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Spy agency spies. News at 11. It is in the NSA's mandate to engage in any espionage that will give the US an advantage. I just don't understand how us spying o

Spy agency spies. News at 11. It is in the NSA's mandate to engage in any espionage that will give the US an advantage. I just don't understand how us spying on a state-controlled Brazilian company is somehow a revelation. It would shock me if we didn't spy on every major foreign company in the world.

nitrogen 13y ago
Obviously complaints about spying are questioning whether the agency's purpose itself is just. Fulfilling one's purpose is still unethical if that purpose is unethical. Nobody excuses murder when the story is "Murderer commits murder. News at 11."
- Aloisius 13y ago
  The agency's purpose is espionage. Espionage, last I checked, was illegal everywhere. Yet every country has spies. Being just or unethical doesn't factor into it. We know spying is unfair, but it is also something people have been doing since the dawn of civilization in order to get a leg up on the competition.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Technically, the 'S' stands for 'Security,' not 'Spying.'
    - mpyne 13y ago
      You don't really think that an entire agency's remit can be specifically summed up within three generic words, do you? Hell, the Navy used to run their personnel management out of the "Bureau of Navigation".
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    What the hell are you talking about, of course ethics factors into it! We, as a society, tolerate espionage so long as it is a necessary evil. One of the terms in the assessment of "necessary evil" is the ethics of what they are doing, the other term is how necessary it is. If your evil:necessary ratio goes to high then it program stops being something that any reasonable person can support. As an extreme example to demonstrate the point, if the CIA were installing cameras in the showers of randomly chosen UK citizens, that would be wildly unethical and have next to no benefit, thus making it wildly unacceptable. You can't just dismiss ethical criticism of a spy agency by saying "well they operate illegally anyway". Excluding the ethical term would be giving them a license to do anything they please.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Part of the problem is that "target" and "adversary" have been defined-down to "everyone" and "anyone who isn't naked to pervasive surveillance." In this case the topic is economic espionage. So who gets the information? Oil companies? Hedge funds? That's a bit different than intelligence on actual military threats. Just oil? Or can Embraer count on Boeing having their bid numbers? And, if so, is maintaining a friendly relationship with the US in Brazil's interests?
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    > ...is maintaining a friendly relationship with the US in Brazil's interests? Honestly, what alternative do we have? As a side note, I'd like to acknowledge the genial strategy of our leaders and voters when they removed any signal of intelligence from the higher positions in the government, and fouled the US plans of gaining any insight. I judged you badly, people, sorry.
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    This sounds like Charles Stross's description of the future cold war in his novel Halting State. Instead of the "twentieth-century model, an electronic Pearl Harbor", the attacks are subtle. "Footnotes inserted in government reports feeding into World Trade Organization negotiating positions. Nothing we'd notice at first, nothing that would be obvious for a couple of years. You don't want to halt the state in its tracks, you simply want to divert it into a sliding of your choice."
nitrogen 13y ago
In the paragraph added in your edit you use the word "we". What if you weren't part of that "we"? Would you feel differently if the NSA were "they"?
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Would you feel differently if the NSA were "they"? Presumably not, at least in general, otherwise the outcry against persistent Chinese spying on the USA (e.g. the Aurora attack on Google) would probably be much much larger within the U.S.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    But nobody in the US says, "We have to make sure China retains its ability to hack into Google."
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Just like nobody in the US says "we have to make sure China has a strong military", and yet we somehow don't find it hypocritical that the US argues they should themselves maintain a strong force. Or maybe you find that hypocritical, but the USA as a whole does not.
- Aloisius 13y ago
  I assume other countries' currently spy on us. Maybe no individual country has quite the intelligence capability that we do, but the US is one giant target and I imagine the combined intelligence of every country that spies on us is fairly close to our own capability. That doesn't make me feel any different that the NSA does it to others. If anything, it means that the NSA is necessary to even the odds.
belorn 13y ago
I wonder if commenters like Aloisius would complain if the army would go and start pillage while out and engaging war. It would surely give the US an economic advantage, which is surely in the mandate of the army. It has all the guns needed to do a armed robbery, to shake out some farmers, or to simply take slaves. The Roman Empire was partially gained through economical advantage of pillaging nearby countries, and surely that was within the mandate of their army. It would however be News for the rest of the world. The army, the listeners and the spies do have some international Rules that are enforced through political channels. When that fails, the media takes over as a gap action before the army gets involved. In this case, doing industrial espionage with your military intelligence force is not within the rules.
diego_moita 13y ago
As a Brazilian this smells as typical American arrogance. The name of the game is trust. You probably wouldn't imagine so, but Brazil is a major IT costumer to the US. Now, how do you think your customers feel when they discover that the stuff they buy from you comes with unwanted surprises?

nitrogen 13y ago

Obviously complaints about spying are questioning whether the agency's purpose itself is just. Fulfilling one's purpose is still unethical if that purpose is unethical. Nobody excuses murder when the story is "Murderer commits murder. News at 11."

Aloisius 13y ago
The agency's purpose is espionage. Espionage, last I checked, was illegal everywhere. Yet every country has spies. Being just or unethical doesn't factor into it. We know spying is unfair, but it is also something people have been doing since the dawn of civilization in order to get a leg up on the competition.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Technically, the 'S' stands for 'Security,' not 'Spying.'
  - mpyne 13y ago
    You don't really think that an entire agency's remit can be specifically summed up within three generic words, do you? Hell, the Navy used to run their personnel management out of the "Bureau of Navigation".
- jlgreco 13y ago
  What the hell are you talking about, of course ethics factors into it! We, as a society, tolerate espionage so long as it is a necessary evil. One of the terms in the assessment of "necessary evil" is the ethics of what they are doing, the other term is how necessary it is. If your evil:necessary ratio goes to high then it program stops being something that any reasonable person can support. As an extreme example to demonstrate the point, if the CIA were installing cameras in the showers of randomly chosen UK citizens, that would be wildly unethical and have next to no benefit, thus making it wildly unacceptable. You can't just dismiss ethical criticism of a spy agency by saying "well they operate illegally anyway". Excluding the ethical term would be giving them a license to do anything they please.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Zigurd 13y ago
Part of the problem is that "target" and "adversary" have been defined-down to "everyone" and "anyone who isn't naked to pervasive surveillance." In this case the topic is economic espionage. So who gets the information? Oil companies? Hedge funds? That's a bit different than intelligence on actual military threats. Just oil? Or can Embraer count on Boeing having their bid numbers? And, if so, is maintaining a friendly relationship with the US in Brazil's interests?
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  > ...is maintaining a friendly relationship with the US in Brazil's interests? Honestly, what alternative do we have? As a side note, I'd like to acknowledge the genial strategy of our leaders and voters when they removed any signal of intelligence from the higher positions in the government, and fouled the US plans of gaining any insight. I judged you badly, people, sorry.
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  This sounds like Charles Stross's description of the future cold war in his novel Halting State. Instead of the "twentieth-century model, an electronic Pearl Harbor", the attacks are subtle. "Footnotes inserted in government reports feeding into World Trade Organization negotiating positions. Nothing we'd notice at first, nothing that would be obvious for a couple of years. You don't want to halt the state in its tracks, you simply want to divert it into a sliding of your choice."

nitrogen 13y ago

In the paragraph added in your edit you use the word "we". What if you weren't part of that "we"? Would you feel differently if the NSA were "they"?

mpyne 13y ago
> Would you feel differently if the NSA were "they"? Presumably not, at least in general, otherwise the outcry against persistent Chinese spying on the USA (e.g. the Aurora attack on Google) would probably be much much larger within the U.S.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  But nobody in the US says, "We have to make sure China retains its ability to hack into Google."
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Just like nobody in the US says "we have to make sure China has a strong military", and yet we somehow don't find it hypocritical that the US argues they should themselves maintain a strong force. Or maybe you find that hypocritical, but the USA as a whole does not.
Aloisius 13y ago
I assume other countries' currently spy on us. Maybe no individual country has quite the intelligence capability that we do, but the US is one giant target and I imagine the combined intelligence of every country that spies on us is fairly close to our own capability. That doesn't make me feel any different that the NSA does it to others. If anything, it means that the NSA is necessary to even the odds.

belorn 13y ago

I wonder if commenters like Aloisius would complain if the army would go and start pillage while out and engaging war. It would surely give the US an economic advantage, which is surely in the mandate of the army. It has all the guns needed to do a armed robbery, to shake out some farmers, or to simply take slaves. The Roman Empire was partially gained through economical advantage of pillaging nearby countries, and surely that was within the mandate of their army. It would however be News for the rest of the world. The army, the listeners and the spies do have some international Rules that are enforced through political channels. When that fails, the media takes over as a gap action before the army gets involved. In this case, doing industrial espionage with your military intelligence force is not within the rules.

diego_moita 13y ago

As a Brazilian this smells as typical American arrogance. The name of the game is trust. You probably wouldn't imagine so, but Brazil is a major IT costumer to the US. Now, how do you think your customers feel when they discover that the stuff they buy from you comes with unwanted surprises?