This is the understood and expected function of the NSA, isn't it? Collecting signals intelligence from foreign sources? Does anyone honestly believe the Germans aren't regularly trying to figure out ways to listen to American officials' communications?
I find the NSA's domestic spying to be appalling... but this is the sort of thing everyone knew the NSA was responsible for since its inception.
You know, I've been a big defender of the role for signals intelligence, including NSA's hand in such.
But there is a lot to be said for discretion, especially when you're talking about the top echelon of our NATO allies! Even my defenses of NSA have been predicated on the actual need for intelligence collection. This has the corollary that collection without any use should not be sanctioned.
So absent some evidence of our allies conspiring against us in things like WTO negotiations, I don't see a justification for such phone tapping. Even though it's probably legal, was it really the best use of NSA resources? What actionable intel could they have hoped to gain? We're not talking about Medvedev or Putin's phones after all.
Certainly we have known that the NSA has the capability to tap into many international communications circuits, but we've also "known" that such taps are predicated on the national security interests of the United States. So now the question: Was pushing far beyond the envelope worth it? Was causing a boatload of whistleblowers (not just Snowden) to form still beneficial to the U.S. in the end?
I would judge that it was not, at this point. What I'm interested in knowing is when these taps of allied leadership's telephones actually stopped? Specifically, was it only after Snowden's leaks? Did Obama put a stop to it? Sometime in between? All we know at this point is that the U.S. isn't doing it now, and pinky swears not to do so in the future.
As far as the Germans doing it to us... maybe. But the NSA is also responsible for ensuring that they can't break our comms even if we do assume they're trying. But maybe I'm naive but I honestly think they are probably focused more on Russia, Islamists and other threats to Germany, than on what Obama is saying to Boehner.
All we know at this point is that the U.S. isn't doing it now...
Actually, we don't know that - we only know they said they're not. Given that Clapper flat out lied about surveillance at the start of all this that isn't worth much.
Sure, but by that definition we don't "know" anything we didn't directly observe ourselves (and even that is at least suspect), and I can't do much by going philosopher-style on what we really know or not.
And that's the rub for them, right? They've totally lost all credibility when they say "Trust us, we're reasonable" or "Actually, we're not doing that". We can only make decisions or form opinions when we have a reasonable basis on which to do so, and why would anyone believe them now?
your comment is calibrating, because it shows that there is a limit to how much privacy invasion the average american will stand for. Thank you for being so forthcoming.
I don't care about Merkel's privacy. But I do care about the fact that she cares about her privacy, and that Germans care about the privacy of their elected Chancellor. Both of those feed into the relationship between Germany and the USA, and that relationship is important enough that the NSA should not put it at risk (or be allowed to be able to put it at risk).
Being a German I only care for Mrs. Merkels privacy because that was the first (and only) moment, when she got upset.
Having her 80 million citizens spied upon by the NSA was no reason to issue a statement. Or to do her job and protect the German people from harm, as it is stated clearly in our constitution as the job of our leaders.
On the contrary. Before anything was really on the table, they declared the topic closed.
So the moment she herself is being spied upon is the moment she (at last) wakes up? Well, really? That does seem quite a little bit egoistic to me, doesn't it.
Isn't every citizen of this country worth the same? Has the same rights to be protected from arbitrary spying?
Well the Germans reelected her with great majority. And the NSA spying is really no big deal for most of my fellow citizens. They just don't care. So the answer to my question above is probably "No".
They just have this "I have nothing to hide, so who cares" mentality, that is so dangerous, so dumb and sheep-like.
Same thing occurred to me. It is so telling, and yet so sad that our leaders care so much for their own privacy, yet so little for that of others, even those that they supposedly represent & protect.
What can we do? We are being abused, yet we are powerless to stop it.
I don't think you will find the path away from pervasive surveillance in the G10 nations. They all have their own well-equipped secret police.
At some point though, some head of state will calculate that the only way to win is to not play the game, and make policy that defends against all surveillance, because the value of their own surveillance is low enough to do without.
These are close, close allies though. We aren't talking about North Korea. We are talking about countries who have deep diplomatic and military ties.
The reason why you wouldn't do something like this, is because there was a damn good chance that it would leak out, mortally wounding your relationship with these people.
Secondly, the utility of this particular SIGINT program is highly questionable. What is the ROI on something like this? Germany is not plotting against the United States. What scenario would they use info for?
That's not how alliances and trust work. In this context, suspicion is a form of accusation - and it is wholly inappropriate and wrongful for the US to accuse Germany or France of plotting against it's national security interests.
Otoh, what this establishes is that in fact, the US is quite willing to consider actions that may damage the national security interests of its allies.
In short, this sort of spying is a significant disruptor of any sort of lasting trust between nations. If everyone behaves like the US, there are no "allies", only temporarily convenient partners who may be betrayed at any point.
> Otoh, what this establishes is that in fact, the US is quite willing to consider actions that may damage the national security interests of its allies.
That's long since been established. Hell, the Pentagon has plans for an invasion of Canada.
The US doesn't need to spy on the German chancellor to be certain of this. There is no conceivable plot that Germany could be involved in that could damage the US, and both countries know this. Same with the UK, Israel, France, etc.
The EU doesn't import US beef because of banned chemicals used to raise US cows. Imagine if the EU implemented more stringent requirements on, say, GM foods. Or other livestock. Banned the pesticides used in California Oranges, etc.
Trade agreements, tariffs, standards and sanctions - there are many ways for European countries to damage the US economically.
Economic espionage, sabotaging foreign trade talks which aren't judged to be in the interests of the US, gaining the upper hand in negotiations. The potential utility of this sort of SIGINT is high, if you are willing to engage in amoral behaviour on a massive scale, treating allies as enemies.
So the question it raises is, why were they collecting this information? You can be sure they would not collect it for no reason.
But we are not at war with everyone, and those countries involved (like Germany, France and Italy) are our partners, economical and military partners. I can accept doing SIGINT on non-friendly countries and organizations but is it correct to spy on your own people and partner countries?
Germany and France do it to us. They're likely just not as talented at it. One way nation states stay allies is knowing, at least to some level, that the public statements match the private.
>but is it correct to spy on your own people and partner countries?
It's rude, but I think to a degree it is acceptable, and probably expected. Friendly countries spy on each other all the time. For one thing, friendly countries might not remain friendly forever.
You know what has millions of people and is entirely unlike an individual human being? A country.
The convenient narratives spun to explain international politics seem entirely lost on people and are being treated as literal relations of how countries behave rather then shorthand.
"China" doesn't act like a person. It doesn't have emotions, moods or opinions like a person does. When we talk about "China thinks this" or "China feels that" we are not describing the moods of a human being, we're not even describing necessarily the aggregate mood of it's government except in so far as we're using a shorthand because we want to talk about trends in policy making or the types of people being appointed as advisers/policy-makers on whichever issue we are actually talking about specifically.
Countries and the people who make them up also form alliances, hate betrayal, and hold grudges. If your country thinks it is acceptable to betray allies, you will soon have no allies. If you say one thing and do another and the gap is wide enough, eventually no other country will believe a word you say, even when you tell the truth.
Alliances between countries are not formed in a rational way just on a specific issue normally, but based on previous actions and previous issues, and old loyalties. To betray those loyalties just means no-one will feel any loyalty to you - that may work in the short-term if you are big enough but long-term it's a terrible strategy.
So in that sense countries are like people, though I agree in many senses they are not.
Alliances are not formed on a specific issue, which is also why they're not broken on intangible issues. This is theatre by Merkel because it plays well with her public. I don't imagine US diplomats are losing any sleep over this.
That's true, but the easiest way not to get caught is to not do it at all.
Presumably spying on friends may be needed someday, but it brings the kind of diplomatic flamefest that should keep such spying restricted to Very Important Things and not just "we'll tap them because their numbers fell in our lap".
To a degree, maybe. But the uproar over these NSA revelations, which has already led to proposed changes to EU law that will have substantial impacts on US businesses, demonstrates that they've gone well past what is considered acceptable.
You know what? Every nation state has my blessing to do a blanket collection of digital communications the moment they don't call me a terrorist for encrypting my email, call the whole thing unwarranted or don't hand over my password.
I think a useful question to ask is whether or not being "partners" means each country is universally willing to put the best interests of the other country first, even when that conflicts with their own best interests. If the answer is no, then intelligence gathering would seem to have at least some role even among allies.
It would be perfectly reasonable for politicians and diplomats in allied countries the world over to express mock outrage at this so they can keep their voters / citizens appeased that they have asserted their sovereignty, while continuing the relationship with the united states. I'm not sure these leaders are as upset as the headlines make out, but I haven't read any transcripts of the discussions.
> Do you routinely monitor the calls, emails and communications of your closest friends and relatives?
No, but I don't do joint military exercises or globally coordinated bank bailouts with them, either. I don't think NATO easily analogized by my Thanksgiving table.
Yes, sort of I do. I check the FB-Pages. ;-) Sorry, but something like this seems to me to be the reason, nobody really cares about NSA spying on him (at least here in Germany).
We all do it. We all give in to our voyeuristic urges. We all "spy" upon our neighbors, spouses, friends and so on. We do not get the scope. We do not know, what it means, if states do this. We do not think about different hierarchical power levels and so on.
We just do Facebook and feel, that it is more or less the same, what the NSA does. At least, that is what was being said, when I asked around.
The big difference is Facebook pages are public, or at least semi-public.
If you go through the e-mail account or texts of a spouse or close friend, you're engaging in a massive breach of trust, and better expect to have them break up with your or refuse to deal with you going forward.
Likewise, the US will now have to face the expectation that US diplomats can not be trusted with any kind of information, including phone numbers that may previously have been considered "safe" to give to allies.
Especially since the document made clear that the NSA did not know all the numbers, hinting that cycling numbers and keeping numbers from US diplomats may still be a viable strategy to reduce the odds of having your calls monitored.
If I was in a position of power now, the first thing I'd do is demand that all senior government officials change numbers, and allocate a wide range of different numbers per person, and allocate one set for the exclusive use for giving to US diplomats and communication that I want the US to pick up, and cycle other numbers frequently and compartmentalise their usage more, since it is clear that the US can not be trusted.
OK; really too few. I am with you there. But less then (felt) 0,1% cared, until "Der Spiegel" broke the news, that our Mutti (OK, Chancelor Merkel)'s phone was spied upon.
So it feels like nobody cares here, when the truth is, that nearly nobody cares.
But herd-immunity will never be reached with this level of care by the German people.
>> Does anyone honestly believe the Germans aren't regularly trying to figure out ways to listen to American officials' communications?
Your statement seems to equate "it's usual to spy" with "it's alright to spy". Spying on close allies only pays off if you are not caught. It's risky to do it and I expect each Nation State weights that in when deciding to do it or not. If the Germans do try to spy on US and they get caught, there will be fallout on relations.
The US got caught spying on several allies. They took the risk. There will be repercussions on diplomatic relations. There will be repercussions on public image and trust.
Apparently from the leaked memo, the intelligence gained didn't really pay off this time around, and since they got caught, all they did was break the trust.
This is the understood and expected function of the NSA
The task of the USG should be to level the actions of its intelligence agencies. If it's ok for the USG to fuck with their allies, then it's the way it is. But don't expect every of its allies to agree with that. There's a difference to spy on everything which moves in Iran/North Korea or France/Germany/you call it. This is making waves in Europe ... I am not sure if that is worth to piss off your close allies.
This might not be getting the big news in the US, but it certainly does in Europe. And if there is only a slight chance that this might affect the opinion people in Europe have about the US(G), everybody in the US should be worried.
Why is relying exclusively on information that's been filtered through a foreign government, possibly with its own agenda, a sensible way to gather intelligence?
Its how the US expects it's allies to behave towards it. Or do foreigners now have every right to assume the US never, ever plays straight and equally massive surveillance budgets should now be turned towards the US by its own allies?
Honest broker or not?
See, its seems to me this is the core of the arrogance accusation the US gets. The US holds its had high as a champion of democracy, truth, justice and the American way. Oh yeah? Really?
We are expected to buy that and treat American as such. Now we know different. American is hostile. All the smiles, hand shakes and slogans, but underneath, not the same story.
Im afraid America is killing its self, cut by cut. The rest of the world is learning what the American dream really means.
Well now you've identified one of the great unsolved problems in asymmetric warfare. How do you know that someone is an enemy without spying on them first?
The most obvious approach would be to wait until someone's given you at least the tiniest hint that they could possibly be planning on attacking you before treating them as a potential enemy.
What kind of legitimate threat would the US government even be watching out for with the German Chancellor? Are they so paranoid that they think the Fourth Reich is just over the horizon, or did Merkel's statement that "Islam is part of us" tip them off that she might be running a terrorist sleeper cell?
I'd like to think that even those who think that it's fine for the state to spy on everyone on the miniscule chance that they might be a terrorist, and even those who think that it's OK to spy on everyone just in case they are planning to commit a crime, would agree that the state shouldn't be spy on people for the purposes of commercial advantage.
And what better way to encourage another country to trust you enough to buy military equipment from you than by spying on their government?
Yeah, even if you're totally appalled by the PRISM NSA scandal, it's hard to get upset when the NSA spies on foreign leaders - which is it's job.
It's really strange when you think about it that even (especially?) friendly countries spy on each other, but there it is. And the funny thing is that if the Germans, or anyone, get upset about it we can just point to their foreign intelligence service and be like, "well, what are those guys doing?" and then they walk sheepishly away.
Humans have a long history of fallings-out between allies, at times in very surprising ways. One way of avoiding this is knowing what your ally is up to.
Given how very SHOCKED!1! German politicians react, one could get the impression that they honestly believed the NSA would only spy on the lower classes.
I find the NSA's domestic spying to be appalling... but this is the sort of thing everyone knew the NSA was responsible for since its inception.