[cherdano]

blackshoe, on 2013-October-26, 07:49, said:

Okay, I can't prove it, so it's opinion. But neither that nor your view makes me wrong.

Maybe that makes me sound naive, but I would be quite surprised if Germany was spying on government officials of its major European allies, and shocked if it went to the extent of tapping phones of their heads of governments.

Just to give an indication: the budget of the Bundesnachrichtendienst is public, at 460 million euros per year. It roughly compares to NSA+CIA. The CIA annual budget is 5 billions according to one of the leaks, and the NSA budget is secret, but estimated at 10 billions.

Meanwhile, from what I can tell the BND repeatedly has had more informed takes on Arabic countries than the CIA. Suggests to me that they are focussing their resources differently.

[Aberlour10]

Mr Snowden is a man of merit not only for this what he is already showed to the world, but either for that what he still keeps secret.
Obama's administration is so not in the position to lie in this affair, they say either truth or keep silent ( mostly). Every single lie could
provoke that another "jewel" from Snowdens collection will find the way to the world press and nail the lie.

[Trinidad]

kenberg, on 2013-October-26, 07:19, said:

Help me out here. Is it a settled matter that the intercepts were for economic reasons or had economic consequences? If so, I totally agree with all of the criticism. The reason for all of this spying is to deal with (I believe real) threats to security.

There are negotiations going on between the US and the EU about a free trade treaty. The USA has been spying on the meetings of the EU delegation. As a result they knew the EU negotiation strategy, before the EU leaders knew it. I don't think there were many terrorists among the EU delegation.

Now, it seems that phones of 35 European leaders, including Angela Merkel, have been tapped. One may have opinions on Angela Merkel, but I think it takes a very lose interpretation of the phrase "threat to the US security" to identify her as one.

kenberg, on 2013-October-26, 07:19, said:

The reason for all of this spying is to deal with (I believe real) threats to security.

After 9/11, the EU countries have literally opened their doors to the USA, to help them in identifying threats to the US security. That's what friends are for. The NSA knows that I call my mother every Friday evening. (They aren't allowed to know something like that about you.) When I call on Saturday instead, they can infer that I have been doing something else on Friday. We say that this is fine, if they can use these data to identify terrorist activity.

We are co-operating with the USA to have them tap phones when they have grounds to believe there is a threat (e.g. from all these phone and email data). But I really doubt that a German authority agreed to tap Angela Merkel's phone.

kenberg, on 2013-October-26, 07:19, said:

Any other use, whether directly planned or as a convenient by-pruduct, shows egregious lack of judgment. It is not just morally wrong it is, what is perhaps worse, incredibly stupid. Shooting ourselves in the foot wouldn't cover it, other parts of the anatomy come to mind.

I obviously agree.

Rik

[ggwhiz]

China may be the elephant in the room.

Their cyber hacking has probably been mostly industrial and if I'm not mistaken they came up with stealth technology that can only have been jump started this way but could well lead to the means to monkey with our power grid or cell communications since they are winning or going after contracts to provide many of the key components..... If they don't already have it.

A defensive capability is necessary and it is no surprise that the secrecy surrounding it would lead to abuse. Effective oversight would be great but cannot be public knowledge and I have no idea what that would look like but I guess we will find out.

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2013-October-26, 11:48, said:

Now, it seems that phones of 35 European leaders, including Angela Merkel, have been tapped. One may have opinions on Angela Merkel, but I think it takes a very lose interpretation of the phrase "threat to the US security" to identify her as one.

Isn't the meat of the Snowden revelation that the NSA has flipped the spying model around? Instead of identifying specific threats and tapping them, they tap everything they can and use software to search it, looking for evidence of possible threats.

[PassedOut]

Article in the Washington Post: Obama didn’t know about surveillance of U.S.-allied world leaders until summer, officials say

Quote

White House officials said Obama was not told about the extent of the world leader surveillance program before this summer because briefings are tailored to the president’s priorities. Iran, China, counterterrorism and other concerns ranked ahead of an accounting of intelligence collected about leaders of allied nations such as Germany, the officials said.

They said the issue came up only after news reports of NSA spying in Brazil and in Mexico, among other countries. Obama asked for information on what exactly the agency was doing in those allied countries and in others.

The review and briefings to Obama on the first findings began soon after. His decision to curtail the program was disclosed late Sunday by the Wall Street Journal.

The latest revelations have sparked new outrage over NSA activities, particularly in Europe, which was already fuming at the clandestine collection of communications data. The breadth of the anger at U.S. prying, and the degree to which Obama is seen as responsible, may have been summed up by a rare English headline on the opinion page of the French daily Le Monde on Monday. “No You Can’t,” it reads, a reference to the 2008 Obama campaign slogan and to French ire over his actions since.

I find it disturbing in many ways to learn that this went on without the knowledge of the president of the US nor of the congressional oversight committees. This situation exemplifies bad management in both the executive branch and the intelligence agencies.

[blackshoe]

I am not convinced that Obama didn't know. In my view this administration will say anything to take the heat off him.

OTOH, as secretive as the NSA is, maybe they "forgot" to tell the people in charge what they were doing.

[mycroft]

I am not convinced that the President didn't know. Possibly that the President didn't understand what was being told him in all of the "non-lie answers" that seem to be SOP around now. Don't care, either; just because the sign's not on the desk any more doesn't mean it don't stop there.

Having said that, keeping secrets and "need to know" is a hard habit to learn, and a hard habit to break even when the law requires it; and there are several layers between the top and the problem. Add to that the comments about "there's a procedure, you don't go outside the chain" - "yeah, and the procedure involves burying it, and the reporter, and keepin' on truckin'" (or cupboards, disused lavatories, and leopards, perhaps) that don't surprise me in the slightest, and it's very reasonable that "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful" (to quote The Plan - language warning if you've never seen it and go searching) by the time it gets anywhere near the Oval Office.

And it's not just bureaucrats - the whole government has been playing the mushroom game with the public for 50 years; it's just now becoming more obvious than before that the rot has been seeping inside (but Yes, Minister was from 1980). Of course, all the arguments that secret laws ruled secretly in secret courts would lead to people breaking those, because after all, who would notice...are coming home to roost.

I don't give the President the blame, necessarily; but it's his responsibility to lead the cleanup. And I very much doubt he will. And in these matters, the only difference I see between D and R is that "it's legal because we say it is" has been replaced with "we won't do it after you catch us" - so I expect worse, not better, with a change.

[blackshoe]

I read an article today that claims that Obama's problem is that he was abused as a child, and so he needs to control everything. I dunno about that, but it would explain a lot if it were true.

[1eyedjack]

I have no doubt that the Europe is spying on the USA every bit as much as the reverse.

[kenberg]

1eyedjack, on 2013-October-30, 02:49, said:

I have no doubt that the Europe is spying on the USA every bit as much as the reverse.

Probably they are not tapping Obama's phone, but whether that is dure to restraint or lack of the technical ability to do so may be open to question.

I believe ins science, technology, progress, all that stuff, and it happens and will continue to happen whether I believe in it or not. Whether we are speaking of atomic weaponry, genetic engineering, or cybertechnology there are opportunities and there dangers. We need to formulate some principles.While I realize that security and economics are niter-linked, it would appeal to me to try to de-link them for the purposes of cyber-spying. It's going to be tough.

My guess is that the next 9-11 will not be planes into buildings, it will be some sort of very substantial cyber attack. I gather that we already have done something along these lines in disrupting Iran's nuclear program. What goes around... Anyway, it's the world we live in and we have to live in it.

Listening in on Angela Merkel's cell phone is over the top. But how did we even get in that neighborhood? In my youth, 1984 was in the distant future, not the past. I see that the NSA's Alexander asserts that some of the intelligence gathering that caused such a flap a while back was actually a NATO operation or operations by individual NATO countries and shared with us. (I don't think he claims it was NATO bugging Merkel though.) Exact details are vague, but it would be naive to think that we are the only ones engaged in electronic surveillance at a very advanced and extensive level.

For starters, it's always good to acknowledge reality. Reality is that we have lots and lots of electronic eavesdropping, and, I believe, some very substantial electronic dangers. How to handle this is not clear, but simply accepting "Trust us, we're the good guys" probably isn't enough.

Henry Stimson, back in the 1930s, supposedly said that gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail. That could be the definition of wishful thinking. But we are just getting too damn good at it, and we have to bring it under some sort of control.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-October-30, 07:08, said:

Henry Stimson, back in the 1930s, supposedly said that gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail. That could be the definition of wishful thinking.

Or it could be a reflection of a change in the concept of "gentlemen".

[barmar]

barmar, on 2013-October-24, 23:56, said:

There's spying going on here? I'm shocked!

Heard someone on NPR yesterday make the same analogy. I don't know whether it was the commentator himself, or if he was quoting an official.

[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2013-October-29, 12:48, said:

I am not convinced that Obama didn't know. In my view this administration will say anything to take the heat off him.

OTOH, as secretive as the NSA is, maybe they "forgot" to tell the people in charge what they were doing.

To me it is a situation where either alternative is eminently plausible. The president and his administration lie about what he/they did/did not know? Sure, I can believe that. Career intelligence workers consider fully informing 4- or 8-year presidents to be nonessential? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.

[PassedOut]

billw55, on 2013-October-30, 13:41, said:

To me it is a situation where either alternative is eminently plausible. The president and his administration lie about what he/they did/did not know? Sure, I can believe that. Career intelligence workers consider fully informing 4- or 8-year presidents to be nonessential? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.

I remember as a youth being shocked to learn that president Eisenhower had plainly lied about the U-2 spy plane shot down by the Soviet Union. Until then, I had truly believed that the lies always came from the other direction. I remember recalibrating my thinking on the matter then and there.

Even now, if I find that someone in business has lied to me, I'm done with that person. Forever.

[mike777]

I can understand being against spying, but understand wanting to gather information, policy positions, and wanting to understand political leaders and their nonpublic objectives. Let us just not call it spying but a systematic method of data collection.


Even Germany, France, Spain and the Brits must be for that assuming they have the resources and money to spend to get it.

[barmar]

PassedOut, on 2013-October-30, 13:55, said:

Even now, if I find that someone in business has lied to me, I'm done with that person. Forever.

It's usually relatively easy to take your business to their competitor. Harder to do that with governments.

And if everyone lies, you're just trading the devil you know for the devil you don't know.

[PassedOut]

barmar, on 2013-October-30, 14:16, said:

It's usually relatively easy to take your business to their competitor. Harder to do that with governments.

And if everyone lies, you're just trading the devil you know for the devil you don't know.

Yes, governments are different, and so is family...

[blackshoe]

There is a very interesting discussion of trust in, of all places, John Ringo's novel The Last Centurion. Basically, there are two kinds of trust: general trust and familial trust. In a general trust society, you tend to trust people until they prove untrustworthy. In a familial trust society, you trust family, and no one else. Ringo gives an example: your neighbor asks to borrow your lawnmower. You're from a general trust society, so you lend it to him. If he's from a general trust society, he'll give it back when he's done with it, or if he doesn't, he will when you ask him for it. If he breaks it, he'll pay for that. If he's from a familial trust society, though, he won't give it back when he's done with it, and when you ask him for it, he'll tell you he lent it to his cousin on the other side of town. As for getting it back, forget it. And if he breaks it, well, too bad. In effect, as far as he's concerned, you're not family, and he's not family to you, and so if you're dumb enough to loan him your lawnmower, as far as he's concerned you gave it to him, and he can do what he wants with it. The US is mostly a general trust society (though I suspect that may be changing). Non-western societies are mostly familial trust.

I suspect the concept is applicable at the level of international relations, too.

[PassedOut]

Aberlour10, on 2013-October-26, 11:32, said:

Mr Snowden is a man of merit not only for this what he is already showed to the world, but either for that what he still keeps secret.
Obama's administration is so not in the position to lie in this affair, they say either truth or keep silent ( mostly). Every single lie could
provoke that another "jewel" from Snowdens collection will find the way to the world press and nail the lie.

Yes, Snowden has put a spotlight on what has been going on in many places: Edward Snowden papers unmask close technical cooperation and loose alliance between British, German, French, Spanish and Swedish spy agencies

Quote

The German, French, Spanish and Swedish intelligence services have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years in close partnership with Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency.

The bulk monitoring is carried out through direct taps into fibre optic cables and the development of covert relationships with telecommunications companies. A loose but growing eavesdropping alliance has allowed intelligence agencies from one country to cultivate ties with corporations from another to facilitate the trawling of the web, according to GCHQ documents leaked by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The files also make clear that GCHQ played a leading role in advising its European counterparts how to work around national laws intended to restrict the surveillance power of intelligence agencies.

The German, French and Spanish governments have reacted angrily to reports based on National Security Agency (NSA) files leaked by Snowden since June, revealing the interception of communications by tens of millions of their citizens each month. US intelligence officials have insisted the mass monitoring was carried out by the security agencies in the countries involved and shared with the US.

The US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, suggested to Congress on Tuesday that European governments' professed outrage at the reports was at least partly hypocritical. "Some of this reminds me of the classic movie Casablanca: 'My God, there's gambling going on here,' " he said.

Yes, we in the US have got plenty of work to do to get these intrusions under control. But we are not alone in that...