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> In any case, being spied on by a foreign country is considerably less bad than being spied on by your own. In the wet dreams of conspiracy theorists, our gove
by dictum 13y ago
> In any case, being spied on by a foreign country is considerably less bad than being spied on by your own. In the wet dreams of conspiracy theorists, our government spies on its citizens to discover their political views, and then imprisons those with views it doesn't like. There's no equivalent evil that France's government could pull off.
Arresting you when you have to enter France for business or personal reasons is one possibility.
EDIT: If France has some agents in your country there's a lot of evil they could pull off even without you leaving the country.
- srl 13y agoI really don't agree that that's equivalent, but I understand your point. Certainly if the power balance were different, it might be a legitimate fear. (If the french government gave me problems, it would be pretty easy for me to find protection from my own government. Wouldn't be so easy if I was in Pakistan, looking for protection from the US, I suppose.) I do agree we should refrain from mass surveillance on non-US citizens, but I don't think that achieving that is realistic at this juncture. The intelligence community is in excited-puppy mode about all the cool things they can do with the internet[1], and it'll be a bit before they and their elected overlords figure out what's useful, what's not, and how surveillance can be better performed without playing godzilla to the city of rights. For now, what I think is reasonable is a more straightforward, open disclosure of what and how the NSA monitors. And now I need to stop commenting on this article until I've actually read the proposed reform in its entirety. (And you all should too. Hah.) [1] Calling it an "insurance policy", really? "We've never had to use it, but it's too cool to give up."