more like egg on the face or an unzipped fly than a huge matter."

[RandBlade]

Spies are spying shocker, part two.

I wonder if Khen will be so quick to jump on the outrage bus this time.

[Dreadnaught]

I assure you the Neukolln anti-tech welfare queens merely bypass this side of the discussion to paint a conspiracy of American tech companies, government and other Class Enemies.

[Flixy]

I don't even understand what clever thing you are trying to say here.

Hypocrisy aside, just because all sides do it doesn't mean it's right. The debate seems to be more about 'but they did it too" and before about "whoever leaked this is a traitor (or not)", but there isn't much happening about the fact that all these spying agencies broke the laws in their respective countries and are breaching our privacy on a massive scale. If we think what they do is actually okay, we should make it legal, if not, we should not be doing it. But now we just have outrage about the other guys doing it and about leaking about what was illegally happening, but the spying continues without much debate in the background like nothing happened at all.

[Dreadnaught]

It may not be "right", but it's also inevitable for countries (which are themselves large, complex systems) to want to know more about each other.

Saying that spying on other countries is "illegal" is sort of a specious statement.

Also for some reason I want to post the Star Trek clip about the scorpion and the fox:

[LittleFuzzy]

I don't even understand what clever thing you are trying to say here.

Hypocrisy aside, just because all sides do it doesn't mean it's right. The debate seems to be more about 'but they did it too" and before about "whoever leaked this is a traitor (or not)", but there isn't much happening about the fact that all these spying agencies broke the laws in their respective countries and are breaching our privacy on a massive scale. If we think what they do is actually okay, we should make it legal, if not, we should not be doing it. But now we just have outrage about the other guys doing it and about leaking about what was illegally happening, but the spying continues without much debate in the background like nothing happened at all.

But it is not generally illegal for countries to spy on other countries, corporations, organizations, or people outside its borders/not under its jurisdiction or to breach their privacy. Things may be muddled for intra-EU spying, I'm ignorant on the laws/regulations in that sphere. States consider their ability to spy on others to be a sovereign right. Being spied on is then itself paradoxically a violation of the country's territorial sovereignty. The paradox might confuse/bother you but the concept of sovereignty creates a bunch of them. Most clearly and obviously via war-making but even the rights/jurisdiction asserted over citizens or even temporary residents creates them. Extradition is a bilateral agreement for mediating one of those paradoxes.

[Loki]

http://gawker.com/germany-caught-spy...ice-1768690267

And a part III.