Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bouchart]

Well, Merkel did grow up in East Germany and spying was kind of the norm there.

[Helgoland]

Ah, Merkel. "Spying is perfectly okay! If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about! ...wait. Wait. They were spying on me!? THAT IS UNCONSCIONABLE! This is an outrage! Spying is WRONG! You promised I wouldn't be targeting when I sold my people out to your government, and now you're just casually casting me aside like some sort of... commoner!? I won't stand for it!"

Well, she seems to be pretty cool with it, actually - the NSA only tapped her unsafe phone (she has two or three), and honestly I think she expected to be a target. Doing the whole indignation dance would only scratch her image.

[Chaoswizkid]

Germany, Brazil enlist 19 more countries for anti-NSA UN resolution.

While the document does not single out the US as the chief electronic spy, its text seems to be a direct response to alleged NSA practices.

The draft says that UN member states are “deeply concerned at human rights violations and abuses that may result from the conduct of extra-territorial surveillance or interception of communications in foreign jurisdictions.”

Snowden’s leaks over the past months have revealed that NSA intercepts data directly from data cables stationed around the world. Internal documents also showed that American intelligence staff did not need a warrant or any other legal basis to freely spy on a non-US citizen.

The proposed document also claims that “illegal surveillance of private communications and the indiscriminate interception of personal data of citizens constitutes a highly intrusive act that violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy and threatens the foundations of a democratic society.”

Silly rest of the world! You can't be more free than the people of the United States, the greatest country on Earth! Our government told us so!

[misko27]

God forbid the UN passes another resolution for the US to ignore. You know they pass a resolution against the US embargo against Cuba every year. For 21 years. 188 countries passed it last year. With, at most, 4 votes against the resolution, and one of those is the US, and another is Israel. And not one single fuck was given that day.

[Tarqiup Inua]

Here is my prediction of the events to come. European leaders got pretty good cards with the latest revelations and will now act all hurt until U.S. intelligence lets them get bigger share of the intel they gather to appease them.

And then we will, again, be one big happy family of people who routinely spy on each other.

[10ebbor10]

God forbid the UN passes another resolution for the US to ignore. You know they pass a resolution against the US embargo against Cuba every year. For 21 years. 188 countries passed it last year. With, at most, 4 votes against the resolution, and one of those is the US, and another is Israel. And not one single fuck was given that day.

Really, no one really cares about UN resolutions. Pretty much every nations has several they ignore.

[Flare]

Why is it as soon as a nation becomes a major world power, they feel the need to spy on everything?

With great power comes great paranoia?

I'd personally be a bit flabbergasted if developed countries like the US didn't do this.

There is no guarantee even if there are treaties around this issue that forbid spying that there is no actual spying being done. The intelligence agencies of a country are only ever accountable to its government and no one else. In this situation where there is no guarantee that anybody else is spying on you, and you are responsible for the welfare of your citizens, the only rational course of action would be to spy on others yourself.

It's not that doing these types of act specifically are noteworthy, but that the US has seemingly been way ahead of everuone else in terms of intelligence gathering. So far as we know, and guaging the reaction to some politicians in Europe, US intelligence ability probably far outstrips the standard.

The meeting of the German spy chiefs with officials in the US probably won't be to demand a stop to this, but to  a sort of deal like the ones signed around the limiting of  nuclear arms and their proliferation.

[misko27]

I don't know. I learned a bit about other nations spying habits, and I was kinda surprised: France, apparently the world's premier expert on industrial theft, until they were replaced by; China, the mass hack attack strategists; Russia, far more experience then the Chinese, especially in that important field of "not getting caught", have a specialty for tapping specific individual lines of communication.

[olemars]

I'm far more comfortable with governments spying on other governments than governments spying on their own citizens.

[kaijyuu]

Also we need more citizens spying on governments.

[Flare]

I think everything should be spied upon by everybody.

[misko27]

Also we need more citizens spying on governments.

No. The government represents the citizens, therefore we need more government spying on itself.

I think everything should be spied upon by everybody.

Issac Asimov's got your back; I suggest reading this.

[Another]

Can the OP please work MUSCULAR into thread title? Apparently this program was (is?) bigger and legally stinkier than PRISM.

[misko27]

Can the OP please work MUSCULAR into thread title? Apparently this program was (is?) bigger and legally stinkier than PRISM.

The NSA disputes that one.

[Sheb]

Like they disputed everything else. I mean, the same guy was saying the NSA doesn't collect large amount of data on US citizens...