So, the US got caught spying on our allies. (See here for the first article I could find.) I know that this is the sort of thing that every nation does, but we’re the ones who got caught. Plus, the extent of the monitoring (eg, hacking Angela Merkel’s cellphone) is probably well beyond the level that is normal or expected. I mean, imagine the shitstorm that would erupt if it turned out that the Canadian Secret Service regularly monitored President Obama’s personal phone calls.
So, what will become of this? Is the US at risk of becoming a pariah nation?
And if the Canadian intelligence services thought they could get a tap on Obama’s phone, it’d be there. Having the inside track on what other leaders are thinking in confidence is invaluable.
Countries are supposed to spy on each other. It’s what they do. Everyone needs a nice glass of “get the fuck over it” juice and get back to their own spying (which they are absolutely totally doing.)
I think the main effect will be to drive communications back to the days of sealed diplomatic pouches and couriers. Now that the Internet-based communications have been shown to be spyable, nations will stop putting info out on the Web.
ought to be good for future spy novels!
Nothing will become of it. This is what intelligence agencies do.
I’m always a little amazed when people are aghast that we’re spying on our “allies” or surprised to learn the NSA is listening to phone calls, or whatever else.
We were the ones caught at it this time. Other countries have been caught at it in the past. Every time, there’s a few weeks of everyone pretending to be aghast about it, then everyone goes back to pretending that nobody does it, and it’s forgotten.
There will be a lot of public posturing, but no real effect at all since all the countries know that the US (and every other government) will always be trying to spy on them. Now it has been confirmed but any government that didn’t assume it was happening was foolish. So they will appear to get upset in public, but shrugged off in private.
I don’t understand all the bluster over the US spying on allies. That is part of the intelligence community’s job. They are supposed to do this. I expect them to. I also understand and fully expect our allies to spy on us.
My concern is the NSA’s wholesale data capturing of the entire domestic population. They are mapping out all of our relationships to one another in addition to providing information to the DEA. All in the interest of fighting terrorism, of course.
So what. We spy on everyone. What we shouldn’t be doing is spying on all Americans.
The US tech industry is already at risk of losing $45 billion because of the fallout from previous revelations. Naturally, Europeans are eager to take advantage of the opportunity, and it’s only to be expected that they’d leverage the issue wherever they can.
Note: The above referenced “previous revelations” concern illicit surveillance of ordinary citizens, not traditional spycraft of snooping of foreign governments. If the well hadn’t been poisoned by the former, I doubt the latter would get much traction.