Not sure if I really have to spell it out like this but bugging the EU in Brussels, EU offices in Washington and various European embassies in the US obviously had nothing to do with fighting terrorism but with gaining economic advantages, especially in light of the US-EU free trade agreement.
This is not only very troublesome, unfair and well... illegal behavior coming from a supposed ally but the NSA used and most likely is still using resources for such purposes that otherwise could be used to fight international terrorism.
Bugging the cellphones of various European heads of state is just the icing on the cake.
Frank, thanks for coming clean.
The earlier argument, if you have nothing to hide why worry, is now being shelved.
Just like EU leaders, American citizens should not have to endure the government tracking their electronic trail.
I stand by what I said about myself not at all caring if my emails and my cellphone conversations might be screened at random. I understand the arguing for this being helpful to pick up on shit.
I'm actually well aware that my emails most probably do get screened at least since I got red flagged by homeland security a few years back for wiring tens of thousands of dollars from NYC to Lagos... they held a Western Union MO and I had to go through phone interviews and send in scans from shipping labels etc to prove to them what the money is being sent for before the funds finally were released. Inconvenient and even infuriating at first but I understood why this had happened and I support the idea of keeping an eye on whoever sends large amounts of cash to a high risk region. This was them doing their job and me being a guest in their country so no problem.
Bugging embassies, EU offices, the UN, the phones of heads of government for economical and political gain however is something entirely different. This shit needs to get resolved by some drastic and immediate action as in giving various people, including that demented looking asshole in the video the boot. If this doesn't happen -and from where I'm looking at it it will not -then this will have a serious and long lasting effect on transatlantic relations.
Because foreigners are not honest? Why is it all good?
Frank has said from the start he doesn't mind being spied on.
I meant it with a wink toward Frank, not as a deeply held political belief.
The reality is that foreigners have fewer rights than US citizens under US law.
Doesn't make it right, but if, like Frank, they are fine with it...
Turns out Angela Merkel is not as easy going as Frank. Who knew?
The documents seen by Der Spiegel give further details of the NSA's targeting of European governments.
A unit called Special Collection Services, based in the US embassy in Pariser Platz in Berlin, was responsible for monitoring communications in the German capital's government quarter.
If the existence of listening stations in US embassies were known, there would be "severe damage for the US's relations with a foreign government," the documents said.
Similar units were based in around 80 locations worldwide, according to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, 19 of them in European cities.
The US government had a second German spy base in Frankfurt am Main, the magazine reports.
This just broke a few hours ago, apparently the NSA and CIA have been and are still running a highly sophisticated system out of the US embassy in Berlin to intercept government communications.
New reports from the Spiegel, Translated from the BBC:
[quote author="Similar units were based in around 80 locations worldwide, according to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, 19 of them in European cities.
So far it seems that only Brazil has been standing up to the US on this issue. This might force Germany to act.
New reports from the Spiegel, Translated from the BBC:
[quote author="Similar units were based in around 80 locations worldwide, according to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, 19 of them in European cities.
So far it seems that only Brazil has been standing up to the US on this issue. This might force Germany to act.
Force Germany to act? Act how? By spying on Europeans?
They are already doing it. Yes, hypocrisy is a bitch.
Spy agencies in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden are carrying out mass surveillance of online and phone traffic in collaboration with Britain, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday
The report is likely to prove embarrassing for governments including those of Germany and Spain, which had denounced earlier reports that the NSA was electronically spying on their citizens.
LOL! "How DARE the US spy on the Germans, WE'RE the ones that spy on the Germans!"
New reports from the Spiegel, Translated from the BBC:
[quote author="Similar units were based in around 80 locations worldwide, according to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, 19 of them in European cities.
So far it seems that only Brazil has been standing up to the US on this issue. This might force Germany to act.
Force Germany to act? Act how? By spying on Europeans?
They are already doing it. Yes, hypocrisy is a bitch.
Spy agencies in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden are carrying out mass surveillance of online and phone traffic in collaboration with Britain, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday
The report is likely to prove embarrassing for governments including those of Germany and Spain, which had denounced earlier reports that the NSA was electronically spying on their citizens.
LOL! "How DARE the US spy on the Germans, WE'RE the ones that spy on the Germans!"
Any government that has the ability to spy on another government is doing so.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is a hopeless fool who should avoid polluting the gene pool.
Nobody but the most clueless were ever concerned about the monitoring of emails and phone conversations of private citizens. Of course this has happened and of course it will continue to happen. It has to, and personally, I fully support this practice. Over a hundred jihadists have left Germany for Syria within the past year and converts play a more and more important role in international terrorism. The "white widow" and her involvement in the Kenyan mall raid is just one example.
Bugging foreign embassies, targeting the cellphones of heads of government and using their own embassies abroad for illegal surveillance isn't unheard of either. As far as Europe is concerned, countries notorious for such violations always have been China and Russia and these are the ranks the US has now joined, call it the Axis of PEE & DOO (Paranoid, Excessive Espionage & Delusions Of Omnipotence). Congratulations!
Maybe it was only the naive who wouldn't have expected this type of behavior from their supposed ally but naturally this topic has been a very hot one in the diplomatic community and from what I have heard this has greatly surprised many if not most. Nobody's too heartbroken or losing any sleep over this but it's a good thing that now we know. I understand the embarrassment and the futile attempts at playing this down but there's just no way around it: The NSA was caught with their pants down. This has severely tainted transatlantic sentiments and will continue to affect foreign relations for years, most likely for decades to come. Just watch and see what happens next time the US asks for support for another one of their doomed military missions in the middle East. Smart move from Snowden who I don't think has to fear for being extradited from any European country he might want to visit. I know he already has several invitations from people who want to talk to him.
It's unclear to me what all of this has to do with any gene pool but I don't think you have to look abroad to worry about troublesome genetic deficiencies...
Sorry, Frank, I generally agree with you but you could not possibly be more wrong here. Merkel can squawk all she wants, but none of this will have any long-term (or even significant short-term) effect on US-German relations.
That's because Germany is the US's bitch and has been since 1945. You can't let your country be the Disneyland for generations of US troops and accept the US as your Big Daddy protecting you against the Russian Rape Hordes for nearly 70 years and then turn around and get all teary-eyed because your Daddy read your diary.
Is Merkel ready for Germany to be a big girl? Good, then request that all the US military bases in Germany pack up and move out. If not, stop the histrionics. No one cares, Angela.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane but your broke ass sorry excuse of a former super power can't even protect itself from its own self...
Nobody outside of your own brainwashed territory meets such antiquated bravado with anything but pity and bemusement.
I also don't think anybody would stop you from moving out your military bases. Maybe this would leave you with enough funding to fix your roads and bridges let alone feed your own people.
Or what about creating and sustaining a 1st world standard social and health care system...
Thanks for the trip down memory lane but your broke ass sorry excuse of a former world power can't even protect itself from its own self...
Nobody outside of your own brainwashed territory meets such antiquated bravado with anything but pity and bemusement.
I also don't think anybody would stop you from moving out your military bases. Maybe this would leave you with enough funding to fix your roads and bridges let alone feed your own people.
Or what about creating and sustaining a 1st world standard social and health care system...
Don't mistake me for someone who approves of American empire and jingoism, Frank. I'm not that guy. And you're right, the US health care situation is a disgrace... but not in Massachusetts, where I live.
But if Germany wants to be taken seriously as a sovereign nation it should start the process of kicking those US bases out. Jeezus, even Panama ad more spine. Ireland says no to the imperium more often than Germany does.
Frank I mostly disagree with your first post above.
Don't know what the asshole you are responding to in the second one said, but totally support your response.
Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree, always enjoy reading your posts.
Allies have always spied on each other. Anyone who didn't know that until these recent revelations is clueless about how intelligence agencies work.
What I don't get, Frank, is why you're so incensed about it.
If you don't see a problem with gov'ts spying on their citizens (which you've stated you don't) I cram to understand why you care that spy agencies are spying on each other.
Allies have always spied on each other. Anyone who didn't know that until these recent revelations is clueless about how intelligence agencies work.
What I don't get, Frank, is why you're so incensed about it.
If you don't see a problem with gov'ts spying on their citizens (which you've stated you don't) I cram to understand why you care that spy agencies are spying on each other.
There's nothing wrong with collecting intel which of course every government does on any other government, allies or not.
Bugging embassies and targeting the cellphones of heads of state is not how the intelligence agencies of allied governments should work. As I have said before, behavior like this is commonly expected from Russia and from China. Running illegal, covert surveillance units up on the roof of their embassy building as the US have been doing in Berlin is just laughable. Imagine it would be the other way around. That embassy should be dismantled and moved to the suburbs, far away from our seat of government.
It's funny how most US citizens don't seem to have any problem with any of this. Just one more indicator how you already share much more with other paranoid and totalitarian regimes like Russia and China than you realize.
Allies have always spied on each other. Anyone who didn't know that until these recent revelations is clueless about how intelligence agencies work.
What I don't get, Frank, is why you're so incensed about it.
If you don't see a problem with gov'ts spying on their citizens (which you've stated you don't) I cram to understand why you care that spy agencies are spying on each other.
There's nothing wrong with collecting intel which of course every government does on any other government, allies or not.
Bugging embassies and targeting the cellphones of heads of state is not how the intelligence agencies of allied governments should work. As I have said before, behavior like this is commonly expected from Russia and from China. Running illegal, covert surveillance units up on the roof of their embassy building as the US have been doing in Berlin is just laughable. Imagine it would be the other way around. That embassy should be dismantled and moved to the suburbs, far away from our seat of government.
It's funny how most US citizens don't seem to have any problem with any of this. Just one more indicator how you already share much more with other paranoid and totalitarian regimes like Russia and China than you realize.
dude I never said I didn't have a problem with it!
I'm simply trying to figure out why you shrug at a gov't monitoring your personal emails but are up-in-arms about gov'ts spying on each other.
I'm not agreeing/disagreeing; i'm trying to understand your viewpoint.
It's funny how most US citizens don't seem to have any problem with any of this. Just one more indicator how you already share much more with other paranoid and totalitarian regimes like Russia and China than you realize.
Yes.
Not the spying on foreign government parts, but the spying on citizens. Every citizen.
We had this debate when GW Bush took office.
He wanted to implement a program called Total Information Awareness.
Civil libertarians on the left and the right freaked. The program was scraped.
But not really, because it was secretly implemented before congress was ever asked.
The US government has always spied on it's citizens. That spying has always been found to be unconstitutional.
During the cold war, a far more dangerous time than today, people worked hard to expose and stop government spying on citizens. Today, not so much.
I think it's strange that by talking about "spying" we're throwing everything into one pot, government surveillance of its own citizens, governments surveillance of foreign citizens and governments spying on other governments.
In my understanding of the term, only the covert collection of intelligence by one country on another is "spying".
I totally understand the need for a government to run surveillance on its citizens. Looking at the current German NSU (murderous, nail bombing underground neo nazi group) trial it is painfully clear that Germany has slept on these issues way too deep and for much too long. I'm also not mad if the NSA collects whatever civilian internet and cellphone data they can get internationally. Of course they need to be checked while doing this but generally, I want them to know as much as possible to be able to do the best job possible to keep all of us safe.
How could anybody even expect that emails can only be read by themselves and the recipient? And why would this be of any importance to anybody? If you do shit nobody should know about then how dumb do you have to be to discuss your dirt in an email. Same goes for cellphones. As long as it isn't anybody in the record game I don't care at all who listens to my phone calls or who reads my emails. Have at it.
Home surveillance is a whole other issue.
Such is the NSA's bugging of foreign embassies, the EU and the UN in the US, or the EU in Brussels. That's just some insulting shit, pardon my French.
My wife works as a diplomat and when she had the option for a transfer to Shanghai , the known fact that the private apartments of all foreign diplomats there will have audio/video bugs was the main reason for us to decide otherwise.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Forget this little thing called: privacy. It's apparently been trumped by this utter bullshit called: safety.
in the US I think citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy (with many exceptions) w/r/t their gov't monitoring them (it goes back to the constitutional guarantees against unreasonable search and self-incrimination).
(why in the fusk should diplomats have that same expectation vis-a-vis other gov'ts is beyond me).
Frank, I get that the gov't bugging issue hits close to home for you because your wife is a diplomat.
how about recognizing that the email monitoring issue hits close to home for we US citizens?
In my understanding of the term, only the covert collection of intelligence by one country on another is "spying".
Such is the NSA's bugging of foreign embassies, the EU and the UN in the US, or the EU in Brussels. That's just some insulting shit, pardon my French.
My wife works as a diplomat and when she had the option for a transfer to Shanghai , the known fact that the private apartments of all foreign diplomats there will have audio/video bugs was the main reason for us to decide otherwise.
Frank, US embassies around the world are put through frequent debugging procedures. Your wife is probably well aware of that.
Our great friend and ally Israel spies on us and has been caught doing so time and again without any appreciable damage to our relationship other than some Merkel-style huffing and puffing. It's how it works. It's more of a game than anything else.
Comments
I stand by what I said about myself not at all caring if my emails and my cellphone conversations might be screened at random. I understand the arguing for this being helpful to pick up on shit.
I'm actually well aware that my emails most probably do get screened at least since I got red flagged by homeland security a few years back for wiring tens of thousands of dollars from NYC to Lagos... they held a Western Union MO and I had to go through phone interviews and send in scans from shipping labels etc to prove to them what the money is being sent for before the funds finally were released. Inconvenient and even infuriating at first but I understood why this had happened and I support the idea of keeping an eye on whoever sends large amounts of cash to a high risk region. This was them doing their job and me being a guest in their country so no problem.
Bugging embassies, EU offices, the UN, the phones of heads of government for economical and political gain however is something entirely different. This shit needs to get resolved by some drastic and immediate action as in giving various people, including that demented looking asshole in the video the boot. If this doesn't happen -and from where I'm looking at it it will not -then this will have a serious and long lasting effect on transatlantic relations.
Investigating large money transfers and keeping an eye on furiners is all good.
Spying on honest citizens, not so much.
Because foreigners are not honest? Why is it all good?
Frank has said from the start he doesn't mind being spied on.
I meant it with a wink toward Frank, not as a deeply held political belief.
The reality is that foreigners have fewer rights than US citizens under US law.
Doesn't make it right, but if, like Frank, they are fine with it...
Turns out Angela Merkel is not as easy going as Frank. Who knew?
That got a LOL!
This just broke a few hours ago, apparently the NSA and CIA have been and are still running a highly sophisticated system out of the US embassy in Berlin to intercept government communications.
Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. Here.
So far it seems that only Brazil has been standing up to the US on this issue. This might force Germany to act.
Force Germany to act? Act how? By spying on Europeans?
They are already doing it. Yes, hypocrisy is a bitch.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/02/germany-france-spain-carry-out-mass-online-and-phone-surveillance-in-collaboration-with-britain-snowden-files/
Spy agencies in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden are carrying out mass surveillance of online and phone traffic in collaboration with Britain, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday
The report is likely to prove embarrassing for governments including those of Germany and Spain, which had denounced earlier reports that the NSA was electronically spying on their citizens.
LOL! "How DARE the US spy on the Germans, WE'RE the ones that spy on the Germans!"
If you're in Europe, then the Germans, British and other countries are.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/02/germany-france-spain-carry-out-mass-online-and-phone-surveillance-in-collaboration-with-britain-snowden-files/
Any government that has the ability to spy on another government is doing so.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is a hopeless fool who should avoid polluting the gene pool.
Bugging foreign embassies, targeting the cellphones of heads of government and using their own embassies abroad for illegal surveillance isn't unheard of either. As far as Europe is concerned, countries notorious for such violations always have been China and Russia and these are the ranks the US has now joined, call it the Axis of PEE & DOO (Paranoid, Excessive Espionage & Delusions Of Omnipotence). Congratulations!
Maybe it was only the naive who wouldn't have expected this type of behavior from their supposed ally but naturally this topic has been a very hot one in the diplomatic community and from what I have heard this has greatly surprised many if not most. Nobody's too heartbroken or losing any sleep over this but it's a good thing that now we know. I understand the embarrassment and the futile attempts at playing this down but there's just no way around it: The NSA was caught with their pants down. This has severely tainted transatlantic sentiments and will continue to affect foreign relations for years, most likely for decades to come. Just watch and see what happens next time the US asks for support for another one of their doomed military missions in the middle East. Smart move from Snowden who I don't think has to fear for being extradited from any European country he might want to visit. I know he already has several invitations from people who want to talk to him.
It's unclear to me what all of this has to do with any gene pool but I don't think you have to look abroad to worry about troublesome genetic deficiencies...
That's because Germany is the US's bitch and has been since 1945. You can't let your country be the Disneyland for generations of US troops and accept the US as your Big Daddy protecting you against the Russian Rape Hordes for nearly 70 years and then turn around and get all teary-eyed because your Daddy read your diary.
Is Merkel ready for Germany to be a big girl? Good, then request that all the US military bases in Germany pack up and move out. If not, stop the histrionics. No one cares, Angela.
Nobody outside of your own brainwashed territory meets such antiquated bravado with anything but pity and bemusement.
I also don't think anybody would stop you from moving out your military bases. Maybe this would leave you with enough funding to fix your roads and bridges let alone feed your own people.
Or what about creating and sustaining a 1st world standard social and health care system...
Don't mistake me for someone who approves of American empire and jingoism, Frank. I'm not that guy. And you're right, the US health care situation is a disgrace... but not in Massachusetts, where I live.
But if Germany wants to be taken seriously as a sovereign nation it should start the process of kicking those US bases out. Jeezus, even Panama ad more spine. Ireland says no to the imperium more often than Germany does.
Don't know what the asshole you are responding to in the second one said, but totally support your response.
Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree, always enjoy reading your posts.
:comedy_gold:
"I don't know that the other person is saying, I just know that they must be wrong".
Intellectual laziness, thy name is LaserWolf.
Too funny.
What I don't get, Frank, is why you're so incensed about it.
If you don't see a problem with gov'ts spying on their citizens (which you've stated you don't) I cram to understand why you care that spy agencies are spying on each other.
There's nothing wrong with collecting intel which of course every government does on any other government, allies or not.
Bugging embassies and targeting the cellphones of heads of state is not how the intelligence agencies of allied governments should work. As I have said before, behavior like this is commonly expected from Russia and from China. Running illegal, covert surveillance units up on the roof of their embassy building as the US have been doing in Berlin is just laughable. Imagine it would be the other way around. That embassy should be dismantled and moved to the suburbs, far away from our seat of government.
It's funny how most US citizens don't seem to have any problem with any of this. Just one more indicator how you already share much more with other paranoid and totalitarian regimes like Russia and China than you realize.
dude I never said I didn't have a problem with it!
I'm simply trying to figure out why you shrug at a gov't monitoring your personal emails but are up-in-arms about gov'ts spying on each other.
I'm not agreeing/disagreeing; i'm trying to understand your viewpoint.
Yes.
Not the spying on foreign government parts, but the spying on citizens. Every citizen.
We had this debate when GW Bush took office.
He wanted to implement a program called Total Information Awareness.
Civil libertarians on the left and the right freaked. The program was scraped.
But not really, because it was secretly implemented before congress was ever asked.
Good time line.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/timeline-nsa-domestic-surveillance-bush-obama
Congress "shut down" the program in 2003. In 2010 the program was ruled illegal by Federal Courts.
The only problem with the time line is it starts with 9/11, the spying started before then.
The US government has always spied on it's citizens. That spying has always been found to be unconstitutional.
During the cold war, a far more dangerous time than today, people worked hard to expose and stop government spying on citizens. Today, not so much.
In my understanding of the term, only the covert collection of intelligence by one country on another is "spying".
I totally understand the need for a government to run surveillance on its citizens. Looking at the current German NSU (murderous, nail bombing underground neo nazi group) trial it is painfully clear that Germany has slept on these issues way too deep and for much too long. I'm also not mad if the NSA collects whatever civilian internet and cellphone data they can get internationally. Of course they need to be checked while doing this but generally, I want them to know as much as possible to be able to do the best job possible to keep all of us safe.
How could anybody even expect that emails can only be read by themselves and the recipient? And why would this be of any importance to anybody? If you do shit nobody should know about then how dumb do you have to be to discuss your dirt in an email. Same goes for cellphones. As long as it isn't anybody in the record game I don't care at all who listens to my phone calls or who reads my emails. Have at it.
Home surveillance is a whole other issue.
Such is the NSA's bugging of foreign embassies, the EU and the UN in the US, or the EU in Brussels. That's just some insulting shit, pardon my French.
My wife works as a diplomat and when she had the option for a transfer to Shanghai , the known fact that the private apartments of all foreign diplomats there will have audio/video bugs was the main reason for us to decide otherwise.
Sheesh.
(why in the fusk should diplomats have that same expectation vis-a-vis other gov'ts is beyond me).
Frank, I get that the gov't bugging issue hits close to home for you because your wife is a diplomat.
how about recognizing that the email monitoring issue hits close to home for we US citizens?
Frank, US embassies around the world are put through frequent debugging procedures. Your wife is probably well aware of that.
Our great friend and ally Israel spies on us and has been caught doing so time and again without any appreciable damage to our relationship other than some Merkel-style huffing and puffing. It's how it works. It's more of a game than anything else.