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You know, I've been a big defender of the role for signals intelligence, including NSA's hand in such. But there is a lot to be said for discretion, especially
by mpyne 13y ago
You know, I've been a big defender of the role for signals intelligence, including NSA's hand in such.
But there is a lot to be said for discretion, especially when you're talking about the top echelon of our NATO allies! Even my defenses of NSA have been predicated on the actual need for intelligence collection. This has the corollary that collection without any use should not be sanctioned.
So absent some evidence of our allies conspiring against us in things like WTO negotiations, I don't see a justification for such phone tapping. Even though it's probably legal, was it really the best use of NSA resources? What actionable intel could they have hoped to gain? We're not talking about Medvedev or Putin's phones after all.
Certainly we have known that the NSA has the capability to tap into many international communications circuits, but we've also "known" that such taps are predicated on the national security interests of the United States. So now the question: Was pushing far beyond the envelope worth it? Was causing a boatload of whistleblowers (not just Snowden) to form still beneficial to the U.S. in the end?
I would judge that it was not, at this point. What I'm interested in knowing is when these taps of allied leadership's telephones actually stopped? Specifically, was it only after Snowden's leaks? Did Obama put a stop to it? Sometime in between? All we know at this point is that the U.S. isn't doing it now, and pinky swears not to do so in the future.
As far as the Germans doing it to us... maybe. But the NSA is also responsible for ensuring that they can't break our comms even if we do assume they're trying. But maybe I'm naive but I honestly think they are probably focused more on Russia, Islamists and other threats to Germany, than on what Obama is saying to Boehner.
- aclevernickname 13y agoyour comment is calibrating, because it shows that there is a limit to how much privacy invasion the average american will stand for. Thank you for being so forthcoming.
- mpyne 13y agoI don't care about Merkel's privacy. But I do care about the fact that she cares about her privacy, and that Germans care about the privacy of their elected Chancellor. Both of those feed into the relationship between Germany and the USA, and that relationship is important enough that the NSA should not put it at risk (or be allowed to be able to put it at risk).
- sdoering 13y agoBeing a German I only care for Mrs. Merkels privacy because that was the first (and only) moment, when she got upset. Having her 80 million citizens spied upon by the NSA was no reason to issue a statement. Or to do her job and protect the German people from harm, as it is stated clearly in our constitution as the job of our leaders. On the contrary. Before anything was really on the table, they declared the topic closed. So the moment she herself is being spied upon is the moment she (at last) wakes up? Well, really? That does seem quite a little bit egoistic to me, doesn't it. Isn't every citizen of this country worth the same? Has the same rights to be protected from arbitrary spying? Well the Germans reelected her with great majority. And the NSA spying is really no big deal for most of my fellow citizens. They just don't care. So the answer to my question above is probably "No". They just have this "I have nothing to hide, so who cares" mentality, that is so dangerous, so dumb and sheep-like.
- w_t_payne 13y agoSame thing occurred to me. It is so telling, and yet so sad that our leaders care so much for their own privacy, yet so little for that of others, even those that they supposedly represent & protect. What can we do? We are being abused, yet we are powerless to stop it.
- Zigurd 13y agoI don't think you will find the path away from pervasive surveillance in the G10 nations. They all have their own well-equipped secret police. At some point though, some head of state will calculate that the only way to win is to not play the game, and make policy that defends against all surveillance, because the value of their own surveillance is low enough to do without.
- grey-area 13y agodiminoten from sibling comment, you are hellbanned, not sure why, I suggest emailing to admins.
- mpyne 13y agoThanks for mentioning it too, as it's an insightful comment IMO.
- lemming 13y agoAll we know at this point is that the U.S. isn't doing it now... Actually, we don't know that - we only know they said they're not. Given that Clapper flat out lied about surveillance at the start of all this that isn't worth much.
- mpyne 13y agoSure, but by that definition we don't "know" anything we didn't directly observe ourselves (and even that is at least suspect), and I can't do much by going philosopher-style on what we really know or not.
- lemming 13y agoAnd that's the rub for them, right? They've totally lost all credibility when they say "Trust us, we're reasonable" or "Actually, we're not doing that". We can only make decisions or form opinions when we have a reasonable basis on which to do so, and why would anyone believe them now?
- diminoten 13y agoThis concept of 'allies' isn't nearly as solid as people are thinking. It seems as if the American public thinks of nations as 'people' and the relationships formed by these 'people' as 'friendships', when really neither holds true. For instance, if a friend betrays you, it sucks but you learn from it and are okay. If a nation betrays you, people die, your economy suffers, people lose their jobs, etc. You don't get any, "aw, shucks" moments. This isn't about national security in the sense of a violent threat, this is about national security in the sense that we get the benefit of knowing if your allies are going to maintain their agreements with the US or not. People make this mistake with the US's fiscal status as well. The US is not a person, having debt is not inherently bad for it, and raising the debt ceiling is not the same as maxing out a credit card. Furthermore, anyone trying to say if this information is useful, or if the information as a net benefit/detriment to the US is blowing smoke, because we don't know the nature of the intelligence gathered.