Obama To Angry Europeans: Hey, Come On, You Guys Spy On Us Too, Right? Right?
from the what's-a-little-spying-among-friends dept
When the news of the US spying on EU embassies and various other official buildings came out over the weekend, we noted that this really wasn't that surprising, as it appeared to be very typical espionage -- the kind that has happened for decades, if not centuries. Still, it's not entirely clear that President Obama's response to this controversy is particularly tactful. He basically uses the "hey, come on guys, we're all doing this to each other, right?" excuse:"We should stipulate that every intelligence service – not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there's an intelligence service … here's one thing that they're going to be doing: they're going to be trying to understand the world better and what's going on in world capitals," he told a press conference during a long-scheduled trip Tanzania. "If that weren't the case, then there'd be no use for an intelligence service."While I still think that this particular revelation is hardly that surprising, and agree that it's almost certain that various European countries are doing the same sort of thing to the US, I do wonder if that's the most tactful response to the growing controversy. Still, I do wonder if the focus on this will take away from the much larger issue of using intelligence services not to spy on other governments, but on the public via mass dragnet collections of information.
"And I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That's how intelligence services operate," Obama added.
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Filed Under: barack obama, embassies, espionage, eu, nsa surveillance, surveillance
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Of course it will.
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Re: Of course it will.
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Anyways, compairing the desire for information and the gathering of it between a single high profile public figure such as the president of a country to lower profile people is simply stupid as calling Snowden a hacker.
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Nip it at the bud.
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Re: Nip it at the bud.
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Re:
Let's see, spend billions of dollars trying to stop someone from killing Americans, or spend billions of dollars on health care for Americans. Which effort will save more lives?
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Taliban Retaliation
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Re: Taliban Retaliation
Anyone else attacks, drop a few more.
Pretty soon, no more punk-assed-fucking-morons around to whine when we paint images of M on every missile we send over.
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Re: Re: Taliban Retaliation
Scorched Earth?
It remains to me a hope for humanity that even when nukes have been in the hands of religious radicals (low-ranking Pakistani and Indian officers, many of whom are quite fanatical) that we still haven't seen one used in hostility even once. (The pre-nuclear atom bombs of WWII notwithstanding; Castle Bravo was the start of the nuclear age.)
It would be a stupid and terrible mistake for the president to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, even in the case of a retaliatory strike (and yes, I know according to MAD that's what we're supposed to do -- it would still be a mistake.)
We're not going to nuke the Taliban, no matter how much like a caricature evil overlord they become.
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Re: Taliban Retaliation
There. See how easy that was?
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Re: Re:
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Re:
The general problem is the extend of surveillance and the lack of rights afforded those being spied on. If USA has specific surveillance on every single non-american, I will bet you that some other countries will have the same data on every single american.
Secret services and their spying on foreigners is a weapon race. If one party is gathering data on another, the opposing countries will look to match that and then some.
Add to that, the refusal to recognize rights for foreign citizens concerning surveillance and you have got a completely out of control surveillance weapons race with no actual limitation except for a little subset concerning own citizens that they want as close to eliminated as possible...
This exact case is just politicians posturing. Merkel do not care in the slightest except for the upcoming election. France does care a little, insofar that it can be used in the TAFTA negotiations to push out cultural products from the deal and strenghten IPR. Most other countries do not care at all. Only a few EU parliamentarians really go at it and a few countries with upcoming elections. Mostly this is absolutely nothing major, but a small advantage in TAFTA negotiations. If it isn't they have promised to slaughter the TAFTA negotiation entirely...
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Breeding Paranoia
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Did you expect something different?.
Evidently our current so-called POTUS thinks that two wrongs makes it all right, especially when he's doing it at a far higher/more expensive level than the rest of the world.
It's never his fault, and the answer from the White House is always denial. How long before he blames it on a previous president?.
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Re: Did you expect something different?.
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An updated version might go something like:
Anything they can do, we can do better ('cause we're damn yankees and we doe everything bigger, better, faster).
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What happened to ...
Now it's no big deal - everyone's doing it.
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France Doesn't Get to Complain
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930418&slug=1696416
Not only have they spied on the US, they've done it to the UK as well.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Industrial+espionage+incident+revealed+involving+BAe+and+Airb us...-a062833503
And according to cables released by Wikileaks back in 2011, they're the #1 country when it comes to industrial espionage.
http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espionage-economy-germany-russia-china-bus iness
In other words, the rest of the EU can feel free to tear Obama a new one over the spying scandal, but the French aren't invited to the "shock and outrage" party.
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No, they probably do not
Germany in particular has the whole lesson of the Stasi and would likely crucify any party that wanted to start spying. They also most likely don't have the hypocritical and imperialistic "foreign people don't count" attitude.
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Then again, it's not so funny. The stupidity cancer that has grown untreated so long in the US is spreading to other countries.
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The stupidity cancer
As per any societal disease, it isn't cured by electing the right guy back into office. I'm pretty sure Obama was the right guy. I'm pretty sure he believed his promises as a candidate. I think anyone who succeeds him is going to suffer from the same attitude adjustment.
...same as the old boss.
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Wait a minute!
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Given that, what European nations would be interested in such chenangins? About the only country we need to worry about in that is North Korea and they are totally incapable of making a standpoint on that.
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How we have fallen
"Gentlemen do not read each others mail"
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Re: How we have fallen
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You hear nothing in this about we screwed up and while it might have been legal given that it passed through congress, it is still unconstitutional.
Funny how that is being avoided in being mentioned.
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Politeness
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Yeah...maybe...but they don't carry it to such an extreme or get caught with all ten of their fingers up their asses when they do.
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Maybe, Mr. President, but does that mean they have any interest in what I had for breakfast, or whatever I might discuss with their leaders (probably in a local cafe).
I think not. I think there are millions of lives irrelevant to politics, irrelevant to the war on terror that just want to be left the fuck alone.
And we have rules against forcing your way into our interests, just so that you can discern whether or not they are your interests too.
...well, we did.
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Paranoid
Sure there's some spying, but other nations don't have the same opportunity, money, or interest. Or the insane creeping fear. Land of the brave.
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Re:
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I find it hilarious that the freakin' Germans are whining about... being spied on?!? Yeah, they've never done anything as bad as spying... have they???
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Re:
Sins of the father(land).
Any other brilliant applications of logic you want to employ?
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Violate the first rule of espionage
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Proof that the obumer adminstion is a fraud
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Knowing Obama's meals could be useful if someone tried to poison him. That's the point of spying massively, isn't it?
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