Except that I’m not even entirely sure there’s a “don’t spy on me” treaty or legal obligation. I might be wrong there, but generally espionage law is specific to the individuals engaged in it, since a country’s local laws can’t extend to obligate a nation-state.
Everything I have said in my posts refers specifically to what wysinwyg correctly terms “conventional spycraft”, as did the OP. And yes, I find that compatible with democracy.
If your position is that: because the United States has done some egregious things in the name of “intellgence” (and I am sure that I would agree with you on many things you can cite), we should do penance by refraining from the sort of conventional spycraft in which every other nation in the world indulges (to the limits of their budgets and technological capabilities) then we will disagree, although I hope cordially.
I support your free speech right to call on them as loudly and as long as you please.
Indeed. That’s why I actually prefer to talk about “values” in international relations to talking about “international law”. Building an international legal framework that reflects decent people’s values is the “project” I was talking about. And I call on decent citizens of democratic nations to hold their governments to some values beforehand.
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This one actually counts against you. There was a four-person meeting of CIA bureaucrats in the 60’s to decide whether Israel could establish settlements on the west bank. James Angleton, directory of counterintelligence, argued that they should not but was overruled. As much as you want to blame diplomacy for the middle east clusterfuck, US secret intelligence probably has a lot more to do with it.
(Angleton is also probably primarily responsible for Israel getting the bomb in the first place.)
I never actually argued for this, and I think subsequent comments have clarified that I initially referred to “secret intelligence” in the context of the cold war US secret intelligence agencies. Putting words in my mouth doesn’t strike me as particularly “cordial”, but to each his own.
So you want a world where countries don’t spy on each other, but don’t have a word to say on it, until one country in particular does it in a manner that’s effective? Because it’s fairly rampant, and I suspect that no country would agree to that particular value if asked to be beholden to it. Why? It literally has no value to you, even if you suck at espionage, because the rewards of even sucky espionage are still quite decent compared to the risk of being completely in the dark.
Wait? You think that the situation is better with settlements on the West Bank? Or am I missing something?
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I respect your voice and opinion, so the following insult is 50% comedy and 50% using comedy to make a point.
You are part of the problem, not the solution. Let the grown ups deal with situations like these.
I should probably work in ‘man child’ somehow, but I can’t make it work.
If you want a reasoned discussion, let me know. I will even apologize for this comment.
Fair enough. I apologize for the implication.
I’m not insulted, but unless these nation-states become part of the same country, I’m utterly baffled by what would be the alternative. Again, being in the dark is generally considered, as a matter of human psychology and possibly game theory, less preferable to being spied on.
I may have spoke a tad hastily, it appears France has specifically been excluded from anti spying treaties. Probably cause we need to steal their recipes for coq au vin and beef bourguignon.
We do have toothless treaties to not spy on france, but the repercussions of breaking said treaty are basically:
So I rescind my comments specifically in regards to France, but not the larger picture where we have broken binding treaties.
You’re missing something.
Angleton argued that the situation would be better without the settlements, but was overruled by a colleague in the CIA (name is escaping me).
My point was that the west bank settlement decision was not made in a diplomatic context, but rather in a meeting between a handful of US spies behind closed doors. And that, therefore, perhaps international law and diplomacy do not deserve the whole flaming mess that is middle eastern ethnic conflict thrown at their metaphorical feet – that the unaccountable bureaucrats in the US spy agencies deserve much, perhaps most, of the blame.
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No additional penance required; but let me observe the following:
- Governments are usually less decent then the average citizen, as far as international politics are concerned.
- Saying that you’re OK with what everyone is doing puts you, as a citizen, on the same level as everyone else’s government.
- So in turn your government will get worse - it’s a democracy, after all! And, in order to keep up, everyone else’s.
So basically, I’m asking for a basic willingness to improve the things that are bad about international politics. We (=the whole planet) have come a long way since 1800, but we have further to go.
I don’t think it is any more. The world is becoming smaller.
Consider the case of the US bugging EU offices and at the same time negotiating TTIP. The representatives of both sides are negotiating a treaty that actually changes local laws and regulations and sets others in stone, i.e. making it very hard for one side to democratically change some laws. In the name of free trade, both sides are signing away some of their democratic rights for the foreseeable future. Anything that distorts these negotiations and might make it unfair is an attack on my fundamental democratic rights.
Or consider two fictional neighboring democratic countries, A-land and B-land. Now, in both countries, there are two big political parties, the Big-Endian and the Little-Endian party. Assume that in A-land, the Big-Endian party is in power, and in B-land, the Little-Endian party. Would it be OK, and entirely compatible with democracy, for the Big-Endian government of A-land to spy on the Little-Endian government of B-land, find out all their dirty little secrets and pass that information on to their friends in the Big-Endian party of B-land?
Or consider two fictional neighboring democratic countries. Is it compatible with democracy for the left-wing government of A-land to spy on the right-wing government of B-land, and then pass the information on to their friends in B-land’s left-wing opposition (or the other way round)?
If both sides consider it OK to spy on the biggest opposition party in other countries as well, things will of course become worse, with two like-minded governments able to keep each other in power by spying on (each other’s) opposition.
No, I want a world where democratic countries don’t spy on each other, but don’t have a word to say on it, until one of the “good guys” gets caught. Because it’s pointless to tell the bad guys to stop, and I can’t ask French citizens to stop their government from spying on the Austrian government, because I have no proof. In fact, I don’t even know for sure whether they actually bother to wiretap our Chancellor’s office (he never acts, and he hardy ever has anything smart to say, so why bother?).
About the effectiveness: Sure. If everyone tries in vain and succeeds only occasionally, it’s much less of a problem than if one particular country is excessively good at it. Of course, the US has as much incentive to stop as the strongest schoolyard bully has to stop collecting other kids’ lunch money. That’s why I keep talking about values rather than about consequences.
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If the nations of the world could be neatly sorted into a bucket of “good guys” and a bucket of “bad guys”, what you say would be a lot more reasonable to me.
Didn’t someone try that once?
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Nice catch, and a fat lot of good it did him.
Until recently, we weren’t supposed to know the roles the Three Letter Agencies played.
But, very broadly
NSA: Signals Intelligence-- eavesdropping
CIA: Human intelligence–getting people to betray their country in various useful ways, pretending to be someone you’re not
NRO: reconnaissance-- spy satellites
NGA: geospatial intelligence-- they make maps
And yes, the CIA does more than just collect and analyze intelligence. But frankly, those covert missions aren’t really part of these revelations, are they? Technically, they aren’t supposed to work as rival agencies, so painting one agency as blameworthy and one that’s blameless and pure ignores the basic reality-- the United States has spies. It also engages in mass surveillance,
The fact that it has spies is understandable. The fact that it engages in mass surveillance is deplorable. France’s leaders are legitimate targets of espionage. The surveillance of large swathes of the population, be they American, or French is much less so.
When the CIA tortures, they don’t torture as the CIA, they torture as agents of the United States. It would make no difference if they were employed by the Treasury Department, or NASA, or the Department of Agriculture, Changing that policy requires leadership at the highest levels, not a recognition of “oh yeah, that’s the rogue agency.”
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The basic information about what the various intelligence agencies do has been public for decades. I first read about the NSA in David Kahn’s “The Codebreakers” (originally published in 1967 and a FANTASTIC book about the entire history of cryptography and cryptanalysis).
That quibble aside, I agree with just about all of your post.
I mentioned that concept of “good guys” once to explain why I hold the US to a higher standard than some other countries that might have been recently caught spying on European heads of state. That doesn’t require any sorting into two neatly labelled buckets, I just need one bucket for “mostly friendly democratic nations”, one bucket for “ISIS and North Korea” and one big bucket for “unsure”.
None of my other arguments rely on any sorting in “good guys” and “bad guys”.
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