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> It isn't even the first time GCHQ has been caught spying on other European countries The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't

by Kalium 8y ago

> It isn't even the first time GCHQ has been caught spying on other European countries The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't just normal, it's part and parcel of basic modern statecraft. Being able to anticipate the moves of your allies, understand their thought processes, and watch them for compromises are all incredibly useful things, and the first two very important for working closely with an ally. This is, quite frankly, normal stuff. What generally doesn't happen is public discussion of it. The public tends to think of espionage as something that would only ever be directed against enemies or threats. That's at odds with the information that enables diplomacy to function well. Every world leader knows their allies are spying on them, and tries to do the same in return. The only weird thing is being publicly exposed, at which point every leader postures against the thing they all rely on. There's really no need to suspect a commercial conspiracy when normal diplomacy is sufficient to explain this kind of thing. But I guess this is boring by comparison to imagining that a historical financial center only functions through ill-gotten commercial intelligence.

pessimizer 8y ago
> The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't just normal, it's part and parcel of basic modern statecraft. And the corollary to the fact that spying on all of your enemies and all of your friends is considered a basic necessity for modern states: when political actors start press releasing accusations of spying, the aim is generally the manipulation of public opinion, not actual concern. > There's really no need to suspect a commercial conspiracy when normal diplomacy is sufficient to explain this kind of thing. I don't know that the two are particularly distinguishable.
Someone1234 8y ago
I was with you until: > But I guess this is boring by comparison to imagining that a historical financial center only functions through ill-gotten commercial intelligence. Nobody said anything about "only functioning because..." The entire basis for your position seems to be that an intelligence apparatus can only do exactly one thing at a time. It can either be for diplomatic reasons OR commercial spying, not both... In reality governments extract as much value out of the intelligence networks and collected information as they can. If the collected information is going to help a domestic business interest against a foreign one (e.g. contract negotiations, mergers, sales, etc) you can bet your butt that tips will be supplied. You really think that the US government doesn't routinely "tip" off Boeing and several European countries Airbus? Countries look out for their own self interests beyond anything else. Expecting that they'll only do so some of the time rather than all of the time, seems like an opinion based more around how you'd wish a country to act morally, rather than the reality on the ground.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  >You really think that the US government doesn't routinely "tip" off Boeing and several European countries Airbus? >Countries look out for their own self interests beyond anything else. And of course, governments only help local companies like this, if they in turn help their government.
- strictnein 8y ago
  The US doesn't tip off American companies with data gathered by its intelligence agencies. This was a decision made back during the Clinton years. You're welcome to share your evidence to the contrary.
  - travmatt 8y ago
    I’m pretty sure until recently they didn’t even share information that would help protect companies from state level actors.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    NSA spying on Petrobras[0]. NSA spying on EADS (Airbus)[1]. NSA spying on Eurocopter[2]. NSA spying on Siemens[3]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras/nsa-spying-on-petrobras-if-proven-is-industrial-espionage-rousseff-idUSBRE98817N20130909 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr... [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bnd-und-nsa-die-chronologie-des-spionageskandals/11722810.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bnd-und-nsa-die-chronolo... [2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/geheimdienst-affaere-nsa-jubelte-bnd-deutsche-spaehziele-unter-1.2715253 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/geheimdienst-affaere-nsa... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edward-snowden-says-nsa-engages-in-industrial-espionage-1.2511635 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edward-snowden-says-nsa-engage...
    - strictnein 8y ago
      You're welcome to point out where I said "the US doesn't spy on foreign companies".
detcader 8y ago
And decades into Chomsky's campaigns to tear down the mythologies of the nobility of modern governments, people in the tech community continue to get all confused and offended when self-identified socialists use euphemisms like "sociopath" for powerful capitalists. We should have been carrying his books around school as teens instead of The God Delusion. "He admitted that he was opposed to democracy, that he thought offshore tax havens were good, that he believed workers shouldn’t have any rights beyond their contracts, and that he had no idea how capitalism could possibly avert the climate change crisis. The right often tries to avoid discussing these implications of its philosophy. Dr. Mitchell was quite blunt in saying that democracy is bad and tax avoidance is good. I am grateful to him because, while I find these positions morally objectionable in the extreme, it is helpful when I can point to someone’s actual words rather than having to accuse them of burying their true feelings beneath euphemisms." - Reflections on Debating the Right, Nathan J. Robinson
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
boomboomsubban 8y ago
>The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't just normal, it's part and parcel of basic modern statecraft. Being able to anticipate the moves of your allies, understand their thought processes, and watch them for compromises are all incredibly useful things, and the first two very important for working closely with an ally. This is, quite frankly, normal stuff. If this information is beneficial to both sides, it should be freely exchanged. Relying on everybody spying in each other allows poor information to cause massive mistakes, creates a power imbalance should one agency outperform another, and requires a massive investment in a sector that is also capable of economic espionage and the creation of a surveillance state. If this is a necessary element of state diplomacy, how can interactions between countries like the US and Mexico ever be fair? And how is the public benefitting from this large investment in state controlled espionage?
- amalcon 8y ago
  > If this information is beneficial to both sides, it should be freely exchanged. A lot of it is. You still want independent confirmation of these things. It reduces incentive to lie (by increasing the probability of being caught), and can mitigate some types of miscommunication. E.g. maybe your ally can't admit something that they know to be true, because it happens to be unpopular domestically. I'm not sure that this is sufficient justification, but the benefit does exist. > If this is a necessary element of state diplomacy, how can interactions between countries like the US and Mexico ever be fair? How can they ever be fair if it isn't? Fairness is just not a property that interactions generally have. Every actor has advantages, and those advantages are rarely equal for all parties.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    >maybe your ally can't admit something that they know to be true, because it happens to be unpopular domestically. It's not like diplomacy is done in public, there are ample opportunities to convey your true intentions. >How can they ever be fair if it isn't? Sure, you're right that "true" fairness is likely unobtainable. This system adds an unnecessary additional component that serves only to further the aims of the powerful. Calling it a normal, necessary part of diplomacy makes it seem like it's in everyone's best interest.
thefounder 8y ago
Yeah, I wonder why the state of Texas is not spying on Washington DC
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  How do you know it doesn't? At some point "spying" becomes just "research". Even grocery stores do "covert espionage" against their competitors, to e.g. match prices.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    You are comparing states with groceries...let's compare the Afganistan war with an afterschool fight or terrorists with pranksters and see where it leads us. Spying activities are hostile actions. They are used to gain unfair economic advantage, overtrow governments, win elections(for their fav candidate) and other nasty stuff. If the british government needs more data to find terrorists they could use their political power to improve the data sharing at the EU level.
- amalcon 8y ago
  Why do you think they aren't? Sure, Texas doesn't have anything like the NSA. Still, you can bet that Texan senators and reps discover things that they aren't officially supposed to know, and some of that information reaches their colleagues back home.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    I don't think it's legal to use NSA/CIA to spy on political adversaries and sabotage them politically and economically.
3pt14159 8y ago
The other open secret is that intelligence services in most countries have no where near the number of people they need to listen to all the taps they have, let alone comprehend it all. And because the people they're surveilling almost certainly know that they're being surveilled all the information has to be treated as potentially suspect because it could be manipulated. Plus, the people being spied upon have their own misconceptions, agendas, and potentially warped ideologies that confound everything. Wrap this all in a bureaucratic malaise with much-too-small-to-compete salary caps and intelligence is way less effectually than people think.
- arminiusreturns 8y ago
  This is largely the truth and the scary part about it all. Incompetence abounds more than we would ever want to know, but often it's not just incompetence. I often think of William Binney's thinthread program, designed to protect Americans privacy while still performing the core node taps at a handful of millions cost. It was scrapped for a program that cost billions, didn't protect Americans privacy, and lost the real intel in the increased haystack size... That's not incompetence. That's kickback cruft to good old boys literally weakening national security for more money. There is a reason certain counties in Virginia have the largest growth of millionaires in America since 9/11.
Theodores 8y ago
You are correct, pretty much all spying at GCHQ is aimed at friendly competition in the business arena (and politics) and has nothing to do with 'hunt the bin Laden', 'kiddy porn' and all those things that they say they do. Even during the Cold War the bulk of operations were directed at allies and customers for the arms trade, not the Soviet Union. There is some dangerous thinking going on with this assumption that 'we must let our spies bug everything and everyone, including our allies' that should not be glossed over. There is the 'copying homework problem' that we all know from school. If you spend all of your efforts copying the efforts of others (whether it is a school assignment or a business proposal) then this really can be to your own detriment. It is far better to do your own work and then to compare with others to see if you have missed something. Starting with the work of others and changing a few details doesn't get you top grades or the contract. It is a risky strategy. Another problem with over-reliance on spying is that this is actually being done by a defence contractor who may not have your best interests at heart. A large part of the GCHQ infrastructure is put in place by American companies and they are upstream. Imagine you are trying to sell bombs to Saudi Arabia, representing the interests of British companies and doing your best to secure jobs for people in your constituency. If the defence contractor doing the spying services also have bomb factories in the USA then there is a conflict of interest going on, they have visibility on what deal is being proposed and can make sure their competing offer gouges the Saudis but does not appear to be based on insider information. Spying also has a chilling effect and targets of spying efforts can go quiet if they know that too many walls have ears. If you were a European company would you prefer to deal with your European neighbours, getting bids from France, Germany or Spain (for example) or would you want to have known snitch-countries bidding too? The Five Eyes run the risk of just being left out of the running as untrustworthy, particularly in countries outside the Anglo-Saxon world.
- JoeSmithson 8y ago
  Why do you think that "pretty much all spying at GCHQ" is related to business/politics? Do you actually have a reliable source for that?
  - Theodores 8y ago

by Kalium 8y ago

pessimizer 8y ago

> The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't just normal, it's part and parcel of basic modern statecraft. And the corollary to the fact that spying on all of your enemies and all of your friends is considered a basic necessity for modern states: when political actors start press releasing accusations of spying, the aim is generally the manipulation of public opinion, not actual concern. > There's really no need to suspect a commercial conspiracy when normal diplomacy is sufficient to explain this kind of thing. I don't know that the two are particularly distinguishable.

Someone1234 8y ago

I was with you until: > But I guess this is boring by comparison to imagining that a historical financial center only functions through ill-gotten commercial intelligence. Nobody said anything about "only functioning because..." The entire basis for your position seems to be that an intelligence apparatus can only do exactly one thing at a time. It can either be for diplomatic reasons OR commercial spying, not both... In reality governments extract as much value out of the intelligence networks and collected information as they can. If the collected information is going to help a domestic business interest against a foreign one (e.g. contract negotiations, mergers, sales, etc) you can bet your butt that tips will be supplied. You really think that the US government doesn't routinely "tip" off Boeing and several European countries Airbus? Countries look out for their own self interests beyond anything else. Expecting that they'll only do so some of the time rather than all of the time, seems like an opinion based more around how you'd wish a country to act morally, rather than the reality on the ground.

BurningFrog 8y ago
>You really think that the US government doesn't routinely "tip" off Boeing and several European countries Airbus? >Countries look out for their own self interests beyond anything else. And of course, governments only help local companies like this, if they in turn help their government.
strictnein 8y ago
The US doesn't tip off American companies with data gathered by its intelligence agencies. This was a decision made back during the Clinton years. You're welcome to share your evidence to the contrary.
- travmatt 8y ago
  I’m pretty sure until recently they didn’t even share information that would help protect companies from state level actors.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  NSA spying on Petrobras[0]. NSA spying on EADS (Airbus)[1]. NSA spying on Eurocopter[2]. NSA spying on Siemens[3]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras/nsa-spying-on-petrobras-if-proven-is-industrial-espionage-rousseff-idUSBRE98817N20130909 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr... [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bnd-und-nsa-die-chronologie-des-spionageskandals/11722810.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bnd-und-nsa-die-chronolo... [2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/geheimdienst-affaere-nsa-jubelte-bnd-deutsche-spaehziele-unter-1.2715253 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/geheimdienst-affaere-nsa... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edward-snowden-says-nsa-engages-in-industrial-espionage-1.2511635 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edward-snowden-says-nsa-engage...
  - strictnein 8y ago
    You're welcome to point out where I said "the US doesn't spy on foreign companies".

detcader 8y ago

And decades into Chomsky's campaigns to tear down the mythologies of the nobility of modern governments, people in the tech community continue to get all confused and offended when self-identified socialists use euphemisms like "sociopath" for powerful capitalists. We should have been carrying his books around school as teens instead of The God Delusion. "He admitted that he was opposed to democracy, that he thought offshore tax havens were good, that he believed workers shouldn’t have any rights beyond their contracts, and that he had no idea how capitalism could possibly avert the climate change crisis. The right often tries to avoid discussing these implications of its philosophy. Dr. Mitchell was quite blunt in saying that democracy is bad and tax avoidance is good. I am grateful to him because, while I find these positions morally objectionable in the extreme, it is helpful when I can point to someone’s actual words rather than having to accuse them of burying their true feelings beneath euphemisms." - Reflections on Debating the Right, Nathan J. Robinson

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

boomboomsubban 8y ago

>The polite open secret of espionage is that spying on your allies isn't just normal, it's part and parcel of basic modern statecraft. Being able to anticipate the moves of your allies, understand their thought processes, and watch them for compromises are all incredibly useful things, and the first two very important for working closely with an ally. This is, quite frankly, normal stuff. If this information is beneficial to both sides, it should be freely exchanged. Relying on everybody spying in each other allows poor information to cause massive mistakes, creates a power imbalance should one agency outperform another, and requires a massive investment in a sector that is also capable of economic espionage and the creation of a surveillance state. If this is a necessary element of state diplomacy, how can interactions between countries like the US and Mexico ever be fair? And how is the public benefitting from this large investment in state controlled espionage?

amalcon 8y ago
> If this information is beneficial to both sides, it should be freely exchanged. A lot of it is. You still want independent confirmation of these things. It reduces incentive to lie (by increasing the probability of being caught), and can mitigate some types of miscommunication. E.g. maybe your ally can't admit something that they know to be true, because it happens to be unpopular domestically. I'm not sure that this is sufficient justification, but the benefit does exist. > If this is a necessary element of state diplomacy, how can interactions between countries like the US and Mexico ever be fair? How can they ever be fair if it isn't? Fairness is just not a property that interactions generally have. Every actor has advantages, and those advantages are rarely equal for all parties.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  >maybe your ally can't admit something that they know to be true, because it happens to be unpopular domestically. It's not like diplomacy is done in public, there are ample opportunities to convey your true intentions. >How can they ever be fair if it isn't? Sure, you're right that "true" fairness is likely unobtainable. This system adds an unnecessary additional component that serves only to further the aims of the powerful. Calling it a normal, necessary part of diplomacy makes it seem like it's in everyone's best interest.

thefounder 8y ago

Yeah, I wonder why the state of Texas is not spying on Washington DC

TeMPOraL 8y ago
How do you know it doesn't? At some point "spying" becomes just "research". Even grocery stores do "covert espionage" against their competitors, to e.g. match prices.
- thefounder 8y ago
  You are comparing states with groceries...let's compare the Afganistan war with an afterschool fight or terrorists with pranksters and see where it leads us. Spying activities are hostile actions. They are used to gain unfair economic advantage, overtrow governments, win elections(for their fav candidate) and other nasty stuff. If the british government needs more data to find terrorists they could use their political power to improve the data sharing at the EU level.
amalcon 8y ago
Why do you think they aren't? Sure, Texas doesn't have anything like the NSA. Still, you can bet that Texan senators and reps discover things that they aren't officially supposed to know, and some of that information reaches their colleagues back home.
- thefounder 8y ago
  I don't think it's legal to use NSA/CIA to spy on political adversaries and sabotage them politically and economically.

3pt14159 8y ago

The other open secret is that intelligence services in most countries have no where near the number of people they need to listen to all the taps they have, let alone comprehend it all. And because the people they're surveilling almost certainly know that they're being surveilled all the information has to be treated as potentially suspect because it could be manipulated. Plus, the people being spied upon have their own misconceptions, agendas, and potentially warped ideologies that confound everything. Wrap this all in a bureaucratic malaise with much-too-small-to-compete salary caps and intelligence is way less effectually than people think.

arminiusreturns 8y ago
This is largely the truth and the scary part about it all. Incompetence abounds more than we would ever want to know, but often it's not just incompetence. I often think of William Binney's thinthread program, designed to protect Americans privacy while still performing the core node taps at a handful of millions cost. It was scrapped for a program that cost billions, didn't protect Americans privacy, and lost the real intel in the increased haystack size... That's not incompetence. That's kickback cruft to good old boys literally weakening national security for more money. There is a reason certain counties in Virginia have the largest growth of millionaires in America since 9/11.

Theodores 8y ago

You are correct, pretty much all spying at GCHQ is aimed at friendly competition in the business arena (and politics) and has nothing to do with 'hunt the bin Laden', 'kiddy porn' and all those things that they say they do. Even during the Cold War the bulk of operations were directed at allies and customers for the arms trade, not the Soviet Union. There is some dangerous thinking going on with this assumption that 'we must let our spies bug everything and everyone, including our allies' that should not be glossed over. There is the 'copying homework problem' that we all know from school. If you spend all of your efforts copying the efforts of others (whether it is a school assignment or a business proposal) then this really can be to your own detriment. It is far better to do your own work and then to compare with others to see if you have missed something. Starting with the work of others and changing a few details doesn't get you top grades or the contract. It is a risky strategy. Another problem with over-reliance on spying is that this is actually being done by a defence contractor who may not have your best interests at heart. A large part of the GCHQ infrastructure is put in place by American companies and they are upstream. Imagine you are trying to sell bombs to Saudi Arabia, representing the interests of British companies and doing your best to secure jobs for people in your constituency. If the defence contractor doing the spying services also have bomb factories in the USA then there is a conflict of interest going on, they have visibility on what deal is being proposed and can make sure their competing offer gouges the Saudis but does not appear to be based on insider information. Spying also has a chilling effect and targets of spying efforts can go quiet if they know that too many walls have ears. If you were a European company would you prefer to deal with your European neighbours, getting bids from France, Germany or Spain (for example) or would you want to have known snitch-countries bidding too? The Five Eyes run the risk of just being left out of the running as untrustworthy, particularly in countries outside the Anglo-Saxon world.

JoeSmithson 8y ago
Why do you think that "pretty much all spying at GCHQ" is related to business/politics? Do you actually have a reliable source for that?
- Theodores 8y ago