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WikiLeaks reveals the NSA spied on Berlusconi and his closest advisors

181 points by secfirstmd 11y ago

pnathan 11y ago
In news today, the SIGINT branch of the United States government collected signals intelligence on a key public official in another country; in particular, it did this at a moment of crisis, allowing the United States government to have an edge of knowledge in charting its policies.
- duncan_bayne 11y ago
  Yeah I sort of thought that's its legitimate purpose (as opposed to domestic surveillance).
  - pnathan 11y ago
    Yes, this is what it's chartered to do. Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Thus this particular Wikileaks release, and, afaict, a lot of the Wikileaks effort has gone into promulgating that ideological goal. I would note that governmental transparency is pursued by multiple political groups across the US spectrum: police transparency, foreign policy transparency, purchasing transparency, etc. It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances and deep variances of goal within the broader 'transparency' ideal. As for me, I am perfectly content to have the spy game played against heads of state; especially if it keeps down total system instability and human suffering.
    - guelo 11y ago
      Spying is illegal in most countries, including the United States. If an Italian spy were caught here stealing Obama's communications he would be put in jail for a lengthy term. If an American spy were caught in Italy they would also be arrested and sent to jail. This whole concept that it's OK for my country to spy on others is strange and hypocritical. It is not heroic, legal, or moral, to spy on other countries unless there has been a declaration of war.
      - tokenadult 11y ago
        No, the most common treatment of a spy acting under diplomatic cover (and that is the most common kind of spy) is simply to tell the purported diplomat that he may no longer stay in the host country, now being persona non grata. All countries around the world agree that they need to spy on one another and need to agree to be spied on by one another to make sure that diplomatic statements through official channels are verifiable. National leaders have to know the intentions of other national leaders--it would be irresponsible not to try to know. AFTER EDIT: To clarify this point a bit, the world of espionage practice distinguishes "operatives" (nationals-employees of the foreign government, who first of all need a visa status even to be in the host country) from "agents" (nationals of the host country, who often have employment status in some sensitive position in the host country's government or armed forces). Yes, the United States and absolutely every country is harsh in its treatment of its own citizens who act as espionage agents directed by the intelligence operatives of foreign countries. Quite a few of the prisoners in the federal SuperMax prison in Colorado are people like John Walker or Robert Hanssen who were paid by the United States taxpayers to handle secret information with discretion and who were pledged by their terms of employment to not have contacts with foreign intelligence operatives at those operatives' direction. Men like that do hard prison time in any country where their activities are discovered. But the foreign operative usually just ends up expelled from the host country, unless there was something illegal in itself about the foreign operative's presence in the host country.
        qrendel 11y ago
        From the release on the Wikileaks site (https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/ https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/): "The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General."
      - marcoperaza 11y ago
        There are no rules among nation-states. Any that you believe to exist, exist only at the whim of the most powerful states in the system. The only true international law is the law of the jungle. Many argue otherwise, but the minute that the survival of their freedom or prosperity hangs in the balance, they would unleash the most barbarous terrors on their enemy for a chance of victory. A nation that doesn't spy on others is irrational and suicidal. Your enemy will not reciprocate your naivete. They will exploit it and enslave you. A nation that doesn't punish spies (or their masters) caught within its territories is similarly irrational. The fear of death (or imprisonment) makes your enemy cautious and less effective. The only morality in the international system is the morality of your own victory and what you do with it. In victory, you can spread peace, freedom, and prosperity to your heart's content. In defeat, your ideals are worthless.
    - CookieMon 11y ago
      I don't think he believes all spying is always wrong, he believes there is a "non linear effect of leaks on unjust systems of governance". If there's nothing outrageous about the who/why of your spying, you don't have to worry as much about your staff's desire to whistleblow, or the kind of consequences if they do, so you don't have to adopt dysfunctional internal policies trying to prevent leaks. Assange's job is to make leaking in general as safe and easy as possible, so the "secrecy tax" will disproportionately damage the unjust use of secrecy: > "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption." More loosely though he believes in privacy for individuals (a protection for the weak), with transparency for organizations. Spying on states doesn't violate the former, and I imagine in some cases you could argue it aids the latter.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      >Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Let me tell you how to defend against that, because there will always be some of those people. Spy as little as possible, conceal it as much as you can, don't share your spy info to catch drug dealers, in fact, don't use it to prosecute crime at all, use it to stop real terrorist violence in progress and let some other jokers take the credit, use it to fact check diplomatic shenanigans. Spying and policing have zero business together in a free society.
    - EdHominem 11y ago
      > [...] a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong [...] Obviously he doesn't, because he does what many people would consider spying. I suggest that he has a more nuanced view that some spying is bad, and that you might want to consider that his support for it depends on how it serves the people. > It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances [...] Well, actually, no there aren't. Lying to bypass limits on your mandate is a crime, if not treason.
    - vasundhar 11y ago
      Why don't we let the US/ UK Rule the world then ? I hope you understand which division NSA belongs to
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    Yes, spying to promote the interests of the people of the U.S. is legitimate in a world with other states with armies and the occasional bin Laden, etc. That's different from spying to promote the power of the executive, its fave corporations, the spies themselves, their counterparts in other nations, and who knows what else. The government is in theory our employees, and I feel more threatened by these employees who act like our masters than I do by their legitimate targets. Assange's quote in the OP is all about alleged abuses that I as supposed employer would want to hear about: "Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban KiMoon's private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies. We previously published Hillary Clinton orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General's DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN's reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targetted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk."
    - duncan_bayne 11y ago
      > The government is in theory our employees Thought experiment: what would happen if you exercised any discretion in whether to continue employing them, or even how much of your income you pay them?
      - _yosefk 11y ago
        Interestingly, this thought experiment kinda works for company managers, too (try firing the CEO of a company where you're a minority investor.) Perhaps things converge to a state where, regardless of who's the nominal owner (citizens/stockholders/etc.), we are ruled by mostly unaccountable managers.
  - threatofrain 11y ago
    While I agree that the NSA acted as intended, I wish to add with a moderately tangential discussion by saying that organizations ought not be viewed under the lens of their chartered purpose, but rather their function. An organization's function is the set of all its capabilities. We should seek to define the purpose of a state entity by limiting its function via mechanism, rather than by hoping for good people to do the right thing. There is no reliable mechanism by which moral people bubble up to the top of power. I feel glad today that the NSA acted in promotion of American interests, but I feel that is a incidental exercise of its many capabilities, and so my feelings are fickle.
    - pnathan 11y ago
      It's a useful exercise analyzing the actual function of the NSA and comparing it against its charter. Is the NSA doing its chartered job? How well? Is it being effective? Does it have too much actual power? It certain doesn't seem as if it has effective oversight in this matter, based on comments from congresspeople as to the level of information they are given. In this instance, it seems as if the NSA is doing their job. In other instances... doesn't seem like it.
      - threatofrain 11y ago
        I phrased too extremely then. Function should be added as a lens of analysis, but I still think that purpose should not be used in isolation because it leads to discussion with moral expectation, rather than functional expectation.
- Iv 11y ago
  Well for us, European citizens, the shock is not that the NSA tries, it is that it succeeds. And that our officials are surprised to learn about the attempts.
  - adventured 11y ago
    NSA has a budget larger than the combined spying budget of the Eurozone members, and it's renowned for being very aggressive and constantly pursuing technical improvement. Why would you be surprised that NSA succeeds? How would you stop them?
    - vidarh 11y ago
      It's unsurprising that they succeed some of the time. The extent, on the other hand, is another matter.
- belorn 11y ago
  The news is not that US SIGINT commit acts of spying against non-hostile nations, but that US SIGINT is no different from all those other nations which US media villainize when they are caught spying. The day that FOX news no longer talks about russia and china when their spies are caught, those will be the day that everyone else will start ignore news about the NSA.
  - gadders 11y ago
    And here we have Moral Relativism in action... Russia and China are an order of magnitude more oppressive than the US.
    - tobltobs 11y ago
      Isn't your comment a good example for "Moral Relativism" itself?
      - gadders 11y ago
        No. Moral relativism would be saying "everyone is equally good; we shouldn't judge them because they don't believe in democracy; all cultures are equally valid".
        deleted 11y ago
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apsec112 11y ago
Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. The problem is when it starts spying on ordinary citizens.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. Nevertheless, specific instances of spying on allied governments is often irritating to the ally involved, and their citizenry. US citizens are probably less upset about foreign surveillance by the NSA (even if it is directed at allies), OTOH, US citizens aren't the entire audience for news.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    I guess I could be a little more sympathetic if I thought our allies weren't spying on us as well. After all the noise the Germans made about US intelligence services bugging Merkel's phone, it came out that the Germans were doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton when she visited as Secretary of State.
    - mioelnir 11y ago
      Ally is a strong word. Allies would have honored their agreements and removed their occupation force.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Spying on allied governments is very common and immensely useful. It helps do things like ensure coordination of policy. It is, however, incredibly bad form to be caught doing so.
- superpatosainz 11y ago
  Well that's what bothers me too: You have no rights as a non-American person. The NSA could not care less about your privacy. I'm not a terrorist and yet the NSA can do whatever it wants with me, and that's scary.
tetraverse 11y ago
"One thing is certain: what happened in those difficult times was intercepted and transcribed by .. the National Security Agency (NSA), as this interception and other top-secret documents published today by WikiLeaks and our newspaper reveal. " Well it ain't no secret anymore and I wonder at the timing, who at the NSA leaked the documents and what their motivation is.
anonymousDan 11y ago
For me it will be interesting to see if any details come out about what pressure he was put under during the euro crisis behind closed doors. Not too bothered about the NSA spying part in this case. As others have said this is what they're supposed to be doing.
vonklaus 11y ago
Snowden's strategy, or at least whoever managed information for the team, was super smart about the first 12 weeks. They kept the government mostly in yhe dark about the depth of what they knew, and executed s perfect slow burn. The agency went reeling from one disclosure to the next hastily making up lies and then having them disproved in subsequent releases. Obviously there was more to it, however the main point is that the opposite seems to be true now. Even for receptive people, we just know and it is an effective strategy for the govt to habituate people. Unless the facts surrounding an event gave relavent subdata and a narrative can be brought into focus with the new insight, this isn't news it is habituating the public to accept it. I don't want to accept it, but simultaneously it is obvious that as noted in the thread, "SIGINT, is gathering signal intrlligience". So it ends up being a reminder that we have given up s lot, but not bad enough(on the per story basis) to ignite support. Also, I am concerned about the risk we tale decentralizing our data. We may give up the opportunity to have amazing trend analytics and information that may never resurface in the inevitable balkanized system that is to be developed
nickpsecurity 11y ago
They were spying on an allied president that did stuff like this: http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits-worlds-shadiest-politician.html http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits... Let's give NSA a slow clap for spying on crooks for once in their allied SIGINT. That guy makes our politicians look like boy scouts.
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chatmasta 11y ago
Julian Assange has some "big balls." Either he really likes pushing his luck, or his end game is way bigger than anyone realizes. He was just starting to curry the favor of the general public. He was the subject of a prominent biopic, he received a positive resolution from the UN. He has a lot of supporters, but they're not all fully sold on his philosophy. Many of his supporters might consider this leak not in the same spirit as the others. The NSA is doing its job, just like the SIGINT agency of any world power. Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary. As long as one country has SIGINT capabilities, its competitors must match them, even if only for the purpose of defending their sovereignty. As others have said, the NSA spying on foreign public officials is hardly newsworthy or unexpected. If you believe all SIGINT should cease to exist, then this should also not be news to you, because you already believe these SIGINT capabilities exist, by definition of you opposing their existence. So in no case should this news shock you. Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own. (Or perhaps the NSA is behind the whole thing. This is a pretty nice puff piece for them, and they've gotta be on the offensive finding job applicants these days.)
- guelo 11y ago
  Assange is not American so your pro-American-aggression PR perspective probably holds very little sway with someone like him.
- ebf6 11y ago
  > Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own. Or his motives are following the philosophy of the freedom of information, as it had in the past. The or is not exclusive: it's possible that his motivations are both personal and philosophical. But to say that this leak furthers "no agenda but his own" is oddly dismissive of the mission / philosophy behind wikileaks. It's not there to circlejerk people who are already exposed to this kind of information. The philosophy is that more people should have the option to know. If it weren't for projects like wikileaks, it would not be a choice for you to make.
secfirstmd 11y ago
While it's arguable that Berlusconi was a sensible target...How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency? FWIW, I've just started laying out one aspect of this debate and how intelligence operation blowback can affect the perception of neutrality of NGOs working on the ground. This increasingly seems to lead to a rise in deaths of aid workers and many of the people they work to help. E.g Polio in Pakistan. https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents-irish-citizen-working-for-the-un-was-targeted-by-the-nsa-f345b73b73df#.lki1vv63g https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents-i...
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  > How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency? I think spycraft is a bit like logging to ELK, or sending metrics to Graphite/InfluxDB - capture all data you can, analyze later.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    Yeah you're right, neither involve actual people.
- deleted 11y ago
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- argonaut 11y ago
  Corruption. Obviously we're both speculating here, but accountability is a serious problem with NGOs, along with corruption/graft/general-wastefulness. So if the US suspected massive (tens of millions of dollars, or more) corruption, that's a plausible reason. I'm not saying it's likely, just that there are possible reasons out there in the world.
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    I dunno, the US Government had billions of USD go mysteriously missing during our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan so it seems unlikely that the powers that be are too concerned about corruption for the sake of stamping out corruption.
tootie 11y ago
My only regret is they didn't get him sent to jail.
ApplaudPumice 11y ago
Hacker News is too USA-centric. What if Italy spied the USA? Including the metadata of all citizens' calls? It's that ok?
- SRSposter 11y ago
  Thing is, Italy is not a world power with dominance in information technologies and global ambitions.
  - ApplaudPumice 11y ago
    Well, the USA should mind its own business and fuck off. Too harsh? Ops. You spy and start wars in others countries and expect it to be ok?
    - adventured 11y ago
      If you want a serious answer based on how things actually work, it's this: the US Government doesn't expect you to be ok with it. They're not asking your permission. They do not care if you dislike it. The goal is to have the upper-hand on specific types of information globally.
      - ApplaudPumice 11y ago
        I know. But you can't expect countries and people to be ok with it, just because the USA wants it. In an ideal world there would be no boundaries or wars and we would live in peace. But fact is that I don't like being spied by NSA. And while this may be expected by a government, what pisses really off is the way HN, eff.org and USA-oriented blogs speak about non USA citizens. From their point of view we are either terrorists, non-humans or some kind of evil, deprived of all kind of rights. From the point of view of democracy the USA is the worse.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- chrononaut 11y ago
samstave 11y ago
While I think that your analogy is fantastic - I want to rebut it... not to rebut you, but to the intelligence community. FUCK YOU intelligence community. I fucking hate you. We are suffering from the parasite of tyranny on the human condition. fuck that condition. Humans exist as both an individual and as a community - this is the binary spectrum we exist in. The challenge is in how we understand the differences between individuality and community. Governments are an overlay which were ostensibly to provide order over chaos. Yet we are now in a position where they extract power from both chaos and order. I reject this. Whole heart. I reject a government or any group or any individual who serves to extract control over me or others. I may lose, entirely (e.g. my life) but I hands-down deny any authority which is literally stealing existence in order to exist. FUCK THEM.
- solipsism 11y ago
  Think build, not destroy.
  - samstave 11y ago
    Agreed - but man, do I love me some emotional ranting about this. I'm just fed up.
- dang 11y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11156136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11156136 and marked it off-topic.
  - samstave 11y ago
    Do I have the record for detachments? ;-) I love you.
    - deleted 11y ago
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jstalin 11y ago
Strange. Wikileaks never seems to leak anything from other countries, such as Russia or China.
- jeffwass 11y ago
  The more interesting question is what wikileaks would do if they received some embarrassing leaks related to Ecuador. Would they choose not release the leaks, given Ecuador's provision of embassy asylum to Assange?
dmix 11y ago
Too bad the newspaper decided to go with the "NSA is spying on x president" headline rather than focusing on the content of the spying (involving details relevant to Italian politics and history) which is clearly the intended goal in releasing this. The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public. Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds. That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts is in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years.
- cronjobber 11y ago
  Yes and no. In the context of Assange's goals, NSA involvement is very interesting. To Wikileaks, the credible threat of future leaking is probably more important than the single leak of past infractions, because the threat impedes the flow of internal communications, which makes an "unjust" organization's internal "thought processes" more costly and less efficient. Proven NSA involvement basically means there's no cheap way to keep high stakes secrets safe from leaking. The NSA has the bigger budget and better technology, so you can't defend against this path of leaking. Yet NSA leaks too, so it seems NSA can't defend themselves, either. Taken together, this says nobody can defend against leaking: That's Wikileaks' most favored state of affairs.
- jheriko 11y ago
  > The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks even aside from Snowden leaks, this exactly what those guys are there for. if they weren't doing it, they wouldn't be doing their jobs... and i agree, the specifics are the interesting part of this.
NN88 11y ago
They SHOULD have
ilostmykeys 11y ago
All Seeing Eye. That's the point.
- EasyTiger_ 11y ago
  It IS fairly concerning the 'All Seeing Eye' the conspiracy folks warned about is actually a thing now.
zakalwe2000 11y ago
Pope discovered to be Catholic. Now if the NSA had spied on Smokey Bear...
elchief 11y ago
I think the interesting question is why can't Italy (or Germany) keep foreign agencies out of their networks? Or can the US not either?
exabrial 11y ago
Under Obama's order. Please, let's make sure we assign credit where it's due.
ghostek 11y ago
For once, NSA spied on right guy. Corruption, minors, drugs, frauds, links to the Russian gov... there's a lot to be concerned about
- qubex 11y ago
  I'm Italian and I was embarrassed for the whole duration of those terms he served whilst I was an adult: not because his buffoonery (every country has people like that) but because collectively the voters of the country had had no better judgement than to elect this guy. This is why I would deeply sympathise with any American whom, come 2017, would find him- or herself represented on the international stage by Trump.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Perhaps it's just me, but I think it'd be more interesting to discover which high profile figures in government that the NSA hasn't been spying on.

181 points by secfirstmd 11y ago

In news today, the SIGINT branch of the United States government collected signals intelligence on a key public official in another country; in particular, it did this at a moment of crisis, allowing the United States government to have an edge of knowledge in charting its policies.

duncan_bayne 11y ago
Yeah I sort of thought that's its legitimate purpose (as opposed to domestic surveillance).
- pnathan 11y ago
  Yes, this is what it's chartered to do. Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Thus this particular Wikileaks release, and, afaict, a lot of the Wikileaks effort has gone into promulgating that ideological goal. I would note that governmental transparency is pursued by multiple political groups across the US spectrum: police transparency, foreign policy transparency, purchasing transparency, etc. It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances and deep variances of goal within the broader 'transparency' ideal. As for me, I am perfectly content to have the spy game played against heads of state; especially if it keeps down total system instability and human suffering.
  - guelo 11y ago
    Spying is illegal in most countries, including the United States. If an Italian spy were caught here stealing Obama's communications he would be put in jail for a lengthy term. If an American spy were caught in Italy they would also be arrested and sent to jail. This whole concept that it's OK for my country to spy on others is strange and hypocritical. It is not heroic, legal, or moral, to spy on other countries unless there has been a declaration of war.
    - tokenadult 11y ago
      No, the most common treatment of a spy acting under diplomatic cover (and that is the most common kind of spy) is simply to tell the purported diplomat that he may no longer stay in the host country, now being persona non grata. All countries around the world agree that they need to spy on one another and need to agree to be spied on by one another to make sure that diplomatic statements through official channels are verifiable. National leaders have to know the intentions of other national leaders--it would be irresponsible not to try to know. AFTER EDIT: To clarify this point a bit, the world of espionage practice distinguishes "operatives" (nationals-employees of the foreign government, who first of all need a visa status even to be in the host country) from "agents" (nationals of the host country, who often have employment status in some sensitive position in the host country's government or armed forces). Yes, the United States and absolutely every country is harsh in its treatment of its own citizens who act as espionage agents directed by the intelligence operatives of foreign countries. Quite a few of the prisoners in the federal SuperMax prison in Colorado are people like John Walker or Robert Hanssen who were paid by the United States taxpayers to handle secret information with discretion and who were pledged by their terms of employment to not have contacts with foreign intelligence operatives at those operatives' direction. Men like that do hard prison time in any country where their activities are discovered. But the foreign operative usually just ends up expelled from the host country, unless there was something illegal in itself about the foreign operative's presence in the host country.
      - qrendel 11y ago
        From the release on the Wikileaks site (https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/ https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/): "The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General."
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      There are no rules among nation-states. Any that you believe to exist, exist only at the whim of the most powerful states in the system. The only true international law is the law of the jungle. Many argue otherwise, but the minute that the survival of their freedom or prosperity hangs in the balance, they would unleash the most barbarous terrors on their enemy for a chance of victory. A nation that doesn't spy on others is irrational and suicidal. Your enemy will not reciprocate your naivete. They will exploit it and enslave you. A nation that doesn't punish spies (or their masters) caught within its territories is similarly irrational. The fear of death (or imprisonment) makes your enemy cautious and less effective. The only morality in the international system is the morality of your own victory and what you do with it. In victory, you can spread peace, freedom, and prosperity to your heart's content. In defeat, your ideals are worthless.
  - CookieMon 11y ago
    I don't think he believes all spying is always wrong, he believes there is a "non linear effect of leaks on unjust systems of governance". If there's nothing outrageous about the who/why of your spying, you don't have to worry as much about your staff's desire to whistleblow, or the kind of consequences if they do, so you don't have to adopt dysfunctional internal policies trying to prevent leaks. Assange's job is to make leaking in general as safe and easy as possible, so the "secrecy tax" will disproportionately damage the unjust use of secrecy: > "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption." More loosely though he believes in privacy for individuals (a protection for the weak), with transparency for organizations. Spying on states doesn't violate the former, and I imagine in some cases you could argue it aids the latter.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Let me tell you how to defend against that, because there will always be some of those people. Spy as little as possible, conceal it as much as you can, don't share your spy info to catch drug dealers, in fact, don't use it to prosecute crime at all, use it to stop real terrorist violence in progress and let some other jokers take the credit, use it to fact check diplomatic shenanigans. Spying and policing have zero business together in a free society.
  - EdHominem 11y ago
    > [...] a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong [...] Obviously he doesn't, because he does what many people would consider spying. I suggest that he has a more nuanced view that some spying is bad, and that you might want to consider that his support for it depends on how it serves the people. > It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances [...] Well, actually, no there aren't. Lying to bypass limits on your mandate is a crime, if not treason.
  - vasundhar 11y ago
    Why don't we let the US/ UK Rule the world then ? I hope you understand which division NSA belongs to
- abecedarius 11y ago
  Yes, spying to promote the interests of the people of the U.S. is legitimate in a world with other states with armies and the occasional bin Laden, etc. That's different from spying to promote the power of the executive, its fave corporations, the spies themselves, their counterparts in other nations, and who knows what else. The government is in theory our employees, and I feel more threatened by these employees who act like our masters than I do by their legitimate targets. Assange's quote in the OP is all about alleged abuses that I as supposed employer would want to hear about: "Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban KiMoon's private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies. We previously published Hillary Clinton orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General's DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN's reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targetted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk."
  - duncan_bayne 11y ago
    > The government is in theory our employees Thought experiment: what would happen if you exercised any discretion in whether to continue employing them, or even how much of your income you pay them?
    - _yosefk 11y ago
      Interestingly, this thought experiment kinda works for company managers, too (try firing the CEO of a company where you're a minority investor.) Perhaps things converge to a state where, regardless of who's the nominal owner (citizens/stockholders/etc.), we are ruled by mostly unaccountable managers.
- threatofrain 11y ago
  While I agree that the NSA acted as intended, I wish to add with a moderately tangential discussion by saying that organizations ought not be viewed under the lens of their chartered purpose, but rather their function. An organization's function is the set of all its capabilities. We should seek to define the purpose of a state entity by limiting its function via mechanism, rather than by hoping for good people to do the right thing. There is no reliable mechanism by which moral people bubble up to the top of power. I feel glad today that the NSA acted in promotion of American interests, but I feel that is a incidental exercise of its many capabilities, and so my feelings are fickle.
  - pnathan 11y ago
    It's a useful exercise analyzing the actual function of the NSA and comparing it against its charter. Is the NSA doing its chartered job? How well? Is it being effective? Does it have too much actual power? It certain doesn't seem as if it has effective oversight in this matter, based on comments from congresspeople as to the level of information they are given. In this instance, it seems as if the NSA is doing their job. In other instances... doesn't seem like it.
    - threatofrain 11y ago
      I phrased too extremely then. Function should be added as a lens of analysis, but I still think that purpose should not be used in isolation because it leads to discussion with moral expectation, rather than functional expectation.
Iv 11y ago
Well for us, European citizens, the shock is not that the NSA tries, it is that it succeeds. And that our officials are surprised to learn about the attempts.
- adventured 11y ago
  NSA has a budget larger than the combined spying budget of the Eurozone members, and it's renowned for being very aggressive and constantly pursuing technical improvement. Why would you be surprised that NSA succeeds? How would you stop them?
  - vidarh 11y ago
    It's unsurprising that they succeed some of the time. The extent, on the other hand, is another matter.
belorn 11y ago
The news is not that US SIGINT commit acts of spying against non-hostile nations, but that US SIGINT is no different from all those other nations which US media villainize when they are caught spying. The day that FOX news no longer talks about russia and china when their spies are caught, those will be the day that everyone else will start ignore news about the NSA.
- gadders 11y ago
  And here we have Moral Relativism in action... Russia and China are an order of magnitude more oppressive than the US.
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    Isn't your comment a good example for "Moral Relativism" itself?
    - gadders 11y ago
      No. Moral relativism would be saying "everyone is equally good; we shouldn't judge them because they don't believe in democracy; all cultures are equally valid".
      - deleted 11y ago
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apsec112 11y ago

Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. The problem is when it starts spying on ordinary citizens.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. Nevertheless, specific instances of spying on allied governments is often irritating to the ally involved, and their citizenry. US citizens are probably less upset about foreign surveillance by the NSA (even if it is directed at allies), OTOH, US citizens aren't the entire audience for news.
- gozur88 11y ago
  I guess I could be a little more sympathetic if I thought our allies weren't spying on us as well. After all the noise the Germans made about US intelligence services bugging Merkel's phone, it came out that the Germans were doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton when she visited as Secretary of State.
  - mioelnir 11y ago
    Ally is a strong word. Allies would have honored their agreements and removed their occupation force.
- Kalium 11y ago
  Spying on allied governments is very common and immensely useful. It helps do things like ensure coordination of policy. It is, however, incredibly bad form to be caught doing so.
superpatosainz 11y ago
Well that's what bothers me too: You have no rights as a non-American person. The NSA could not care less about your privacy. I'm not a terrorist and yet the NSA can do whatever it wants with me, and that's scary.

tetraverse 11y ago

"One thing is certain: what happened in those difficult times was intercepted and transcribed by .. the National Security Agency (NSA), as this interception and other top-secret documents published today by WikiLeaks and our newspaper reveal. " Well it ain't no secret anymore and I wonder at the timing, who at the NSA leaked the documents and what their motivation is.

anonymousDan 11y ago

For me it will be interesting to see if any details come out about what pressure he was put under during the euro crisis behind closed doors. Not too bothered about the NSA spying part in this case. As others have said this is what they're supposed to be doing.

vonklaus 11y ago

Snowden's strategy, or at least whoever managed information for the team, was super smart about the first 12 weeks. They kept the government mostly in yhe dark about the depth of what they knew, and executed s perfect slow burn. The agency went reeling from one disclosure to the next hastily making up lies and then having them disproved in subsequent releases. Obviously there was more to it, however the main point is that the opposite seems to be true now. Even for receptive people, we just know and it is an effective strategy for the govt to habituate people. Unless the facts surrounding an event gave relavent subdata and a narrative can be brought into focus with the new insight, this isn't news it is habituating the public to accept it. I don't want to accept it, but simultaneously it is obvious that as noted in the thread, "SIGINT, is gathering signal intrlligience". So it ends up being a reminder that we have given up s lot, but not bad enough(on the per story basis) to ignite support. Also, I am concerned about the risk we tale decentralizing our data. We may give up the opportunity to have amazing trend analytics and information that may never resurface in the inevitable balkanized system that is to be developed

nickpsecurity 11y ago

They were spying on an allied president that did stuff like this: http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits-worlds-shadiest-politician.html http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits... Let's give NSA a slow clap for spying on crooks for once in their allied SIGINT. That guy makes our politicians look like boy scouts.

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chatmasta 11y ago

Julian Assange has some "big balls." Either he really likes pushing his luck, or his end game is way bigger than anyone realizes. He was just starting to curry the favor of the general public. He was the subject of a prominent biopic, he received a positive resolution from the UN. He has a lot of supporters, but they're not all fully sold on his philosophy. Many of his supporters might consider this leak not in the same spirit as the others. The NSA is doing its job, just like the SIGINT agency of any world power. Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary. As long as one country has SIGINT capabilities, its competitors must match them, even if only for the purpose of defending their sovereignty. As others have said, the NSA spying on foreign public officials is hardly newsworthy or unexpected. If you believe all SIGINT should cease to exist, then this should also not be news to you, because you already believe these SIGINT capabilities exist, by definition of you opposing their existence. So in no case should this news shock you. Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own. (Or perhaps the NSA is behind the whole thing. This is a pretty nice puff piece for them, and they've gotta be on the offensive finding job applicants these days.)

guelo 11y ago
Assange is not American so your pro-American-aggression PR perspective probably holds very little sway with someone like him.
ebf6 11y ago
> Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own. Or his motives are following the philosophy of the freedom of information, as it had in the past. The or is not exclusive: it's possible that his motivations are both personal and philosophical. But to say that this leak furthers "no agenda but his own" is oddly dismissive of the mission / philosophy behind wikileaks. It's not there to circlejerk people who are already exposed to this kind of information. The philosophy is that more people should have the option to know. If it weren't for projects like wikileaks, it would not be a choice for you to make.

secfirstmd 11y ago

While it's arguable that Berlusconi was a sensible target...How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency? FWIW, I've just started laying out one aspect of this debate and how intelligence operation blowback can affect the perception of neutrality of NGOs working on the ground. This increasingly seems to lead to a rise in deaths of aid workers and many of the people they work to help. E.g Polio in Pakistan. https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents-irish-citizen-working-for-the-un-was-targeted-by-the-nsa-f345b73b73df#.lki1vv63g https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents-i...

Florin_Andrei 11y ago
> How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency? I think spycraft is a bit like logging to ELK, or sending metrics to Graphite/InfluxDB - capture all data you can, analyze later.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  Yeah you're right, neither involve actual people.
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argonaut 11y ago
Corruption. Obviously we're both speculating here, but accountability is a serious problem with NGOs, along with corruption/graft/general-wastefulness. So if the US suspected massive (tens of millions of dollars, or more) corruption, that's a plausible reason. I'm not saying it's likely, just that there are possible reasons out there in the world.
- wavefunction 11y ago
  I dunno, the US Government had billions of USD go mysteriously missing during our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan so it seems unlikely that the powers that be are too concerned about corruption for the sake of stamping out corruption.

tootie 11y ago

My only regret is they didn't get him sent to jail.

ApplaudPumice 11y ago

Hacker News is too USA-centric. What if Italy spied the USA? Including the metadata of all citizens' calls? It's that ok?

SRSposter 11y ago
Thing is, Italy is not a world power with dominance in information technologies and global ambitions.
- ApplaudPumice 11y ago
  Well, the USA should mind its own business and fuck off. Too harsh? Ops. You spy and start wars in others countries and expect it to be ok?
  - adventured 11y ago
    If you want a serious answer based on how things actually work, it's this: the US Government doesn't expect you to be ok with it. They're not asking your permission. They do not care if you dislike it. The goal is to have the upper-hand on specific types of information globally.
    - ApplaudPumice 11y ago
      I know. But you can't expect countries and people to be ok with it, just because the USA wants it. In an ideal world there would be no boundaries or wars and we would live in peace. But fact is that I don't like being spied by NSA. And while this may be expected by a government, what pisses really off is the way HN, eff.org and USA-oriented blogs speak about non USA citizens. From their point of view we are either terrorists, non-humans or some kind of evil, deprived of all kind of rights. From the point of view of democracy the USA is the worse.
- deleted 11y ago
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chrononaut 11y ago

samstave 11y ago

While I think that your analogy is fantastic - I want to rebut it... not to rebut you, but to the intelligence community. FUCK YOU intelligence community. I fucking hate you. We are suffering from the parasite of tyranny on the human condition. fuck that condition. Humans exist as both an individual and as a community - this is the binary spectrum we exist in. The challenge is in how we understand the differences between individuality and community. Governments are an overlay which were ostensibly to provide order over chaos. Yet we are now in a position where they extract power from both chaos and order. I reject this. Whole heart. I reject a government or any group or any individual who serves to extract control over me or others. I may lose, entirely (e.g. my life) but I hands-down deny any authority which is literally stealing existence in order to exist. FUCK THEM.

solipsism 11y ago
Think build, not destroy.
- samstave 11y ago
  Agreed - but man, do I love me some emotional ranting about this. I'm just fed up.
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11156136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11156136 and marked it off-topic.
- samstave 11y ago
  Do I have the record for detachments? ;-) I love you.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

jstalin 11y ago

Strange. Wikileaks never seems to leak anything from other countries, such as Russia or China.

jeffwass 11y ago
The more interesting question is what wikileaks would do if they received some embarrassing leaks related to Ecuador. Would they choose not release the leaks, given Ecuador's provision of embassy asylum to Assange?

dmix 11y ago

Too bad the newspaper decided to go with the "NSA is spying on x president" headline rather than focusing on the content of the spying (involving details relevant to Italian politics and history) which is clearly the intended goal in releasing this. The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public. Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds. That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts is in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years.

cronjobber 11y ago
Yes and no. In the context of Assange's goals, NSA involvement is very interesting. To Wikileaks, the credible threat of future leaking is probably more important than the single leak of past infractions, because the threat impedes the flow of internal communications, which makes an "unjust" organization's internal "thought processes" more costly and less efficient. Proven NSA involvement basically means there's no cheap way to keep high stakes secrets safe from leaking. The NSA has the bigger budget and better technology, so you can't defend against this path of leaking. Yet NSA leaks too, so it seems NSA can't defend themselves, either. Taken together, this says nobody can defend against leaking: That's Wikileaks' most favored state of affairs.
jheriko 11y ago
> The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks even aside from Snowden leaks, this exactly what those guys are there for. if they weren't doing it, they wouldn't be doing their jobs... and i agree, the specifics are the interesting part of this.

NN88 11y ago

They SHOULD have

ilostmykeys 11y ago

All Seeing Eye. That's the point.

EasyTiger_ 11y ago
It IS fairly concerning the 'All Seeing Eye' the conspiracy folks warned about is actually a thing now.

zakalwe2000 11y ago

Pope discovered to be Catholic. Now if the NSA had spied on Smokey Bear...

elchief 11y ago

I think the interesting question is why can't Italy (or Germany) keep foreign agencies out of their networks? Or can the US not either?

exabrial 11y ago

Under Obama's order. Please, let's make sure we assign credit where it's due.

ghostek 11y ago

For once, NSA spied on right guy. Corruption, minors, drugs, frauds, links to the Russian gov... there's a lot to be concerned about

qubex 11y ago
I'm Italian and I was embarrassed for the whole duration of those terms he served whilst I was an adult: not because his buffoonery (every country has people like that) but because collectively the voters of the country had had no better judgement than to elect this guy. This is why I would deeply sympathise with any American whom, come 2017, would find him- or herself represented on the international stage by Trump.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

Perhaps it's just me, but I think it'd be more interesting to discover which high profile figures in government that the NSA hasn't been spying on.