Rule of law among nation-states? Holy shit, you think that’s a real thing? It’s a complete fabrication where people walk away scott-free all the time. Get people to stop committing atrocities then we can talk about a little spat between allies that will do very little to change the status quo.
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Oh jebus, this argument. Do I even engage? I respect your opinion… But this might take a face to face debate to settle.
Treaties are laws that govern how nation states interact with each other. A nation state can break a treaty, just like I can break a law.
Congresscritters generally are not held accountable for breaking legal treaties. People in the trenches (gargle me and my friends in the industry) try to prevent that from ever happening.
So I guess talk about whatever narrative you want. And I’ll attempt to keep powerful people in check 
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And before you mention it, yes me and my industry are failing. We suck. We are terrible. We aid and comfort our enemies.
I have heard it all.
Nepotism and corruption are hard to fight. But we do believe in law, contracts, and accountability.
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I’m sure Poe’s law applies to this, I just don’t know which way. So I’ll just ask: Are you serious?
Killing foreign nations’ people is what the military is supposed to do. Disappearing people who criticize the government is what secret police are supposed to do.
Still, people do take offense when it’s actually done.
IT IS A REAL THING. It’s a project we’ve been working on. Doesn’t quite work yet, but it’s getting there. Shame that our “friends” across the Atlantic try to ruin it every chance they get, and collaborate with those in our own countries who don’t like it.
That said, it already works surprisingly well between European countries.
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In 1929, Henry Stimson became U.S. Secretary of State. He shut down what was called the “Black Chamber” (the proto-NSA) using the famous words "Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”.
Fortunately, this decision was reversed a couple of years later. I say “fortunately”, because by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we had an organization in place that was regularly decrypting and reading their diplomatic and naval messages. Admirers of Alan Turing are well aware that the Brits were doing the same thing with the German codes, and of course we and they were sharing information.
Now you may believe that gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail, and of course I am not particularly concerned about a sneak attack on Hawaii by the French.
But if France, or Germany, or anyone else, is contemplating doing a back channel deal with Putin, or Iran, or China, the fact that the NSA may be monitoring and reporting those conversations would cause me to lose approximately 0.00 minutes of sleep each night.
In a word - yes.
So, you do not respect my right as a citizen of a democratic country to have my democratically elected government negotiate deals with anyone?
Oh, and just to be sure before I endanger myself: do you accept that I have a right to free speech and a right to due process, even though I am not an American citizen and not located within the US? Or would you be happy to have a CIA death squad assassinate me if I spoke out against US interests? Just checking. </sarcasm>
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What’s your opinion of countries that spy on the US?
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the agency in question here is NSA not CIA right?
What do you suppose the “I” in CIA stands for?
That would NEVER happen, but only because the French wouldn’t be willing to repeatedly do the mountain of paperwork necessary. And now that the DMV has a TSA rep there…yeah, it’d never come to fruition.
They’re going to try and do it regardless of my opinion. I’m not going to waste my breath complaining to them. So I just hope we are reasonably good at keeping them at bay.
NSA has been breaking the law by gathering too much info without warrants since the 60’s:
During SHAMROCK, they shared the info with the CIA and the FBI, which worked rather more closely together in the 60’s than subsequently.
I just read this:
Which focuses heavily on the question of whether secret intelligence is compatible with democracy. Within CIA culture during the cold war, the attitude was very much that the CIA were “a society of men, not a society of law” – that is, they had a privileged position to decide which laws they would and wouldn’t follow in the course of their mission to defend the USA against the USSR. This led to hijinks such as the CIA performing domestic ops to suppress constitutionally protected (anti-war) speech, as well as the CIA spending a decade or more of trying to penetrate the anti-war movement to prove there was a KGB connection (largely at the behest of LBJ and then Nixon).
They didn’t find any connection, of course, but several people high up on the food chain, including those two presidents, were convinced such a connection existed and so the illegal domestic ops continued.
I think there is a real question of whether democracy is truly possible in a world where unknown, completely unaccountable bureaucrats decide for themselves what laws they should and shouldn’t have to obey, and which of their countrymen’s freedoms they should or shouldn’t bother to respect. Especially given that these particular bureaucrats seem prone to imagining themselves to be heroes protecting the free world from pure evil, letting them justify just about anything under the rubric of ends justifying means.
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If your country wants to do a deal with (for example) another country whose unofficial motto is “Death to America”, I don’t have a problem with America finding out about it using any means at its disposal.
It’s great if you live in a country that respects those rights, and I hope that you do. But it’s not my job or the job of the United States government to guarantee or enforce them. Our obligation is to protect American citizens, whether or not we protect the rights of others is a matter of policy. I don’t think you want the USA to start being the enforcer of free speech and due process worldwide, do you??
No, I would not. But I don’t believe the OP made any reference to “CIA death squads”. If I missed that part, please point it out to me.
Was it wrong for the US to be reading Japanese messages in the 1930’s??
Let me ask you the question that I have also asked Zathras. Was it “compatible with democracy” for the United States to read Japan’s coded messages, and for Britain to read Germany’s, before war had been declared??
How do you like them Freedom Fries?
Seriously, though. I think there’s a significant difference between spying on foreign governments and spying on domestic or foreign private citizens. Governments, both our own and others should be and must be spied on constantly. Private citizen should be protected from spying, prying, manipulation (a-la the CIA) and wiretapping unless there is demonstrable good reason. And with an ally government, we should trust that ally to investigate their own citizens where we have a concern. Of course, we’ll be spying on that government to see how well they are addressing the problem, but still…
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Did you bother to read my comment in full before jumping in with this?
Everything in my comment had to do with the CIA and NSA, which were created after WWII. I had nothing to say about secret intelligence prior to or during WWII.
But I can say that during and after WWII, the OSS (and then the CIA) started fucking heavily with Italian democracy to make sure only the right kind of candidates got elected (hope that’s not too subtle for you). That is, this “society of men” decided for themselves that the Italian people were not capable of choosing their own government, and that US secret intelligence must install the right form of government for the Italian people.
So I’m not taking a particular position on whether the two particular incidences you mention – the sort of conventional spycraft that has been practiced for thousands of years – are incompatible with democracy.
I’m saying that intelligence as it’s been practiced ever since seems very likely to be incompatible with democracy. Now are you going to address any developments subsequent to WWII, or are you stuck on those two tired examples?
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No one asked you to “protect” or “enforce” anything. I was asking you to “respect” it, as in not actively taking away hose rights.
You don’t have to expend any effort to keep people from murdering me, either, and you don’t have to protect my property. But you damn well have a moral obligation to not murder me, not steal from me, and not conspire with the criminals in my town to do so.
Glad to hear that. I wasn’t referring to the OP, I was just checking. Given the blatant disregard that US foreign policies have towards some of my fundamental rights, and given your support for that position because “Our obligation is to protect American citizens”, I thought it prudent to ask whether that disregard is limited to my right to privacy and my right to democratic government, or whether it extended to my right to life as well.
Go spy on dictatorships all you want. And on countries you already consider your enemies. Just don’t be surprised when they think you’ve been acting in a hostile manner to them.
So what are you going to do to the people who do the actual spying for those countries? Are you going to throw them in prison when they’ve done nothing wrong? So, next time you catch a spy in the US, put them in a first-class flight back home and ask them to come back for vacation some day.
It’s a real thing that has only ever served victors and superpowers. Want to see International Law in inaction (not a typo)? Look at what happens when the Russians and Americans had disputes during the Cold War, or even presently. I have zero interest in International Law as a savior of anyone. If Hitler had won, international law would probably look very much the same, the people punished being one of the few differences. Look at international law’s biggest failure, in the Middle East, and tell me that it counts for shit.
Asking people to be beholden to International Law is asking for them to let powerful nations step on their necks and be okay with it: Because “law.” Never has any system of law existed where the maxim, “might makes right” been more apt.
Oh boo-hoo, a powerful nation-state got its feelings hurt by a more powerful nation-state. I don’t know, it sounds like there is plenty of sympathy for the Devil when it happens to not be the particular and familiar American one.
… .but mainly because the victors and superpowers have often violated it as soon as it stopped serving them. Due to the very same attitude of “Our obligation is to protect [insert favorite superpower here] citizens” that I’ve been arguing against.
So consequently, there should be nothing wrong with calling on victors and superpowers to stick to it for a change.
And anything happening in Italy barely holds a candle to the ruthless history of North American meddling in South American politics and democracy. “Look, but Don’t Touch” would seem to be a valuable rule for espionage policy.
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