My take on that is that spying is supposed to have as it primary justification the objective of determining a foreign nations true intentions. Its a method to c

My take on that is that spying is supposed to have as it primary justification the objective of determining a foreign nations true intentions. Its a method to confirm or disprove what is said. Germany, for example, says its no threat to the US, and US spying will hopefully confirm this. And of course vice-versa. So, spying on politicians and policy makers can be argued to be legit. However whole sale spying on citizens is not. What gone wrong here is that spying is now used for law enforcement, instead of a tool for diplomacy.