More Details Emerge On How the US Is Bugging Its European Allies

dryriver writes with this excerpt from the Guardian: "U.S. intelligence services are spying on the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington, according to the latest top secret U.S. National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as 'targets.' It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae. Along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the E.U. missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey. ... One of the bugging methods mentioned is codenamed Dropmire, which, according to a 2007 document, is 'implanted on the Cryptofax at the E.U. embassy, DC' – an apparent reference to a bug placed in a commercially available encrypted fax machine used at the mission. The NSA documents note the machine is used to send cables back to foreign affairs ministries in European capitals."

Comments

Re:Enemies of the state

[0111 1110]

Allies are temporary and they are potential enemies, so the more you know about them, the less chance they will be a threat.

This is particularly true when you treat your allies and enemies exactly the same and when you routinely violate the human rights of their citizens and diplomatic staff any chance you get without the slightest pang of guilt because, as foreigners, they are unworthy of being treated well. Those dirty foreigners don't have any rights. I guess they can consider themselves lucky that we don't simply murder them all and grind them up to feed our cattle. They would have no basis to object because our constitution does not explicitly mention that foreigners also possessed human rights which should also be respected by our government. All of that "all men are created equal stuff" obviously only refered to American men. If the founders had wanted foreigners to have rights they would have explicitly mentioned that the limitations to our government's power also applied to: and then made a list of every country that existed at the time. The fact that John Locke, from whom most of the Founder's ideas about natural rights originated was himself a foreigner, a Lesser Homo Sapien or Homo Sapien 'Europa' need not be considered and is in fact a heinous ThoughtCrime.

Surely all of those poor unwashed savages outside of our borders can't really be considered human anyway. We can treat them as badly as we wish without worry. Well unless we thought they were a military threat. Then we can just nuke them before they can do the same to us. Any casualties on the other side would certainly be regretable in the same way that stepping on an ant's nest is regrettable, but, again, since the other side are rightless sub-human savages we don't have to feel bad about murdering, err I mean exterm, I mean putting them to sleep or sending them to a better place. Thank goodness we only have to think about ourselves and not care about anyone else! And since we are the baddies we don't have to worry about anyone preemptively nuking us before we can nuke them! Other countries might hesitate before simply exterminating tens of millions or hundreds of millions of human beings, but not us. Because we know that only US Citizens are fully human and worthy of having rights. I think I finally understand! Maybe I no longer even need to go to the re-education camp.

The only thing that still confuses me is whether Snowden is still human now that his passport / citizenship has basically been revoked. When the US government revokes your citizenship is it like a form of de-evolution? Is he no longer a member of the superior Homo Sapien 'Americanus'? After his citizenship is revoked is it then perfectly okay to torture him to death in gitmo since he no longer has any rights?