Slashdot Mirror
EU Parliament: Other Countries Spy, But Less Than the UK, US
itwbennett writes "An E.U. Parliament survey of 5 member states found that 4 of the 5 (U.K., France, Germany and Sweden) engage in bulk collection of data. Only the Netherlands doesn't, but that's not because it doesn't want to. In fact, The Netherlands is currently setting up an agency for that purpose. France, which summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain allegations that the NSA spied on Alcatel-Lucent, ranks fifth in the world in metadata collection. And Sweden? Its National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) is alleged to have been running 'upstreaming' operations (tapping directly into the communications infrastructure as a means to intercept data) for the collection of private data — collecting both the content of messages as well as metadata of communications crossing Swedish borders through fibre-optic cables from the Baltic Sea."
Spying on foreign countries is feasible when there is an immediate threat. In a globalized world where most countries sort of "work together" and their borders become blurry (from an industrial point of view) it does more harm than good. Companies fear industry espionage and pull back or limit interaction with those "excessively spying" countries and that harms global economy which eventually boils down to every single one of us.
Bullshit. Spying on allies is often as important as spying on "immediate threats". I, for one, hope that the US is spying on Israel and that the information gathered has prevented them from pulling us into a war with Iran.
The issue isn't spying but the scope and the escalation. Violating the privacy of millions of citizens for a dragnet is not just spying but a violation of sovereignty. The same applies to escalating the spying up to the phones of heads of state. Effectively, the US just built an espionage nuclear weapon. Now the rest of the world is going to do the same, meaning everybody is fucked. The unwritten lines of common decency that restricted spying based on an actual purpose have been crossed. Now we are in the land of spying on everybody and everything with the goal of just holding the information until it becomes useful. Privacy has just taken a mortal blow.
Yes, a certain amount of spying is expected and allowed. An ambassador is basically a legalized spy who has diplomatic protection and is allowed to work in the open.
The problem is that the NSA is not following the same priorities as the State Department. How many European political leaders will give the American diplomats their private phone number in the future? The NSA's spying on allies is destroying any future back channel communication abilities that we may have. The conspiracy theorist in me would be saying it's intentional so that the NSA becomes the ONLY source for intelligence gathering in the American government.