3 ms·

This actually preceded the EU as it was during the Falklands situation, and I don't think EU<->EU cooperation is inherently different if interests are misaligne

This actually preceded the EU as it was during the Falklands situation, and I don't think EU<->EU cooperation is inherently different if interests are misaligned (which has happened many times between EU members), or if a country (e.g. the UK) chooses to leave the EU. I was hoping to at least illustrate that European countries (particularly EU countries) have for many years gone out of their way to invade the privacy of foreign citizens when it benefits them, just as the US feels free to do so today. I don't support this in either case, and rereading my initial comment I made a quick edit that I think makes this a bit more clear. My point is more that if we're going to claim that certain countries are the victims of US surveillance, the countries that opt into cooperating and benefit more often than not really shouldn't be at the top of the list. The US and most western European countries (or certainly those which cooperate with the US) do not see each other as their foremost adversaries, which I suspect is why both seem to willingly sign up for this cooperation. I would instead suggest that the victims of this relationship are limited to third-parties that don't have anything to gain but are still vulnerable to these extrajudicial privacy invasions. EDIT: > But I think there's a clear delineation between: "Our government does shady things" and "Another nations government does shady things, and incidentally we're entirely dependent on them not to do it to us". Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but this sounds to me like it is an attempt to justify the hypocrisy you alluded to in the initial comment.

dijit 6y ago
if I seem like I am hypocritical then it is because I don't scan these things as being the same at all. Cooperation is very different from dependence. The rest of your comment seems to assume that I'm talking about "bad things that we do to each other" and I'm not really talking about that at all, merely our dependence on a foreign ally that has unclear motives. Here's some things that I consider to be true: 1) Our intelligence services are in bed together, that's bad. 2) Our governments are blindly allowing (or in some cases supporting) monopolies of other nations industries. That's bad. 3) Our countries are both victims _and_ perpetrators, there's no black/white divide here. But our peoples will be worse off. 4) We're taking on a debt that has a very high interest later. I don't think cooperation and pooling of resources is the same as pinning an entire section of society on another country. For a concrete example, imagine that we're pretty friendly with Germany, we decide to let them be our postmen, they carry all post for us. Eventually we don't have the capacity to deliver mail anymore, the logistics are completely lost on us. The Germans open our mail, their government "allows" it, and there's nothing we can do because the post is somehow routed via Germany and not our jurisdiction anymore. We do nothing, because we trust the germans, maybe a stern warning, maybe certain mail has to be routed in-country. But the Germans say that this is stifling industry. Later, Germany invades poland, all our postmen are German, all the trucks are German, all the infrastructure that depends on post is German. You might argue that this is absurd, but this is how I see the situation with the USA.

dijit 6y ago

if I seem like I am hypocritical then it is because I don't scan these things as being the same at all. Cooperation is very different from dependence. The rest of your comment seems to assume that I'm talking about "bad things that we do to each other" and I'm not really talking about that at all, merely our dependence on a foreign ally that has unclear motives. Here's some things that I consider to be true: 1) Our intelligence services are in bed together, that's bad. 2) Our governments are blindly allowing (or in some cases supporting) monopolies of other nations industries. That's bad. 3) Our countries are both victims _and_ perpetrators, there's no black/white divide here. But our peoples will be worse off. 4) We're taking on a debt that has a very high interest later. I don't think cooperation and pooling of resources is the same as pinning an entire section of society on another country. For a concrete example, imagine that we're pretty friendly with Germany, we decide to let them be our postmen, they carry all post for us. Eventually we don't have the capacity to deliver mail anymore, the logistics are completely lost on us. The Germans open our mail, their government "allows" it, and there's nothing we can do because the post is somehow routed via Germany and not our jurisdiction anymore. We do nothing, because we trust the germans, maybe a stern warning, maybe certain mail has to be routed in-country. But the Germans say that this is stifling industry. Later, Germany invades poland, all our postmen are German, all the trucks are German, all the infrastructure that depends on post is German. You might argue that this is absurd, but this is how I see the situation with the USA.