The spying diplomats and their staff engage in isn’t legal either. I’m not arguing that it’s legal, I’m pointing out that everyone does it in spite of that fact.
The question was “is this illegal?” The answer is, obviously, “Yes!” And your response to that is “wha! I think he’s doing it too!”?
Shift the goal posts much? Not only are you shifting the goal posts, you’re shifting them to the most childish position possible.
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I believe he was asking whether the NSA’s actions in this case were illegal in the US. I don’t think there’s really any question that spies are breaking the law in other countries by spying on them.
Last time I checked Toronto was still part of Canada, and Canada was still not-the-US.
Yeah. Like I said, they’re violating Canadian law by spying on people in Canada. That wasn’t his question/assertion though. He was saying it was legal/their job to spy on foreign countries. You’re both correct.
I admit, I did not think they were letting foreign countries come onto our land and spy on us. I figured those foreign spies where doing it without the PM’s knowledge or consent. Call me crazy but I sorta thought protecting its citizens from foreign interests was one of the primary rolls of the government.
Also, I thought we were done with spying on our own citizens. I thought the hippies showed what a waste of time and resources it was - but apparently the Americans were just waiting for their chance to do it again.
Yeah, except both (if not all MI[integer] agencies have been shown to be incredibly inbred, stupid, abusive, and incompetent.
States spying on each other and states spying on their citizens isn’t the same. One’s really universal and important and morally defensible. The other isn’t, at least not in a democracy.
This latest news is about the former, not the latter, and I don’t think you should lump it all together.
Oh yes, granted. But that separation shows how - in principle, if not practice - counter intelligence could be conducted without the need to bug Merkel’s phone, or offensively spy on everyone at the G20. For example.
Except that “states spying on each other” has rapidly devolved into “states spying on all of each other’s citizens.”
Oh, and spying on everyone at the G20, or on Petrobras, or the leaders of friendly and allied nations, is NOT universal, and it is NOT important. Whether it’s morally defensible is between you and your conscience, although you’ve already made it abundantly clear where your conscience leads you.
I agree with you on the complexity of the issue, and on the basic morality of spying.
Thing is though, that’s not really whats in question here, is it? This is actually what I mean about a straw man argument, in practice, if every country has spies, this should balance itself out. I don’t have a solution for this, so I wont offer an opinion on it either. But that’s not whats at the heart of the Snowden revelations either.
The heart of the matter is that the NSA has obtained some very broad powers for spying, has increased its infrastructure and personnel, has transgressed peoples privacy beyond what they have been allowed to consent and done so right under their nose, has lied to lawmakers and ostensibly has no oversight or tested legal framework to engage in its activities. All in the name of fighting terrorism/sts.
There’s a lot of people who, while they don’t like it, are willing to turn a blind eye to this because they believe this will keep them safe. They still TRUST the NSA and the goverment to act in good faith on their behalf.
The heart of the matter is that these powers are being used for something other than fighting the bad guys. And the only way that this can be squared, legally, ethically and morally with what the intelligence comunity has allowed us to know, and how they’ve convinced us to allow them to act without regard to law is that they now consider you and me and everybody in the whole world the bad guys.
The TL;DR:
Spying as an activity and as a necessity of the realpolitik is not at question here.
What I question is the indiscriminate targeting and the worldview that allows this to continue without a legal and ethical framework.
I realize that the various three-letter agencies are going to use every excuse and technicality possible, but I’m pretty sure that using a foreign government to spy on your own citizens is still spying on your own citizens.
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And yet, hundreds were arrested in Toronto just for protesting openly at G20?
Oh, this is not even close to being done yet! UK and Canada may be the US’s traditional besties - but…got a feeling much more will be revealed as this this keeps on unraveling. Thing’s turned into a freaking millipede!
I miss Gerald Ford soooo much just about now! So undramatic. So boring. So, “Huh?” One has to actually think about it just to remember which party ran him. At least his legacy was just a detox center. Not earth-shattering. Not world-changing. Just…useful. And unharmful. Who knew?
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Regarding “high-level discussion of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability”, yeah, that’s pretty much what I think. Also regarding patent treaties, copyright agreements, trade agreements in general, all of this should be open to public discussion and debate, and policy making should be transparent. In real time.
“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson when closing down Yardley’s ‘Black Chamber’ in 1929.
If you spy on everyone all the time it means you are paranoid. Yes, even paranoids can have real enemies. But paranoia is a mental illness. On a personal level it means living a sad, lonely and ultimately wasted life. On the level of nation states? Too scary to extrapolate.
This is the cold war race for nuclear supremacy all over again, and just as dangerous.
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Exactly. It is apparently legal for the CIA to assassinate people in various parts of the world. That doesn’t make it legal in those parts of the world where it actually happens. And it certainly doesn’t make it moral or just.
If you have a secret, unaccountable agency spying on foreign leaders to enrich some other secretive, unaccountable corporations, then you have a recipe for trouble on so many levels it is terrifying.
I don’t think Neuromancer was supposed to be a guidebook.
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You know, I’ve actually thought about this. too. I am no longer together with my now ex-girlfriend, but even at the height of our problems, I never thought it would be ok for me to spy on her — not just because I thought it would be inappropriate, but the paranoia would be mind-destroying. I didn’t even like looking on her Facebook page. It was too weird.
Granted, security issues on a geo-political scale are different from my personal life, but I’ve definitely wondered at the mental damage on a governmental scale that almost limitless spying abilities could cause.
It’s interesting how many people take the position that everyone is always spying on everyone else so that makes it all ok. Point… missed.
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