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I'm sorry, I guess that me not being American makes me unable to stand by your position, but I don't get it. I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok

I'm sorry, I guess that me not being American makes me unable to stand by your position, but I don't get it. I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter). If it was Iran doing this the US would go to war with them. If it was Palestine who was spying on US banking systems the US military would be killing left and right until nothing but corpses would remain, but is it OK for the NSA to shit on International laws to make America "safe"? The NSA is out of control of the American people, as all the other agencies. It seems like the US government and ther agencies feel they can do whatever they want, wherever they want and however they please, and no, that's not OK for the rest of the world. And about that 9/11 funding thing... It was proven that the CIA had knowledge about the attack before it happened... Do you really think they need to spy on the entire world to stop another one? And given the recent events, do you even think they need banks to attack the US, France or any other place? Gathering this information seem to have much more to do with controlling foreign goverments than with preventing terrorism. Please stop using 9/11 as an excuse for everything, there are lots of countries which have suffered many more terrorist attacks in the last 5 years and don't use it ad an excuse to fuck with everyone else in the planet.

rdxm 9y ago
Which European state do you live in? Because, UK, France and Germany are knee deep in this as participants. Hell, France has the most invasive internal surveillance of any country at last check. I continue to find it odd that folks in the EU have some reality distortion mechanism when it comes to what's going on in thier home countires..and yes it's not all that are wired into the 5-Eye's thing, but its most.
- socmag 9y ago
  According to Sir Googalot.... Europe includes 51 independent states. Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey are the transcontinental countries, partially located in both Europe and Asia. Armenia and Cyprus politically are considered European countries, though geographically they are located in the West Asia territory. Also, there are 28 member states in the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden ... Granted, five eyes is more like fifteen these days, but still, doesn't make it right or just because everyone is doing it we should just tow the line, doff our caps and cry for more. Some of us have been fans of Dickens and Kafka far too long to know that. [Edit] - Going to try and update this post here because I'm not allowed by HN to post very often currently... --- snip --- First of all I don't see any comments here that say that the US are the only country that spies. I mention this since it seems to be a straw man that is stuck on repeat. Secondly, surveillance done right takes a heck of a lot of resources and infrastructure; and even though all countries and humans partake, some have rather more resources and connections to accomplish these goals than others. It's kind of like the 1% - there's nothing wrong "technically" with 1% having half the cash (given that it is ultimately reinvested), the problem is abuse of power that comes with it and lack of oversight. Ultimately, we have seen stories repeatedly regarding US and Western technologies for surveillance, not Palestinian, Iranian or Luxembourgian... and this is another one. How many is that this week/month/year/decade? My family has been in and around SIGINT/COMINT for decades so I'm hardly surprised, although it is a bit surprising how comedic it is seeing people comparing the capabilities of the NSA to that of nations with less GDP than Luxembourg. I think it is good to "Have the conversation", whether it be right or wrong to infiltrate SWIFT et al.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Somehow I fail to see how internal surveillance is related to hacking the banking system of a different continent. It can't be just me that understand the difference between internal and external. Then again cyberspying and cyberwarfare is not the same as traditional spying. In this domain France is a newcomer and has only recently entered the game and is struggling to catch up. In matter of more traditional spying to me that historically the UK was on top though it is true that France has quite a history of internal political spying and intrusion in other countries but it's mostly in Africa and colonies. Usually France lags behinds the US, for example it's only a few years after the CIA through in-Q-tel took control and brought back the chip card technology to the US that France played catch-up and created the french equivalent to in-Q-tel (1999), the "Fonds stratégique d'investissement"(2008) and by the time it got created and bought back gemplus in-q-tel had long finished its mission and was selling its shares. Moreover there's a notion of scale at play, the US is a few steps further if not a couple order of magnitude more into it. And this may have something to do with Eisenhower 1961's warning: we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military– industrial complex. At the times France was still in the process of rebuilding itself from WW2 and dealing with the 1958 coup d'etat, which may or may not explain why France has been lagging behind the US.
  - phil21 9y ago
    > It can't be just me that understand the difference between internal and external. It's not just you. But it's a very select few apparently that understand this. If the NSA exists, the entire point of it existing is to spy on foreign countries - allied or not. The only legitimate argument if you're against this is if you feel the NSA and CIA should not exist at all. I will say you are incredibly naive if you say no, but will allow for reasonable people to differ in opinion. Anything else is simply someone not spending 5 seconds thinking geopolitics and logic through. The point of a spy agency is to spy. Don't pretend to be outraged when they do their damn jobs.
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      I may have badly expressed myself, my point was you can't counter argue about US external spying by saying "but other countries are much into internal spying". This make no sense on a logical basis. To me as a living being on this planet I strongly think no intelligence agency should exist at all for the simple reason that borders and countries should be abolished so we could all be earthlings sharing a planet. Buuuuut it seems the ones in position of domination such as US and old colonial Europe tend to disagree with this view. But this personal view does not prevent me from using my brains and senses to observe and having a certain understanding of how a minority of humans in position of power defend their own interest and push their own agenda and try to get every edge they can by whatever mean is available. The point of a spy agency is not to spy, it is to spy and not get caught, because when caught now it's a whole different game. So given the accumulation of recent leaks I would say that NSA and CIA do not so such a good job. And given the nature of the revelations and what is exposed it seems they go too far past what is acceptable. Compared to how China or Russia hack into the US without getting caught or exposed with a fraction of the US budget this paints a picture of an overspending of budget for arguably poor results for those agencies that not only get exposed but also fail at their mission of protection.
shouldbworking 9y ago
Any country with satellites spends tons of their time gawking at everyone else's stuff, while maybe occasionally predicting the weather. I think you're really underestimating how much counties spy on each other. Russia stole nuclear secrets from the US and China was recently implicated trying to get plans for US fighter jets. I think stealing military tech is much closer to an act of war than watching people's finances? How about assassinating people you don't like on a foreign countries soil? Because places like North Korea do that stuff regularly. I'm just saying that this isn't even close to the worst stuff that's come out and I think your outrage is a bit much
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Country spy on each other is a couple steps down from what the NSA does. > How about assassinating people you don't like on a foreign countries soil? The US is famous for being a champion in this category, France under its current president also competes for appearing in the high score table, Israel is known for this too. But the US still wins because on top of the secret assassination programs and drones, contraction mercenaries to do the killing, financing local dissident to do the killings, it also invades countries and makes war which it's pretty much the only one doing, even north korea doesn't do that, maybe because they cannot afford the multi trillions of military spending the US does.
  - phil21 9y ago
    > Country spy on each other is a couple steps down from what the NSA does You don't get to call someone out for being better than you at the game. I mean really this is your argument? Everyone does it, but the NSA is so much better only they are somehow immoral but everyone else is ok? I just cannot wrap my head around that argument. If a spy agency exists, it's job is to spy. Why would anyone be surprised or upset to find out... they did their job?
    - fulafel 9y ago
      I think this is the line of thinking that puts off western non-US citizens about the American espionage machine. The shadow state is ingrained in people's minds as a given, and is not seen a tool that democratically elected leaders wield and control. In addition being orders of magnitude better resourced than other countries' spy agencies, the US intelligence machine don't seem to be politically restrained by the traditional spook moderators of popular support or respect for other countries' sovereignity. You can think that German spooks don't listen to Trump's phone calls because they have less resources and possibly competence, but that's because the politicians and voters choose to rein them in.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
You're wrong about them being out of control: this, the hacking, spying, compromise of foreign nations, etc, is what the American people want. You're confusing a vocal minority that agrees with you for consensus. From the perspective of most Americans, the IC are loyal soldiers who brought nearly the whole globe under American control at a price below that of our latest fighter plane. Total information warfare superiority. The new nuclear dominance. Now, you (and I) might find that unsavory, but for people who are fans of real politik, it wasn't even a question. If anything, the IC should've done more to neutralize Chinese and Russian capabilities. I would argue the real politik view is simplistic, but yours is also naive. You're simply wrong about the US going to war if others did the same -- they do and we don't. We retaliate in cyberspace, dissident funding, etc. That state of continuous covert warfare is normal, everyone does it, and there are many reasons the US wants to dominate at it. The only criticism I have of the IC is failing to advance our defensive capabilities, not for keeping us at the forefront of the cyber battlefield.
- iamacynic 9y ago
  you could say that the continual, un-ending nature of covert cyber/internet and financial war prevents any individual player or group from gaining sudden over-proportional power (as is possible with the two arm leverage of technology and finance) and causing a large-scale conflict. i.e. it's the new multi-lateral cold war of the 21st century.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    It's just the cyberization of the economic, psychological, and ideological warfare that has existed... Well, probably since always, but I've heard of at least to the 1600s and the birth of the modern nation-state. Nations have always jockeyed for economic advantage, harmed the cohesion of rival nations (eg, psyops and funding dissidents), and advanced groups in those nations ideologically sympathetic to themselves. Sometimes it spills in to small scale conflicts or actual revolutions or wars.
  - theparanoid 9y ago
    In the overt corporate space Microsoft sure did win during the 90's. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Iran schlonged their middle-east rivals in cyber warefare this or the next decade.
ajross 9y ago
Iran and Palestine suffer from asymmetry of power projection, so maybe what you say it true. It's absolutely true, however, that China and Russia engage in exactly this kind of espionage against the US and other western targets, and the world survives. Spying gets a bad rap. When it works correctly everyone is a little better off for it, because it prevents surprises on the part of the people whose mistakes can be most costly.
- cmurf 9y ago
  Ehh. There's the connotation of spying and then the real world denotation of spying. It connotes just information gathering. But spies are absolutely involved in sabotage.
  - ajross 9y ago
    There's no allegation of sabotage in the linked article or the grandparent comment though. And in fact the structure of the US intelligence community makes that sort of a broad leap too: "spies" may be involved in sabotage, but broadly the NSA never is. That's someone else's job.
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      Wikipedia article about NSA tends to differ: Although many of NSA's programs rely on "passive" electronic collection, the agency is authorized to accomplish its mission through active clandestine means,among which are physically bugging electronic systems and allegedly engaging in sabotage through subversive software. Though I cannot pinpoint it on NSA, I would say stuxnet is a good example of sabotage and probably involves the NSA.
ars 9y ago
> If it was Iran doing this the US would go to war with them. They are doing this, and yet, no war. So what does that do to your claim? > If it was Palestine who was spying on US banking systems the US military would be killing left and right until nothing but corpses would remain, Oh please, you must know nothing about geopolitics to think this is true. I'm 100% certain Palestine spies on Israel as much as they possibly can, and Israel does the same to them. I doubt Palestine spies on the US, but only because it's not in their interests, not because they are worried about being killed. > Gathering this information seem to have much more to do with controlling foreign goverments than with preventing terrorism. And? Is that bad or something? That's what countries do - if they can. You might wish you lived in a utopia where everyone was super nice to everyone else, and no one took anything not theirs. But in the real world if people can take power, they will. It would be stupid for any country not to do anything they can to stop or manage that. > there are lots of countries which have suffered many more terrorist attacks in the last 5 years and don't use it ad an excuse to fuck with everyone else in the planet. You really believe that the US is the only country that spies?
- travmatt 9y ago
  It seems like you're letting facts get in the way of a perfectly good chance to be outraged over completely sensationalized hand wringing.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Wow, that's a nice way of pulling HN quality down, grats ! Allow to offer a single correction > That's what countries do - if they can. It's not countries but spying agencies that need to justify their existence now that the cold war is over. Or governments. But I sincerely doubt that worldwide a national referendum about "should we use our resources and power to spy on other countries and try to control foreign government" would get close to a majority of yes in most countries around the world apart maybe in the US and north korea and maybe a few others. And even for the US I'm not so sure.
  - newdayrising 9y ago
    Someone disagrees with you so you act like a child and tell them they're bringing the "quality down" on HN? Tip: If you want people to take you seriously, act like an adult.
avn2109 9y ago
As an American patriod I support neither the NSA nor the unconstitutional American police state. But to oppose the idea of meddling in the international banking system is to oppose the very idea of an intelligence service. Such meddling is the core mandate of organized intelligence. It's exactly what all intelligence services have done since time immemorial. Following the money is the oldest trick in the book.
- aisofteng 9y ago
  Oh please, there is no American police state.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    From the outside I'd say that the USA is not that far from a police state and getting closer with time. One would have to look away on purpose to not see the militarization of police. But don't think it's only the US, this is a trend we can notice in Europe too. As if the conditions of life were evolving towards possible uprising due to say growing poverty, diminishing buying power, increase in food insecurity, increasing gap between the rich and poor, unsustainable economy closing on its limits, etc. and the governments taking precautionary measures to protect themselves.
  - ionised 9y ago
    To outside observers you most certainly are approaching one at speed.
meowface 9y ago
All globally-competitive countries are doing this to all other countries. I'd be very shocked if Iran's intelligence agencies didn't have (either in the past, or presently) some level of access to our financial systems. It's pretty absurd to suggest we would kill people just because we caught a spy agency snooping on us. We've caught and rebuked foreign spy agencies all the time. The usual punishment is covert retaliation (escalating malware attacks, etc.), and the times when it isn't covert (like with the Russia revelations), responses usually involve sanctions and condemnation. NSA would be doing the American people a disservice if they weren't competing with the rest of the spy agencies out there. It's just a fact of life. We just want them to do it without warrantless mass surveillance of US citizens. >It was proven that the CIA had knowledge about the attack before it happened... They didn't. To suggest they did is to allege a massive conspiracy. They received hints it might happen, but intelligence agencies receive tens of thousands to millions of pieces of new information per week, 99.99% of which turns out to be nothing. You can apply this argument to almost every war or attack in history (including Pearl Harbor). Sieving the signal out of the noise isn't easy. I'm an American but neither a nationalist nor a patriot. I just realize they're doing their job. I also realize and acknowledge Russia wouldn't be doing its job properly if they didn't try to influence the Presidential election.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >All globally-competitive countries are doing this to all other countries. I'd be very shocked if Iran's intelligence agencies didn't have (either in the past, or presently) some level of access to our financial systems. I'd be terrible shocked if this is not just Hollywood-level paranoia, the kind most people around the world merely laugh at. This idea that countries are at some kind of equal footing with regard to those things, "doing the same" with the 10.000ft gorilla that spends more than 3 times for its military what the next player (China) does -- more than the next 7 players combined. There are maybe 4-5 countries that even remotely do anything like that on a global scale. Most countries merely track their neighbours's and traditional (regional) enemies. I'd say just the US, the UK and France (ex big colonial powers that have fucked half the world over), Israel (because it has people everywhere, who, due to the terrible persecutions Jews faced in WWII can be very loyal to the cause of the "homeland" even if its not their actual country of citizenship), and China (because of sheer size and economic/global rise) have any such capacity, intent and power. USSR back in the day too, modern Russia, not so much. France a little, as an ex-colonial power. Germany has its secret service too, but not much to write home about either. And even of those few, even fewer have the history, military and diplomatic means to pressure and reach of using those things to mess with other countries the world over.
mikestew 9y ago
I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter). Boy, have I got disappointing news for you. I mean, I don't know what to tell you other than what you'd like and how the world works are very much disconnected. IOW, "they all do that, sir." If we pitched bombs at each other every time we caught a spy in our home country, we'd do nothing else.
kristianc 9y ago
> I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter) As a European citizen how did you feel about Europe seizing any deposits over €100k from Cyprus' second largest bank when it decided it had debts that needed collecting? And then suggesting that this should be a 'model for future bailouts?' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/25/cyprus-bailout-deal-eu-closes-bank https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/25/cyprus-bailout...
- kpil 9y ago
  That sucks - it also happens to be the protected amount that the EU guarantees and is committed to reimburse the account holders with when a bank fails and go bankrupt. So in one way the customers outcome did not really change from a real bankruptcy, while reducing the risk of crashing the entire bank system in Cyprus, possibly EU and in that case the world. The sum is not extraordinarily high though so I suspect that quite a few rather ordinary people saw their retirement savings evaporate. I also suspect that the bank have been paying dividends to it's shareholders for many years, so it would have been nice to let them bail the bank in one way or another instead of ordinary people - but I doubt that it's possible to do that legally after the fact. The best you can do is to step in and buy the bank for nothing - but that won't remove the debts. I suppose that it would be possible to write laws that make the banks shareholders be responsible for any debts somehow, just like some other types of incorporations - and why not? Owning a bank seems to be pretty risk-free if you can just use your customers money to bail yourself out...
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    > I also suspect that the bank have been paying dividends to it's shareholders for many years maybe not as the bank ceo later admitted that the bank had probably been insolvent as early as 2008, even before cyprus entered the eurozone.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  That's a gross mischaracterization of what actually happened. The EU didn't seized anything but gave a bailout of 10 billions euros at the demand of the cypriot governement and asked that in return the second largest bank be closed and uninsured deposit over 100k€ (and 48% of them in the largest bank) used as a one time levy. Most of this money belonged to foreigner using cyprus as a tax haven. Those who lost 3 millions in the process were given a 7 millions discount on buying the cypriot citizenship. see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financial_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financ... But now let's provide some context here, the EU had to bailout Cyprus as a consequence of the US subprime mortgage crisis. So the EU had to clean up the mess made by the US. Though I do agree there are some rotten things on the financial side of the EU, mainly the IMF and the ECB but also that countries have to pay for the private debt of banks. But this is not so different from the rest of the world and other central banks. Though quite scaled down it's not so far from the 700 billion bailout of banks in the US and the ECB and other central banks and federal reserve buying 2.5 trillion of government debt and bank asset the largest such move ever while EU and US government were injecting 1.5 trillion in their major banks.
jsz0 9y ago
> don't use it ad an excuse to fuck with everyone else in the planet What about Europol? https://www.wsj.com/articles/europol-says-data-sharing-on-potential-terrorists-rises-significantly-1484859853 https://www.wsj.com/articles/europol-says-data-sharing-on-po...
cmurf 9y ago
There is a significant degree of might makes right here. But you know, the world opinion is that it wants a world police man, just not a world bully. Important but sometimes its a small distinction. And the U.S. has been a bully (Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) so there's trust loss on whether the next instance is generally for the benefit of Americans and the world, or only Americans and only in a superficial way? I mean come on, U.S. decries chemical weapons use in Syria, the official spokesperson makes a Godwin statement about how even a certain bad guy in history didn't drop them out of airplanes on civilian population, and yet umm hello?? Napalm?? Courtesy of Dow Chemical company... And as for bad things going on in the world, it's approximately a genocide (that it's in the not so gray area, means we've hit the "never again" line in my view) what's going on in Yemen. We looked the other way from genocides in Sudan, and Congo, and Timor. Only so many resources for things like that when there are only so many resources available to recoup the cost. That's the reality. It's to a great degree U.S.A. Inc. and about the best you can hope for is to not repeat the vicious events of the past. The last Korean war, where no one was really ready for it, wanted it (except Kim), and weren't fighting with today's Weapons Inc. let alone nukes, yet it still got more than a million people killed. So yes there's a lot about the U.S. to be irritated at, but the world is complex and you have to judge each case.
Jach 9y ago
It's worth reading an ex-CIA Head's take on why we spy even on our allies in Europe, not just our potential enemies in the Middle East: http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm "Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology. It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing economic circumstances. You'd rather not go through the hassle of moving toward less dirigisme. It's so much easier to keep paying bribes."
- nyolfen 9y ago
  this is an interesting piece, but its premise is totally ludicrous. we don't spy on europeans because they bribe, we spy on them because we spy on everyone, to have intelligence to act upon in any domain. spying on diplomats and politicians gets orders of magnitude more attention than airbus paying off saudis, and probably any other catgeory besides perhaps security. we spy on these types of people so that analysts can make informed policy recommendations, with better sources than the public media, and any country that doesnt is either underresourced or incompetent. this article is essentially a (literal) joke, thumbing the nose at any outraged europeans who would read it and a collective laugh in their direction for its actual american audience
anigbrowl 9y ago
Countries have spied on each other forever, and any country that doesn't engage in such activities is run by fools. No, the Us would not go to war over another country spying on us, it would just expel the spies, though in an earlier era it might have shot them. We Europeans spy as much as anyone, and always have. Espionage is an organizational reality. To pretend you don't have to care about such things is like being a tourist that wanders into the bad part of town flashing money everywhere and then expresses astonishment if their pocket is picked or they are otherwise taken advantage of.
booleandilemma 9y ago
Every country is spying on all other countries. To not believe this would be naive. Iran hacked a US drone in 2011 and we didn't go to war with them over it.
darawk 9y ago
What would you like spy agencies to be doing?
buttsnax 9y ago
Fortunately, it doesn't matter what you think is ok.
ramblerman 9y ago
As a fellow European, stop being so naive. Spying on merkels phone annoyed me, but this is not the same. Also it was proven the CIA had knowledge of 911. Do you have a source of that?

rdxm 9y ago

Which European state do you live in? Because, UK, France and Germany are knee deep in this as participants. Hell, France has the most invasive internal surveillance of any country at last check. I continue to find it odd that folks in the EU have some reality distortion mechanism when it comes to what's going on in thier home countires..and yes it's not all that are wired into the 5-Eye's thing, but its most.

socmag 9y ago
According to Sir Googalot.... Europe includes 51 independent states. Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey are the transcontinental countries, partially located in both Europe and Asia. Armenia and Cyprus politically are considered European countries, though geographically they are located in the West Asia territory. Also, there are 28 member states in the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden ... Granted, five eyes is more like fifteen these days, but still, doesn't make it right or just because everyone is doing it we should just tow the line, doff our caps and cry for more. Some of us have been fans of Dickens and Kafka far too long to know that. [Edit] - Going to try and update this post here because I'm not allowed by HN to post very often currently... --- snip --- First of all I don't see any comments here that say that the US are the only country that spies. I mention this since it seems to be a straw man that is stuck on repeat. Secondly, surveillance done right takes a heck of a lot of resources and infrastructure; and even though all countries and humans partake, some have rather more resources and connections to accomplish these goals than others. It's kind of like the 1% - there's nothing wrong "technically" with 1% having half the cash (given that it is ultimately reinvested), the problem is abuse of power that comes with it and lack of oversight. Ultimately, we have seen stories repeatedly regarding US and Western technologies for surveillance, not Palestinian, Iranian or Luxembourgian... and this is another one. How many is that this week/month/year/decade? My family has been in and around SIGINT/COMINT for decades so I'm hardly surprised, although it is a bit surprising how comedic it is seeing people comparing the capabilities of the NSA to that of nations with less GDP than Luxembourg. I think it is good to "Have the conversation", whether it be right or wrong to infiltrate SWIFT et al.
bigbugbag 9y ago
Somehow I fail to see how internal surveillance is related to hacking the banking system of a different continent. It can't be just me that understand the difference between internal and external. Then again cyberspying and cyberwarfare is not the same as traditional spying. In this domain France is a newcomer and has only recently entered the game and is struggling to catch up. In matter of more traditional spying to me that historically the UK was on top though it is true that France has quite a history of internal political spying and intrusion in other countries but it's mostly in Africa and colonies. Usually France lags behinds the US, for example it's only a few years after the CIA through in-Q-tel took control and brought back the chip card technology to the US that France played catch-up and created the french equivalent to in-Q-tel (1999), the "Fonds stratégique d'investissement"(2008) and by the time it got created and bought back gemplus in-q-tel had long finished its mission and was selling its shares. Moreover there's a notion of scale at play, the US is a few steps further if not a couple order of magnitude more into it. And this may have something to do with Eisenhower 1961's warning: we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military– industrial complex. At the times France was still in the process of rebuilding itself from WW2 and dealing with the 1958 coup d'etat, which may or may not explain why France has been lagging behind the US.
- phil21 9y ago
  > It can't be just me that understand the difference between internal and external. It's not just you. But it's a very select few apparently that understand this. If the NSA exists, the entire point of it existing is to spy on foreign countries - allied or not. The only legitimate argument if you're against this is if you feel the NSA and CIA should not exist at all. I will say you are incredibly naive if you say no, but will allow for reasonable people to differ in opinion. Anything else is simply someone not spending 5 seconds thinking geopolitics and logic through. The point of a spy agency is to spy. Don't pretend to be outraged when they do their damn jobs.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    I may have badly expressed myself, my point was you can't counter argue about US external spying by saying "but other countries are much into internal spying". This make no sense on a logical basis. To me as a living being on this planet I strongly think no intelligence agency should exist at all for the simple reason that borders and countries should be abolished so we could all be earthlings sharing a planet. Buuuuut it seems the ones in position of domination such as US and old colonial Europe tend to disagree with this view. But this personal view does not prevent me from using my brains and senses to observe and having a certain understanding of how a minority of humans in position of power defend their own interest and push their own agenda and try to get every edge they can by whatever mean is available. The point of a spy agency is not to spy, it is to spy and not get caught, because when caught now it's a whole different game. So given the accumulation of recent leaks I would say that NSA and CIA do not so such a good job. And given the nature of the revelations and what is exposed it seems they go too far past what is acceptable. Compared to how China or Russia hack into the US without getting caught or exposed with a fraction of the US budget this paints a picture of an overspending of budget for arguably poor results for those agencies that not only get exposed but also fail at their mission of protection.

shouldbworking 9y ago

Any country with satellites spends tons of their time gawking at everyone else's stuff, while maybe occasionally predicting the weather. I think you're really underestimating how much counties spy on each other. Russia stole nuclear secrets from the US and China was recently implicated trying to get plans for US fighter jets. I think stealing military tech is much closer to an act of war than watching people's finances? How about assassinating people you don't like on a foreign countries soil? Because places like North Korea do that stuff regularly. I'm just saying that this isn't even close to the worst stuff that's come out and I think your outrage is a bit much

bigbugbag 9y ago
Country spy on each other is a couple steps down from what the NSA does. > How about assassinating people you don't like on a foreign countries soil? The US is famous for being a champion in this category, France under its current president also competes for appearing in the high score table, Israel is known for this too. But the US still wins because on top of the secret assassination programs and drones, contraction mercenaries to do the killing, financing local dissident to do the killings, it also invades countries and makes war which it's pretty much the only one doing, even north korea doesn't do that, maybe because they cannot afford the multi trillions of military spending the US does.
- phil21 9y ago
  > Country spy on each other is a couple steps down from what the NSA does You don't get to call someone out for being better than you at the game. I mean really this is your argument? Everyone does it, but the NSA is so much better only they are somehow immoral but everyone else is ok? I just cannot wrap my head around that argument. If a spy agency exists, it's job is to spy. Why would anyone be surprised or upset to find out... they did their job?
  - fulafel 9y ago
    I think this is the line of thinking that puts off western non-US citizens about the American espionage machine. The shadow state is ingrained in people's minds as a given, and is not seen a tool that democratically elected leaders wield and control. In addition being orders of magnitude better resourced than other countries' spy agencies, the US intelligence machine don't seem to be politically restrained by the traditional spook moderators of popular support or respect for other countries' sovereignity. You can think that German spooks don't listen to Trump's phone calls because they have less resources and possibly competence, but that's because the politicians and voters choose to rein them in.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

You're wrong about them being out of control: this, the hacking, spying, compromise of foreign nations, etc, is what the American people want. You're confusing a vocal minority that agrees with you for consensus. From the perspective of most Americans, the IC are loyal soldiers who brought nearly the whole globe under American control at a price below that of our latest fighter plane. Total information warfare superiority. The new nuclear dominance. Now, you (and I) might find that unsavory, but for people who are fans of real politik, it wasn't even a question. If anything, the IC should've done more to neutralize Chinese and Russian capabilities. I would argue the real politik view is simplistic, but yours is also naive. You're simply wrong about the US going to war if others did the same -- they do and we don't. We retaliate in cyberspace, dissident funding, etc. That state of continuous covert warfare is normal, everyone does it, and there are many reasons the US wants to dominate at it. The only criticism I have of the IC is failing to advance our defensive capabilities, not for keeping us at the forefront of the cyber battlefield.

iamacynic 9y ago
you could say that the continual, un-ending nature of covert cyber/internet and financial war prevents any individual player or group from gaining sudden over-proportional power (as is possible with the two arm leverage of technology and finance) and causing a large-scale conflict. i.e. it's the new multi-lateral cold war of the 21st century.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  It's just the cyberization of the economic, psychological, and ideological warfare that has existed... Well, probably since always, but I've heard of at least to the 1600s and the birth of the modern nation-state. Nations have always jockeyed for economic advantage, harmed the cohesion of rival nations (eg, psyops and funding dissidents), and advanced groups in those nations ideologically sympathetic to themselves. Sometimes it spills in to small scale conflicts or actual revolutions or wars.
- theparanoid 9y ago
  In the overt corporate space Microsoft sure did win during the 90's. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Iran schlonged their middle-east rivals in cyber warefare this or the next decade.

ajross 9y ago

Iran and Palestine suffer from asymmetry of power projection, so maybe what you say it true. It's absolutely true, however, that China and Russia engage in exactly this kind of espionage against the US and other western targets, and the world survives. Spying gets a bad rap. When it works correctly everyone is a little better off for it, because it prevents surprises on the part of the people whose mistakes can be most costly.

cmurf 9y ago
Ehh. There's the connotation of spying and then the real world denotation of spying. It connotes just information gathering. But spies are absolutely involved in sabotage.
- ajross 9y ago
  There's no allegation of sabotage in the linked article or the grandparent comment though. And in fact the structure of the US intelligence community makes that sort of a broad leap too: "spies" may be involved in sabotage, but broadly the NSA never is. That's someone else's job.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    Wikipedia article about NSA tends to differ: Although many of NSA's programs rely on "passive" electronic collection, the agency is authorized to accomplish its mission through active clandestine means,among which are physically bugging electronic systems and allegedly engaging in sabotage through subversive software. Though I cannot pinpoint it on NSA, I would say stuxnet is a good example of sabotage and probably involves the NSA.

ars 9y ago

> If it was Iran doing this the US would go to war with them. They are doing this, and yet, no war. So what does that do to your claim? > If it was Palestine who was spying on US banking systems the US military would be killing left and right until nothing but corpses would remain, Oh please, you must know nothing about geopolitics to think this is true. I'm 100% certain Palestine spies on Israel as much as they possibly can, and Israel does the same to them. I doubt Palestine spies on the US, but only because it's not in their interests, not because they are worried about being killed. > Gathering this information seem to have much more to do with controlling foreign goverments than with preventing terrorism. And? Is that bad or something? That's what countries do - if they can. You might wish you lived in a utopia where everyone was super nice to everyone else, and no one took anything not theirs. But in the real world if people can take power, they will. It would be stupid for any country not to do anything they can to stop or manage that. > there are lots of countries which have suffered many more terrorist attacks in the last 5 years and don't use it ad an excuse to fuck with everyone else in the planet. You really believe that the US is the only country that spies?

travmatt 9y ago
It seems like you're letting facts get in the way of a perfectly good chance to be outraged over completely sensationalized hand wringing.
bigbugbag 9y ago
Wow, that's a nice way of pulling HN quality down, grats ! Allow to offer a single correction > That's what countries do - if they can. It's not countries but spying agencies that need to justify their existence now that the cold war is over. Or governments. But I sincerely doubt that worldwide a national referendum about "should we use our resources and power to spy on other countries and try to control foreign government" would get close to a majority of yes in most countries around the world apart maybe in the US and north korea and maybe a few others. And even for the US I'm not so sure.
- newdayrising 9y ago
  Someone disagrees with you so you act like a child and tell them they're bringing the "quality down" on HN? Tip: If you want people to take you seriously, act like an adult.

avn2109 9y ago

As an American patriod I support neither the NSA nor the unconstitutional American police state. But to oppose the idea of meddling in the international banking system is to oppose the very idea of an intelligence service. Such meddling is the core mandate of organized intelligence. It's exactly what all intelligence services have done since time immemorial. Following the money is the oldest trick in the book.

aisofteng 9y ago
Oh please, there is no American police state.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  From the outside I'd say that the USA is not that far from a police state and getting closer with time. One would have to look away on purpose to not see the militarization of police. But don't think it's only the US, this is a trend we can notice in Europe too. As if the conditions of life were evolving towards possible uprising due to say growing poverty, diminishing buying power, increase in food insecurity, increasing gap between the rich and poor, unsustainable economy closing on its limits, etc. and the governments taking precautionary measures to protect themselves.
- ionised 9y ago
  To outside observers you most certainly are approaching one at speed.

meowface 9y ago

All globally-competitive countries are doing this to all other countries. I'd be very shocked if Iran's intelligence agencies didn't have (either in the past, or presently) some level of access to our financial systems. It's pretty absurd to suggest we would kill people just because we caught a spy agency snooping on us. We've caught and rebuked foreign spy agencies all the time. The usual punishment is covert retaliation (escalating malware attacks, etc.), and the times when it isn't covert (like with the Russia revelations), responses usually involve sanctions and condemnation. NSA would be doing the American people a disservice if they weren't competing with the rest of the spy agencies out there. It's just a fact of life. We just want them to do it without warrantless mass surveillance of US citizens. >It was proven that the CIA had knowledge about the attack before it happened... They didn't. To suggest they did is to allege a massive conspiracy. They received hints it might happen, but intelligence agencies receive tens of thousands to millions of pieces of new information per week, 99.99% of which turns out to be nothing. You can apply this argument to almost every war or attack in history (including Pearl Harbor). Sieving the signal out of the noise isn't easy. I'm an American but neither a nationalist nor a patriot. I just realize they're doing their job. I also realize and acknowledge Russia wouldn't be doing its job properly if they didn't try to influence the Presidential election.

coldtea 9y ago
>All globally-competitive countries are doing this to all other countries. I'd be very shocked if Iran's intelligence agencies didn't have (either in the past, or presently) some level of access to our financial systems. I'd be terrible shocked if this is not just Hollywood-level paranoia, the kind most people around the world merely laugh at. This idea that countries are at some kind of equal footing with regard to those things, "doing the same" with the 10.000ft gorilla that spends more than 3 times for its military what the next player (China) does -- more than the next 7 players combined. There are maybe 4-5 countries that even remotely do anything like that on a global scale. Most countries merely track their neighbours's and traditional (regional) enemies. I'd say just the US, the UK and France (ex big colonial powers that have fucked half the world over), Israel (because it has people everywhere, who, due to the terrible persecutions Jews faced in WWII can be very loyal to the cause of the "homeland" even if its not their actual country of citizenship), and China (because of sheer size and economic/global rise) have any such capacity, intent and power. USSR back in the day too, modern Russia, not so much. France a little, as an ex-colonial power. Germany has its secret service too, but not much to write home about either. And even of those few, even fewer have the history, military and diplomatic means to pressure and reach of using those things to mess with other countries the world over.

mikestew 9y ago

I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter). Boy, have I got disappointing news for you. I mean, I don't know what to tell you other than what you'd like and how the world works are very much disconnected. IOW, "they all do that, sir." If we pitched bombs at each other every time we caught a spy in our home country, we'd do nothing else.

kristianc 9y ago

> I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter) As a European citizen how did you feel about Europe seizing any deposits over €100k from Cyprus' second largest bank when it decided it had debts that needed collecting? And then suggesting that this should be a 'model for future bailouts?' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/25/cyprus-bailout-deal-eu-closes-bank https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/25/cyprus-bailout...

kpil 9y ago
That sucks - it also happens to be the protected amount that the EU guarantees and is committed to reimburse the account holders with when a bank fails and go bankrupt. So in one way the customers outcome did not really change from a real bankruptcy, while reducing the risk of crashing the entire bank system in Cyprus, possibly EU and in that case the world. The sum is not extraordinarily high though so I suspect that quite a few rather ordinary people saw their retirement savings evaporate. I also suspect that the bank have been paying dividends to it's shareholders for many years, so it would have been nice to let them bail the bank in one way or another instead of ordinary people - but I doubt that it's possible to do that legally after the fact. The best you can do is to step in and buy the bank for nothing - but that won't remove the debts. I suppose that it would be possible to write laws that make the banks shareholders be responsible for any debts somehow, just like some other types of incorporations - and why not? Owning a bank seems to be pretty risk-free if you can just use your customers money to bail yourself out...
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  > I also suspect that the bank have been paying dividends to it's shareholders for many years maybe not as the bank ceo later admitted that the bank had probably been insolvent as early as 2008, even before cyprus entered the eurozone.
bigbugbag 9y ago
That's a gross mischaracterization of what actually happened. The EU didn't seized anything but gave a bailout of 10 billions euros at the demand of the cypriot governement and asked that in return the second largest bank be closed and uninsured deposit over 100k€ (and 48% of them in the largest bank) used as a one time levy. Most of this money belonged to foreigner using cyprus as a tax haven. Those who lost 3 millions in the process were given a 7 millions discount on buying the cypriot citizenship. see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financial_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Cypriot_financ... But now let's provide some context here, the EU had to bailout Cyprus as a consequence of the US subprime mortgage crisis. So the EU had to clean up the mess made by the US. Though I do agree there are some rotten things on the financial side of the EU, mainly the IMF and the ECB but also that countries have to pay for the private debt of banks. But this is not so different from the rest of the world and other central banks. Though quite scaled down it's not so far from the 700 billion bailout of banks in the US and the ECB and other central banks and federal reserve buying 2.5 trillion of government debt and bank asset the largest such move ever while EU and US government were injecting 1.5 trillion in their major banks.

jsz0 9y ago

> don't use it ad an excuse to fuck with everyone else in the planet What about Europol? https://www.wsj.com/articles/europol-says-data-sharing-on-potential-terrorists-rises-significantly-1484859853 https://www.wsj.com/articles/europol-says-data-sharing-on-po...

cmurf 9y ago

There is a significant degree of might makes right here. But you know, the world opinion is that it wants a world police man, just not a world bully. Important but sometimes its a small distinction. And the U.S. has been a bully (Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) so there's trust loss on whether the next instance is generally for the benefit of Americans and the world, or only Americans and only in a superficial way? I mean come on, U.S. decries chemical weapons use in Syria, the official spokesperson makes a Godwin statement about how even a certain bad guy in history didn't drop them out of airplanes on civilian population, and yet umm hello?? Napalm?? Courtesy of Dow Chemical company... And as for bad things going on in the world, it's approximately a genocide (that it's in the not so gray area, means we've hit the "never again" line in my view) what's going on in Yemen. We looked the other way from genocides in Sudan, and Congo, and Timor. Only so many resources for things like that when there are only so many resources available to recoup the cost. That's the reality. It's to a great degree U.S.A. Inc. and about the best you can hope for is to not repeat the vicious events of the past. The last Korean war, where no one was really ready for it, wanted it (except Kim), and weren't fighting with today's Weapons Inc. let alone nukes, yet it still got more than a million people killed. So yes there's a lot about the U.S. to be irritated at, but the world is complex and you have to judge each case.

Jach 9y ago

It's worth reading an ex-CIA Head's take on why we spy even on our allies in Europe, not just our potential enemies in the Middle East: http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm "Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology. It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing economic circumstances. You'd rather not go through the hassle of moving toward less dirigisme. It's so much easier to keep paying bribes."

nyolfen 9y ago
this is an interesting piece, but its premise is totally ludicrous. we don't spy on europeans because they bribe, we spy on them because we spy on everyone, to have intelligence to act upon in any domain. spying on diplomats and politicians gets orders of magnitude more attention than airbus paying off saudis, and probably any other catgeory besides perhaps security. we spy on these types of people so that analysts can make informed policy recommendations, with better sources than the public media, and any country that doesnt is either underresourced or incompetent. this article is essentially a (literal) joke, thumbing the nose at any outraged europeans who would read it and a collective laugh in their direction for its actual american audience

anigbrowl 9y ago

Countries have spied on each other forever, and any country that doesn't engage in such activities is run by fools. No, the Us would not go to war over another country spying on us, it would just expel the spies, though in an earlier era it might have shot them. We Europeans spy as much as anyone, and always have. Espionage is an organizational reality. To pretend you don't have to care about such things is like being a tourist that wanders into the bad part of town flashing money everywhere and then expresses astonishment if their pocket is picked or they are otherwise taken advantage of.

booleandilemma 9y ago

Every country is spying on all other countries. To not believe this would be naive. Iran hacked a US drone in 2011 and we didn't go to war with them over it.

darawk 9y ago

What would you like spy agencies to be doing?

buttsnax 9y ago

Fortunately, it doesn't matter what you think is ok.

ramblerman 9y ago

As a fellow European, stop being so naive. Spying on merkels phone annoyed me, but this is not the same. Also it was proven the CIA had knowledge of 911. Do you have a source of that?