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posted by
mattie_p
on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:00AM
from the I'm-not-directly-spying-on-you dept.
from the I'm-not-directly-spying-on-you dept.
Angry Jesus writes:
"German language magazine 'Bild am Sonntag' reports that, in response to Obama's recent order to stop spying on Angela Merkel and other heads of 'friendly' states, the NSA has instead ramped up spying on everybody Merkel communicates with. Cory Doctorow points out that this action demonstrates that the NSA is out of control and deliberately disobeying a presidential order with a level of duplicity worthy of a four year-old."
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NSA Secretly Continues Merkel Surveillance
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 4, Insightful) by starcraftsicko on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:43AM
Some of the activities of the NSA clearly violate the constitution. Some seem designed to skirt the edges. Then there is this.
While it may provide the occasional diplomatic embarrassment, surveillance of foreign heads of state is both constitutional and reasonable.
At the risk of invoking Godwin, I seem to recall a former head of the German state for whom we only wish we could have had such surveillance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcd on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:50AM
Let's not compare Merkel to Godwin's subject. But I do agree that other nations should pretty much expect this. I'd be shocked if they weren't all doing the same thing to the US's political leaders, especially president. Talk about a high-value intel target.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 1) by jimshatt on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:33AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:32AM
And also high value targets more likely to yield useful intelligence.
I'd rather have surveillance of the Indian Prime Minister, or the Iranians or the Saudis or the Chinese.
The Germans have played pretty straight with us, more so than even the Brits, and god know the French and Israelis.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1) by starcraftsicko on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:29PM
The good news is, we almost certainly try to monitor their communications too. And the Germans, just in case.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deconfliction on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:17AM
This is the standard old school point of view, OK, fair enough. But when as a human race do we get to - enough is enough. The old school rules were established when the world was a much bigger place, and technology much less pervasive. Our founding philosophers declared that We The People had certain 'inalienable rights' to be free of an authoritarian government watching our every move, 24 hours a day, even in the privacy of our own homes and bedrooms (absent specific probable cause and a signed warrant).
Were those 'inalienable rights' something that just became obsolete the instant technology and childish logic allowed a handful of world superpowers to get around them by just saying- Ok, the govt of A(e.g. U.S.) will spy 24/7 via tech on all world leaders - *and individuals because they could always be potential terrorists* of govt B(e.g. U.K.), and vice versa, resulting in a de-facto New World Order government that is allowed to bypass those 'inalienable rights' of all citizens of the world???
I mean come on. My 4th ammendment right doesn't just disappear because those children in power play silly games with legal logic like that.
And even if this childish spying was limited to 'politically interesting' people like advisors to world leaders- does even that make sense? When you become an advisor to a world leader, do you just give up your right to be treated respectfully and decently by the world powers at large? Your "Water is Wet" comments suggests you think they should just suck it up and sacrifice their personal privacy because they decided they wanted to be a significant part of their democratic government. That is so bogus. That can only lead to a withering of the pool of political advisors down to the people who just don't give a frack about their own, or anyone else's privacy. That can't be a good thing for our global human society. There has to be a better way of dealing with our global society than a - I don't know, is panopticon the right word? There just has to be a way to evolve into a global society where every individual feels as secure in their papers and effects / privacy as our 4th ammendment led our ancestors to feel they deserved to be. (ok, well if you had the right color skin, but I digress...)
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:28AM
I think your confusion stems from a mistaken idea that the founders gave a shit about the rights of the public. Those rights were for the 10% or so of people who were white, male landowners. Women, blacks and poor whites could eat shit and die. And it hasn't really changed in 200 years. The name of the game has always been placate the masses with some seeming acquiescence, then plot some other means to achieve the same goal. And that goal is always the same: control the masses, preserve the status quo.
Left a beta website for an alpha website.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:36PM
Confusion might also stem from the mistaken idea that all of the founders were in unanimous agreement about everything. Sometimes real change takes small steps in series rather than one giant leap. For example, I've heard that the original draft of the US Constitution abolished slavery, but couldn't get enough signatories in that form, so they changed it. Don't forget, especially if you're from the US, that preserving the status quo is not why the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights were written.
(Score: 1) by starcraftsicko on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:44AM
Right. The NSA & their cousins are way over the line, but its important to understand where the line is. Surveillance of foreign government figures is completely different than dragnet surveillance of 'everyone'.
It makes sense. The behaviour and motivations of governments are of interest to other governments. Once could infer that the surveillance represents the respect of those foreign governments. When you play at a different level, you come under a different level of scrutiny. Think major leagues vs minor leagues vs semi-pro vs little league.
The alternative is to have political advisors and leaders with a "right" to rule the world in secret. Think it through. When you reach the level of guiding a nation-state, your actions are substantially more than the actions of an individual. Your efforts deserve more scrutiny.
The NSA and its cousins need to be curtailed, but your secret society is probably not an achievable outcome. In the case of the NSA and US constitutional law, dragnet surveillance is clearly an overreach. The part that is unacceptable however is not even the surveillance, but the formal link between the NSA as an element of NATIONAL DEFENCE, and agencies like the FBI or DEA which conduct domestic LAW ENFORCEMENT. The worse part of that link is the formal policy of concealment - even perjury - implied by the process of PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION.
We must not let utopian ideals and angst distract us from the smoking gun.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:55AM
Applying such surveillance to someone like Kim Jong-un or Ali Khamenei is one thing. Those people are heads of state of countries openly hostile to the United States, and spying upon people like them is both constitutional and reasonable. However, doing the same thing to the heads of state of countries ostensibly allied to the United States and with supposedly friendly relations, while still perfectly constitutional, is a bit of a stretch to call reasonable. Is it a smart thing to treat Angela Merkel the same way as Kim Jong-un?
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:36AM
The constitution is a red herring. It doesn't prevent the US from using intelligence agencies to gain diplomatic advantages. The important question is whether the NSA is doing this in contradiction to the President's orders. When the revelations came out, it became clear that the diplomatic gains from NSA surveillance were outweighed by the diplomatic losses from being publicly known to spy on allies. So now there are two possible explanations:
In the first case, the US has just burned a bit more of its political capital, by being publicly caught lying and will likely have to make some more diplomatic concessions to make up for it. Whoever at the NSA was supposed to stop them getting caught again should be in trouble.
In the latter case, the NSA is completely out of control of governmental oversight and needs some immediate intervention (i.e. fire everyone at the top 3 ranks and bring in completely new management).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:39AM
More over North Korea actively tries to spy on the US and there is pretty much nothing anyone can do to stop it, but fortunately their resources are limited. If the US wants to get into a spying war with Germany though things could turn ugly really fast, not least because Germany is a powerful voice in the EU. As we have already seen it looks like US companies will eventually be locked out of the EU market.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by unimatrix on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:08PM
Germany, France, and other EU countries actively try to spy on the United States and US Businesses as well. Hell France dedicates about a quarter of their foreign intelligence budget towards "economic espionage" which is mainly Spying on US and British businesses and giving that info to French companies. And they've done so for decades. It's an open secret and anyone inside the beltway, this isn't exactly new news.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Kawumpa on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:12AM
Actually they could have just read the book to get a pretty good idea.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:55AM
Well, since Godwin is already out of the box...
Back in 1939-1945 Germany were the despotic authoritarian fascist bullies and the US were the freedom-loving champions of democracy.
Today I think it looks more the other way round.
Would you really have wanted that "former head of the German state" to have had access to such surveillance over the rest of the world?
Posting anon because I am genuinely frightened of the US gov. Yay chilling effect!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:32PM
You honestly think that makes a difference? Unless you've used TOR, you've sent your IP address in the clear to dev.soylentnews.org with every single packet. Even if you accessed SN over HTTPS, just the number of packets will probably reveal that you were posting that comment. I'd be very surprised if the NSA couldn't figure out who you are if they want.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by quacking duck on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:14AM
You probably mean surveilling them during wartime, but that would've automatically excluded them from being a "friendly" state and Obama's pledge of surveillance immunity wouldn't apply, the actual parallel would be surveillance *before* the war started.
In which case, nothing different would've happened. A sizeable number of Americans (and others, but this story is about the NSA) unfortunately agreed with this German head of state's policies in general before active hostilities started, but European powers were in appeasement mode and the USA had an isolationist policy in place. Pre-WWII Germany wasn't exactly shy about stating their intentions.
(Score: 1) by LookIntoTheFuture on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:31AM
The problem is that they KNOW they are being spied on. The usefulness of this kind of surveillance has fallen apart. In fact, what's to stop them from providing purposely inaccurate information to those listening in? The whole thing is pointless and in bad taste.