US Spying on Europe

[kandrathe]

I'm interested in how you feel about it. I guess it finally matters now that they've discovered our NSA is not just after Al Queda, but also snooping on trade negotiation secrets, and what Angela Merkel had for lunch.

I'm glad it's finally hit a boiling point over there. I was just reading in TechDirt, "Keith Alexander Says The US Gov't Needs To Figure Out A Way To Stop Journalists From Reporting On Snowden Leaks". I'm outraged, but feel our flash in the pan news cycle here is "over it" and on to another kettle of fish. Our citizens either don't know, don't understand or don't care that their rights are trampled. And... unlike Europeans, we are supposed protected from our own NSA by the Bill of Rights. For what it is worth, on behalf of my arrogant, jack booted government, I again apologize.

The only glimmer of hope that remains from my point of view is that they've targeted journalists, and nothing removes a tingle from your leg like a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury to reveal your journalistic sources.

In a show of solidarity, wouldn't if be nice if some European nation other than Russia might consider giving Эдвард Сноудена asylum.

[Jester]

In a show of solidarity, wouldn't if be nice if some European nation other than Russia might consider giving Эдвард Сноудена asylum.

I thought it was Bradley Manning who got the sex change...

-Jester

[Occhidiangela]

I'm interested in how you feel about it.

The French were constantly trying to collect intelligence on us, American specific stuff, while I was in NATO. There was a reason we didn't trust them. They blew OPSEC on two different ops targeting Radcic in the FY/Bosnia area.

Other "allies" were variously trustworthy, and not.

Turnabout is fair play.

Fair weather friends: are they really friends?

One wonders.

[eppie]

One wonders.

Yeah, one wonders what you are trying to say here.
Fact is that the US, and also Russia and China don't really care what other countries say. The other countries will put up with everything out of simple fear for the US, Russia and China's military strength and general non-trustability.
We all know the NSA etc don't use the info for anti terrorist work but just to strengthen the power base of the US. Positive thing for us in Europe is that it is better to be friends with the US than with the other two.


added laters:
a few hours after I wrote this I read an interview with Ray McGovern basically saying the same things. With the difference that he knows what he is talking about. The NSA spying has nothing to do with national security but it is 100 % economical and about power. Normal citizens are robbed of their privacy while potential terrorists (like the Boston bombers and one of the Nairobi attackers) are left alone. But maybe it is not intentional....maybe the US only believes intelligence from their own NSA and CIA and don't want to do anything with information from other countries that is just handed to them.

[kandrathe]

Other "allies" were variously trustworthy, and not.

Turnabout is fair play.

Fair weather friends: are they really friends?

One wonders.

I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing what the Brits did to the US in WWI, and namely the leak of the secret Zimmermann Telegram, which once released to the US public, convinced the US to end their isolationism, and enter the war in Europe.

Turnabout is fair play, unless you heed the advice of Gandhi, where an taking an eye for an eye results in a blinded world.

[LemmingofGlory]

I'm interested in how you feel about it. I guess it finally matters now that they've discovered our NSA is not just after Al Queda, but also snooping on trade negotiation secrets, and what Angela Merkel had for lunch.

Well, you know what they say: the only thing worse than being spied on is not being spied on. I imagine an Onion article along the lines of "Head-of-state feels rejected after NSA refuses to tap his phone." What DID the president of Freedonia have for lunch? Duck soup most likely, but no one cares. He'll have to tweet pictures.

-Lemming

[kandrathe]

*Newsflash*


Not really. This was 2009.

[LochnarITB]

*Newsflash*


Not really. This was 2009.

Non-discussion aside:

That brings back such good memories. 1975 (ouch! 38 years ago ). My high school choir did a concert tour in Germany. I discovered real German bratwurst. Everywhere we went, street vendors would grill the white brats so they had black char spots on them. Slapped on a real hard roll, with really good mustard, they were better than any gourmet hoity toity slop you could ever put put in front of me. Had one every day we were there. Yum!


Now back to your regularly scheduled woes of our world today.

[DilenSey]

Other "allies" were variously trustworthy, and not.

Turnabout is fair play.

Fair weather friends: are they really friends?

One wonders.

I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing what the Brits did to the US in WWI, and namely the leak of the secret Zimmermann Telegram, which once released to the US public, convinced the US to end their isolationism, and enter the war in Europe.

Turnabout is fair play, unless you heed the advice of Gandhi, where an taking an eye for an eye results in a blinded world.

I find it funny how you guys feel the need to defend the US^^

Your secret service is not under your control and neither under the control of the president really. They are just a few corrupt people left to their own devices with lots of power and noone to watch over them and control them.

Its like a woman defending an abusive husband really XD
"He rapes me, bu he still ma man so leave him alone!!"

silly

You never said yes, your government never said yes, noone ever said yes to the stuff the US secret service does, so why defend it?

[Lissa]

I'm interested in how you feel about it.

The French were constantly trying to collect intelligence on us, American specific stuff, while I was in NATO. There was a reason we didn't trust them. They blew OPSEC on two different ops targeting Radcic in the FY/Bosnia area.

Other "allies" were variously trustworthy, and not.

Turnabout is fair play.

Fair weather friends: are they really friends?

One wonders.

Exactly...I find it humorous that the general populations are shocked that this is going on. We've spied on our allies and enemies alike just as our allies and enemies have done the same with the US. I'm not sure whether to laugh or sigh at people's reactions to all of this.

---

One wonders.

Yeah, one wonders what you are trying to say here.
Fact is that the US, and also Russia and China don't really care what other countries say. The other countries will put up with everything out of simple fear for the US, Russia and China's military strength and general non-trustability.
We all know the NSA etc don't use the info for anti terrorist work but just to strengthen the power base of the US. Positive thing for us in Europe is that it is better to be friends with the US than with the other two.


added laters:
a few hours after I wrote this I read an interview with Ray McGovern basically saying the same things. With the difference that he knows what he is talking about. The NSA spying has nothing to do with national security but it is 100 % economical and about power. Normal citizens are robbed of their privacy while potential terrorists (like the Boston bombers and one of the Nairobi attackers) are left alone. But maybe it is not intentional....maybe the US only believes intelligence from their own NSA and CIA and don't want to do anything with information from other countries that is just handed to them.

You're being a tad naive here Eppie. Spying on ones friends and enemies has happened throughout history, this is neither something new nor something unusual. And it's not just coutries that do it, companies do it as well, hell, even next door neighbors do it. (or what do you think gossip is all about?) Why people are acting shocked or surprised by this is really the height of naivete.

---

Other "allies" were variously trustworthy, and not.

Turnabout is fair play.

Fair weather friends: are they really friends?

One wonders.

I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing what the Brits did to the US in WWI, and namely the leak of the secret Zimmermann Telegram, which once released to the US public, convinced the US to end their isolationism, and enter the war in Europe.

Turnabout is fair play, unless you heed the advice of Gandhi, where an taking an eye for an eye results in a blinded world.

I find it funny how you guys feel the need to defend the US^^

Your secret service is not under your control and neither under the control of the president really. They are just a few corrupt people left to their own devices with lots of power and noone to watch over them and control them.

Its like a woman defending an abusive husband really XD
"He rapes me, bu he still ma man so leave him alone!!"

silly

You never said yes, your government never said yes, noone ever said yes to the stuff the US secret service does, so why defend it?

It's not defense, it's realization of how things work and have worked, for a very long time.

[shoju]

Is it really surprising that the US is spying on anyone and everyone?

Let's just think about this for a second. We have

FBI
CIA
Secret Service
NSA
U.S. Marshall's Service
ATF
DEA
DHS

as the alphabet soup of the Federal Government's law enforcement / non military wing.

Now, they are all supposed to have different jobs, doing different things, but the one thing that all of them have in common, is that they do, even if in limited scope, have a tendency to become embroiled in affairs outside the country.

We have bought into (the people being "we" here) a cycle of perpetual fearmongering by our government, dating back to at least to the end of WWII, when the Cold War got going, and we had to make sure that we were one up on "those damn dirty commies".

The only thing that is shocking to me about this, is that people are surprised that it happened. And with the internet, and all the technology at the public's disposal, it's not surprising to me to read what goes on and what happens.

That doesn't mean I'm ok with it. Far from it. I really detest a lot of the spying / intelligence gathering that the government does in the name of national security. But, the questions comes in:
What do we need to know?
Who makes that decision?

Obviously, if it is related to "spying" and "intelligence gathering" it's not something that you can put to a vote. At that point, it's worthless to try and spy, if you are just going to announce that you are going to spy to the public.

and Dilensey,
I'm really surprised that you would choose to point a finger at the Secret Service. THat's... not really the secret service's job. In the list of Federal Agencies that have corruption problems, the Secret Service is pretty far down the list. They make headlines for hiring hookers. Other than that, they protect dignitaries, the president, and oversea things related to currency and coinage (counterfitting, etc..)

The Secret Service, while not perfect is not the poster child for problems in the Government. That would be the NSA, and DHS, for completely different reasons. The NSA is that creepy bastard in the van, who will toss a sack over your head, and run you off into hiding.

The DHS is the epitome of red tape, and excessive red tape.

[kandrathe]

Yes, I wouldn't say I'm defending it. On the contrary really, I despise it in it's current incarnation. eppie is on the right track, in that it is a tool of the political establishment to acquire and keep power. The "Terrorists" or "Red Scare" are justifications in order to sell it to the public, so that we don't mind the billion dollar data mining center being constructed in Utah.

If you want to know how to fight terrorists, you can learn everything useful from the movie "Zero Dark Thirty". Not so much reliance on satellites, or the crunching of domestic phone calls. Mostly, paid informants, interrogation(which can also be the humane type) of other criminals, and putting the pieces together with good analysis. To win a war, you need to be willing to put boots on the ground, covert ones in this case.

What they do need is a good cross agency integrated computer system for mapping those who are/were terrorists and other seemingly unrelated bits of good intelligence. Even with the Boston case, in hindsight, there was enough for the US to have put 2+2 together. They just didn't or lacked the tools useful to do so.

But, as is usual after these "War on _____" exercises get politicized, is that they become perverted into a cash cow for buying votes by bringing home the bacon.

[Mavfin]

While I'm not necessarily defending how the US is currently doing it, I do have to laugh when the European countries get up in arms publicly over domestic surveillance, when they do much the same things at home. Difference is that in Britain, for example, the security services most likely do much the same things, but, they can tell the press not to talk about it.

Basically, all developed countries do this stuff. Again, leaving out the right or wrong of it, it's pretty naive for anyone in a developed country to think that their country is not spying on their telecommunications and/or Internet use. They just may hide it better than the US has.

The fact is, you're probably not going to stop the information from being extracted. The only thing we may be able to affect is how that information is used, and how much of it is kept, and who it is kept about; i.e. Joe Average, law-abiding citizen may come up in the logs, but his data shouldn't be kept, while Suspected Terrorist Financier X should be watched. However, there should be checks and balances to make sure that the 'terrorist financier' has done more than just speak out against the government.

[kandrathe]

I'm hopeful that onion routing and built in better network encryption can thwart massive data collection, like PRISM. Yes, given enough time they could hack, and decrypt some, but it would need to be targeted. And, targeted hopefully means, probable cause, court order, and for foreign surveillance FISA oversight.

Of course, it means a whole new generation of apps built on something other than SSL, and probably new network hardware where the government has built holes. It might take at least a decade to change, if anyone really cared about privacy.

[FireIceTalon]

Fuck the US spying on Europe, I'm much more worried about the shit that is going on HERE, right on the front door.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013...ests-feds/

^^This is just disturbing and scary on so many levels. Not to mention, its pretty fucking stupid, since DNA tests are medically impossible to test for drug use. I'll tell a cop to fuck off before I ever give him/her a DNA test for ANY reason. This reeks of pure fascism.

[Alram]

What is going on here?? Why does the link to "Zimmerman Telegram go to a hacker's website? Ban this guy --DilenSey. He is up to no good. The oridinal post by Kandrathe contains a legitimate link.

[kandrathe]

Tricky, I see what he did there. Ya, he's hinkey.

[Bolty]

Indeed, very suspicious posts to start with had me watching him, but didn't even notice those repurposed links until you guys pointed it out.

[Alram]

Actually we should even delete his posts so that nobody goes to his hacker site by accident.

[Mavfin]

Actually we should even delete his posts so that nobody goes to his hacker site by accident.

At least edit the links out.