I agree that mass surveillance is bad whether it’s in the US or overseas. That’s not the issue raised by this story though. Here Der Spiegel (The Guardian’s source) revealed that UK intelligence spies on specific individuals, governments and organizations which are neutral to friendly to it. NSA involvement is just assumed, though I’d say it’s a safe assumption that NSA both participated and has its own program. I would argue that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such spying as I can think of examples where the US would have a legitimate interest in knowing what allies are really up to such as:
- allies secretly planning an attack on a third country like in the
Suez Crisis - German companies violating nuclear sanctions against Iran
- France spying on American tech firms
- Airbus using bribery to make sales (until 2000 foreign bribery
was tax deductible in France) - French companies making illegal arm sales to Angola
- pervasive bribery and fraud in a UN-run program
This doesn’t mean there’s no wrongdoing here; spying on the head EU anti-trust official in particular sounds really dodgy. I do think specifics matter though.
