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> It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot. It's absolutely hilarious t

> It's not like the CIA that breaks your SSL certs and wiretaps on your communications without asking anyone if they can or cannot. It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this. where did I say it's the only one? But would you deny that its the one spending more on it and with the most advanced technologies to do it? I don't know many other "free" countries that spied the political leaders of allied Nations.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Every country spies on their nominal allies. That part is not unusual or unexpected and has a long historical tradition. You can find story after story on this. “Allies” are only allies for reasons of national interest, not because they are genuinely friends, whatever that would mean between countries. Of course, there’s still outrage when they get caught. Here, for example, is Germany being outraged that the US spied on them. [1] And here’s Germany spying on France [2]. But they all know it’s going on. And here’s a good quote from French intelligence: > “If Hollande was genuinely shocked by these allegations, that would mean he wasn’t aware that this kind of thing is normal,” he said. “But of course he is aware. Hollande has to satisfy the feelings of the general public by expressing some indignation, but the truth is all countries spy on their friends and the only limitation is the means at their disposal. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-spying-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-... [2] https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-hollande-merkel-no-surprise https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-h...
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > Every country spies on their nominal allies. no. they have sources and intelligence officers share information, for various reasons, not excluding political beliefs. but spying the way USA was doing it on Merkel (for example) is not common, at all. It would also mean that American intelligence is more incompetent than French or Italian intelligence, never caught spying an ally, which cast some doubts on why CIA is so highly praised... I really don't believe it's true. And frankly "former intelligence officer says that" it's more information warfare than something newsworthy. If we believed "former intelligence officers" flying saucers should be filling our skies.
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      France has been caught spying many times. There was a huge scandal in the 90s when the French intelligence services were caught bugging American business leaders. WikiLeaks cables make the claim France is actually the “evil empire” of state-sponsored industrial espionage. France also has an enormous NSA-style spying apparatus. https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowden-hollande-nsa-prism-hypocritcal https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowd... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electronic-spying-operation-nsa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electro... Beyond just spying, French intelligence services even blew up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. They don’t have a moral problem with messing with allies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warri... Allies negotiate with each other all the time. Of course it helps them to have inside knowledge of what’s going on behind the scenes. Why do you think any country would handicap itself?
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > Why do you think any country would handicap itself? why do you think I think that? As a person from Rome I have no respect for France. The point is not that secret services spy on each other, but that mass surveillance of the scale US has built has no equivalent in the west. They have been spying their citizen too. Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate Add to that most of the corporations amassing people data are American and manufacture the most popular devices around (not limited to but including clouds, voice assistants, even roomba now) and have close relations with NSA (they have to or are willing to do it it doesn't matter) and the only logical conclusion is that they either are incompetent and got caught or they have been doing it too aggressively and the allies got pissed. Right now I believe they simply stepped up their game and catching them is just gone be harder. Wiretapping looks like child's play in comparison. But in the end my comment was about the fact that EU Parliament is not the CIA and it's not advocating for mass surveillance. There's a reason why secret services are called secret, because they are not doing it because the laws permits it.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> It's absolutely hilarious that you believe America is the only country that does this. where did I say it's the only one? But would you deny that its the one spending more on it and with the most advanced technologies to do it? I don't know many other "free" countries that spied the political leaders of allied Nations.

Amezarak 4y ago
Every country spies on their nominal allies. That part is not unusual or unexpected and has a long historical tradition. You can find story after story on this. “Allies” are only allies for reasons of national interest, not because they are genuinely friends, whatever that would mean between countries. Of course, there’s still outrage when they get caught. Here, for example, is Germany being outraged that the US spied on them. [1] And here’s Germany spying on France [2]. But they all know it’s going on. And here’s a good quote from French intelligence: > “If Hollande was genuinely shocked by these allegations, that would mean he wasn’t aware that this kind of thing is normal,” he said. “But of course he is aware. Hollande has to satisfy the feelings of the general public by expressing some indignation, but the truth is all countries spy on their friends and the only limitation is the means at their disposal. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-spying-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/europe/denmark-us-nsa-merkel-... [2] https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-hollande-merkel-no-surprise https://www.france24.com/en/20151113-germany-spying-france-h...
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Every country spies on their nominal allies. no. they have sources and intelligence officers share information, for various reasons, not excluding political beliefs. but spying the way USA was doing it on Merkel (for example) is not common, at all. It would also mean that American intelligence is more incompetent than French or Italian intelligence, never caught spying an ally, which cast some doubts on why CIA is so highly praised... I really don't believe it's true. And frankly "former intelligence officer says that" it's more information warfare than something newsworthy. If we believed "former intelligence officers" flying saucers should be filling our skies.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    France has been caught spying many times. There was a huge scandal in the 90s when the French intelligence services were caught bugging American business leaders. WikiLeaks cables make the claim France is actually the “evil empire” of state-sponsored industrial espionage. France also has an enormous NSA-style spying apparatus. https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowden-hollande-nsa-prism-hypocritcal https://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowd... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electronic-spying-operation-nsa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electro... Beyond just spying, French intelligence services even blew up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. They don’t have a moral problem with messing with allies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warri... Allies negotiate with each other all the time. Of course it helps them to have inside knowledge of what’s going on behind the scenes. Why do you think any country would handicap itself?
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > Why do you think any country would handicap itself? why do you think I think that? As a person from Rome I have no respect for France. The point is not that secret services spy on each other, but that mass surveillance of the scale US has built has no equivalent in the west. They have been spying their citizen too. Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate Add to that most of the corporations amassing people data are American and manufacture the most popular devices around (not limited to but including clouds, voice assistants, even roomba now) and have close relations with NSA (they have to or are willing to do it it doesn't matter) and the only logical conclusion is that they either are incompetent and got caught or they have been doing it too aggressively and the allies got pissed. Right now I believe they simply stepped up their game and catching them is just gone be harder. Wiretapping looks like child's play in comparison. But in the end my comment was about the fact that EU Parliament is not the CIA and it's not advocating for mass surveillance. There's a reason why secret services are called secret, because they are not doing it because the laws permits it.