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The same offensive narrative repeats itself. - The government is bulk collecting data on foreigners. - Meh... - They're also incidentally spying on US citize

• atmosx 12y ago
  I feel offended by the way US-media approaches this matter and by my country's stance on the matter (not even a comment about it). Civilisation (broadly speaking) doesn't evolves hand-in-hand with technology. It is the major danger of our future.
  • tinco 12y ago
    Because for non-US countries nothing has changed. It's been a publicly known fact that the US spies on non-US citizens by monitoring internet traffic for over 20 years. Ask any hacker aged over 24. There's simply hardly anything worth being surprised about as a foreign national. If you asked anyone in The Netherlands 10 years ago if they thought their e-mail on Hotmail or GMail was monitored by authorities in the U.S. I am sure their answer would have been yes.
    • Dolimiter 12y ago
      Think about it. You're saying that the USA spies on all non-US internet traffic. Does that make any sense? Is there any evidence? No and no.
      • NicoJuicy 12y ago
        I'm from Belgium and he is right - i do think that USA spies on everyone, it makes sense and USA had admitted it multiple times. They are just worried that US citizens think the USA spies on them. PS. The USA doesn't only spy on non-US traffic, they just hide the spying inside the US more secretive :) PS2. Every country tries to spy though, not only the US :)
      • tinco 12y ago
        Yes[1,3] and yes[2]. Have you been in a cave for the past two years? 1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#European_Parliament_investigation_.282000-01.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#European_Parliament_inv... 2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files 3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
      • Dolimiter 12y ago
        "Yes[1,3] and yes[2]. Have you been in a cave for the past two years?" Yes, the NSA can monitor specific targets. Do they monitor all Internet traffic worldwide? No, such a task is absurd and technically impossible. However I have learned that people's opinions about the NSA are faith-based, and not open to reasoned arguments.
        • fit2rule 12y ago
          Sorry, but "absurd" - yes it is absurd - THAT THEY DO IT. And, also: "technically impossible" - also: NOPE. Technically possible! In fact so technically possible it is a done deal. You cannot turn off the NSA, for to do so would be to turn off the entire Internet.. we get the copy, NSA gets the originals.
        • angersock 12y ago
          So, let's at least try to do this in good faith...what makes you think it's technically impossible?
    • teekert 12y ago
      I agree, I find it way more shocking that my government (the Netherlands) is so laid back about all this than the "revelation" that Americans care about America spying on Americans. Yes, the dutch government announced a Dropbox alternative that is open source (http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97793/overheid-werkt-aan-opensource-cloudopslagdienst.html http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97793/overheid-werkt-aan-opensour...) but I believe it is the wrong approach. They should publicly denounce NSA spying and swear to not cooperate with them (!when it comes to Dutch civilians at least!). All they do is empty gesturing. It annoys me to no end that my government is so afraid. It also annoys me that they are so adamant in pleasing the US in the sanctions against Russia, they only damage our economy, not to mention Russia's (hey, the Russians love their children too!) We are so the US' lap dog.
      • danieldk 12y ago
        It's not that they are afraid, it's that they are in bed together. Dutch intelligence relies on US intelligence and visa versa for 'the war on terror'. The situation in Germany is similar, the German government was only offended when it turned out that they tapped Merkel's phone. When it were regular citizens, most politicians shrugged their shoulders, some put on a small show for their electorate. One of the few institutions that stuck their neck out for their citizens is the European Parliament. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the EU is now so enamoured with nationalism that they want to reduce the power of the EU or even leave the EU.
        • atmosx 12y ago
          The Merkel thing was just a political show for the up-coming elections IIRC. Anyway, we (the citizens) suffer the same fate no matter where we are, since we're using their services.
        • SyneRyder 12y ago
          I think Merkel deserves at least a little credit for speaking out in public, even if some of it was for the elections. When visiting Germany it was amazing how much news coverage there was about Snowden & how aware everyone was... you couldn't avoid it, his face was even on digital billboards in train stations. It was markedly different to Australia, where the politicians almost all support it, it was a minor TV news story (certainly not the lead headline like in Germany), and most people just don't care or understand. Germans are understandably cynical, but I wish Germans would have more pride in their country, there are some things that Germany does so much better than other countries right now.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • ZoFreX 12y ago
      Hacker aged over 24 here. Sure, we all knew. But it's one thing to "know", it's another entirely to have tangible proof. Whenever I spoke about this to people 10 years ago the reaction was "there's no proof, you're paranoid, you're a conspiracy theorist". Now we have proof the reaction is "so what, everyone knows that, I have nothing to hide". There's some serious goalpost shifting happening here.
      • themartorana 12y ago
        Isn't that one of the worst things to come of the Snowden leaks so far? There aren't many conspiracy theories I can, with full conviction, point at and laugh anymore. Maybe reptile people in government. But otherwise...
        • mpweiher 12y ago
          What's your definition of 'reptile'? Just asking...for no particular reason...
        • bostik 12y ago
          Maybe not reptile, but certainly invertebrate. Pretty much a universal phenomenon.
• lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Extending rights to non citizens? What are you, some sort of communist? Next you'll be asking them to dip their flag to a host nation, or measure something in meters, or some other outrage. edit - though admittedly here in the UK we are currently borrowing our citizenship and rights law direct from the pages of 2000AD http://usvsth3m.com/post/75158899178/the-uk-government-is-now-literally-getting-its http://usvsth3m.com/post/75158899178/the-uk-government-is-no...
• follywagon 12y ago
  This narrative openly stretches to the top. See: every Presidential speech on the matter. But the worst part isn't that it's offensive to foreigners (which nobody cares about), it's that people so easily ignore that history knows no such thing as a unidirectional spy camera.
• spindritf 12y ago
  This approach makes perfect sense in a democratic country where people are the sovereign. That's like an intelligence service spying on their own king. It subverts the whole system in ways that spying on foreigners doesn't. It's not about human rights.
  • bakhy 12y ago
    It is about human rights. "All men are created equal." Of course the US government must only bow to its own people, and only US citizens can lead its policy, that is perfectly understandable. But we all deserve basic human rights and a country that is one of their biggest champions should, for the sake of its credibility, not ignore that! It would be ideal if some oversight existed for ALL such surveillance. With allied countries, the US should try to work with their governments. With adversaries, it's reasonable to have more relaxed rules. But just bulk collecting data of all non-citizens, treating us all with the same lack of respect of our human rights, is not cool. Perhaps the US government actually does do all this as I described, and cooperates with allied governments. Then it is just the US media and public that leave the impression like they don't give a fuck about the human rights of anyone other than US citizens... Not cool.
    • DanielBMarkham 12y ago
      I pay my government to spy on people in other countries to make sure they are not going to hurt me. And, more to the point, they aren't going to put in motion things that are could conceivably hurt me or those I care about. I hate the security state, but I'm okay with that. We've got hundred of millions of people here. There are billions of people in the world. It makes sense to me to spy on all the folks in other countries. I don't see how else you would honestly do a good job of governing. Spying or digging into the affairs of the people who are voting to make choices in a democratic society? Screw that. There is a really good reason we separate foreign intelligence from domestic intelligence. The moves the U.S. made after 9-11 to tear down the walls were extremely bad.
      • grrowl 12y ago
• coldtea 12y ago
  Non-US citizens are considered less than humans. To be fair, the same holds to some degree also for lots of kinds of US citizens/residents (blacks, latinos, native americans, etc).
  • CWuestefeld 12y ago
    The race card isn't playable here. The computers collecting the data don't know what race the people being monitored belong to.
    • pessimizer 12y ago
      The computers are created and operated by people. Computers don't decide anything.
    • mikeash 12y ago
      You don't think this stuff gets cross-referenced with databases that contain racial classifications, and that this influences decisions farther down the line?
      • CWuestefeld 12y ago
        It probably does happen. We know about the "parallel construction" thing, telling us that regular law enforcement is seeing some of the gathered data. And they may be acting prejudicially. But this isn't related to the surveillance thing as such. Criticism of this racism, if it exists, should be targeted at some combination of the prejudice in the police agencies, the leaking of the data that's supposed to be locked in a vault, and at a stretch, the lopsided impact of the laws on various racial groups.
    • coldtea 12y ago
      In aggregate I'd say that's true. They just collect everything for everybody. Still it's trivial to have algorithms to identify the race of the people they have data (heck, even just "call metadata" for). To give an obvious (if slightly non-PC example, if you're from a specific part of Baltimore and you're called Jermaine, you're in all probability Black). And Jesus Mandolito in Southern California is probably latino. And of course they can cross-corellate with databases, like social security info, police records, birth certificates, and the like. Plus, not every population / race is targeted equally. Consider Middle-easterns vs Icelandish people for example. And not everyone is them is an equal target for later data use.
• worklogin 12y ago
  And your same indignant stance will get largely ignored by me, because it ignores a core fact: The US doesn't have imminent jurisdiction over you. You likely aren't ever going to run for political office in the United States. The US probably doesn't share data with local Japanese law enforcement. In short, the practical threat is much lower for you than it is for an American. The CIA spied on the Intelligence committee charged with the agency's oversight. The NSA and CIA and FBI all likely have dossiers on every state and federal politician in the country. That means a heck of a lot more than them doing legit SIGINT on adversaries across the world. And frankly, even if I completely agree with you, we're still talking about the U.S. Constitution being blatantly ignored. I know canonical legal documents of a country aren't as big a thing in other places, but here, it tends to mean something.
  • bakhy 12y ago
    That is a good point! But the same attitude does not stop at surveillance. Detaining people (or, should I say folks? lol), or executing them by drones, without any trial, are also things that don't cause too much fuss in the US public, because the targets are not US citizens... Granted, the scope of these issues is minute compared to the scope of NSA surveillance. But all of this together makes the famous words "all men are created equal" sound hollow. You also stated their abuses against your government, and I agree that those are the truly worst offences they made, completely undermining your democracy. But that is off topic from my comment. US media react strongly to any US citizen being spied on, not just politicians, while implicitly condoning bulk collection of data on ALL non-citizens, not just adversaries. I presume adversaries are most targeted, but nobody really raises that issue or asks for that kind of oversight. Non-citizens are just not created equal. P.S. Constitutions are a big thing in many other places, not just in the US. I hope your phrasing was just an accidental mistake, because you sounded as if you think no other country respects it's constitution...