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> n.b. I always find it funny how interested and intrigued yet abhorred so many people are when it comes to spycraft/espionage etc... I was such a person. When

> n.b. I always find it funny how interested and intrigued yet abhorred so many people are when it comes to spycraft/espionage etc... I was such a person. When I was in school I read the EU report on Echelon. There was so much basic espionage meta in there that shocked me. For example I had thought of signals intelligence as an aggressive act - an act of war. In the EU report SIGINT and broadly spying was introduced as a ordinary part of a decent intelligence function of a state.

goohle 5y ago
Listening and watching is not a form of aggression. A state have right to listen and watch other state actions from their territory. If a foreign traffic is passing through your state territory, your state has rights to look into it.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  On top of that, it is a tool, which can be used or abused. It can, for example, be used to avoid aggression. Just like talking to a high military leader of a hostile state can be used for 'good' or 'bad' purposes.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
It also comprises the vast majority of the intelligence we collect. It's not even close how big of a gap there is between how much SIGINT and IMINT we collect and there's still another huge gap between the amount of IMINT and HUMINT we collect. I personally wouldn't consider any of them aggressive.