I'm sorry to pick you out from the crowd on this, but this is exactly what's so frustrating about civil debate on Hacker News. You ignored the majority of the

I'm sorry to pick you out from the crowd on this, but this is exactly what's so frustrating about civil debate on Hacker News. You ignored the majority of the parent's point, instead electing to pick on one word ("Romans") and then strawman that half to hell. If it pleases you, and you'll read the rest of his argument before bashing out an angry rebuttal, put in some other example of your choosing. You literally missed his entire point about the purpose and necessity of intelligence gathering agencies in the global theater. People shouldn't have to worry about their exact word usage because someone -- like you -- will come along and nitpick it so the original point is buried under the burden of a disagreeable example. You responded to his post either without really reading all of it or understanding it. Allow me to summarize his point: Spying does not require nor dictate that two countries are enemies. Allies and spying are not mutually exclusive - your entire point about how you'd like to think about your allies as someone from the Netherlands is thus irrelevant. Next, allow me to address your second paragraph. All states are always competing. We don't live in an idealistic world where globalization has renderd us kumbayah with everyone else. Again, let me reiterate - that does not mean we are enemies. Finally, or course there is an economic benefit to all intelligence gathering agencies. This should be self-evident. But no, that's not the only one by any means. Intelligence gathering agencies also benefit their homelands with intelligence, which is obviously not just an economic benefit.