EPTEdit: Of course, like I said before, if the trade-off is actually worth it, then sure why not. In the end you gotta do a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, I don't believe it's worth it, but I could be wrong (we have no idea what kind of information the government gained so it's impossible to make an assumption either way).
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 568
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
Edit: Of course, like I said before, if the trade-off is actually worth it, then sure why not. In the end you gotta do a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, I don't believe it's worth it, but I could be wrong (we have no idea what kind of information the government gained so it's impossible to make an assumption either way). | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
I don't believe that all spying is equal and there are definitely boundaries especially when it comes to allies. You kiddin? The NSA doesn't even understand boundaries when it comes to America  | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On October 25 2013 08:51 oneofthem wrote: it's not like without the spying you'd trust allies entirely. with the spying at least you know what they really think and can trust more. the strange upside of total spying is that there is no secrecy and no prisoner's dilemma situations What prisoner's dilemma are you referring to? Anyway, total spying is a silly concept because that would require every country to spend the same on intelligence and counter-intelligence, and that makes no sense when having information supremacy over everyone else (by spending more) is advantageous. On a side note, I don't understand the fixation on spying on allies being the key issue here. How is that distinction relevant? Every country has both common and conflicting interests with every other country, except maybe in extreme circumstances (war means no common interests), so why is military cooperation (I assume that's what you mean by allies) the line that divides "ok to spy" from "not ok to spy"? | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + Awkward. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
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LaNague
Germany9118 Posts
I would say, currently is rather terrible. Whatever advantages had been gained by by spending several billions are now lost by diplomatic incidents, economic treaties put on hold...etc. spying on everything you can get your hands on no matter the risk doesnt sound like a good idea to me, its like a brute force attack. Build giant server farms that store EVERYTHING going in and out of the continent. That certainly is an impressive achievement, but from an intelligence point of view rather useless. Its a lot of data, but compared to the effort not a lot of information. Also for the merkel phone thing...it was not her official work phone in her function of the german chancellor, which is secured. It was a privately used "on the side" phone. Which was a stupid thing to do, Merkel really tried to make the whole NSA incident go away for our US allies. There was barely any reaction to it despite weekly revelations. Neither political nor in public opinion. But i guess now the US kind of pissed her of personally. | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 25 2013 09:36 Sbrubbles wrote: I meant that military cooperation is just one aspect of many in the relations between nations. The US and its (military) allies may agree on military cooperation under certain parameters, but are capable of being enemies on other issues (technological, economic, etc). Alliances are built off of trust/a certain understanding. Spying contradicts such trust. Say what you will but these kinds of distinctions are important to the public, and understandably so. Sure, everyone's after their own self-interests, but as allies you are expected to work around those in a professional and cordial manner. Spying is anything but. | ||
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NovaTheFeared
United States7222 Posts
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FallDownMarigold
United States3710 Posts
On October 25 2013 08:23 DoubleReed wrote: My point is that the actual problem is that we make everything super secret. If we had policies about being more open and honest about espionage, then we wouldn't do stupid shit like spying on the german president. It's part of a larger problem of secrecy. If we all agree spying is inevitable, then what's the big deal? I mean if we said openly that we hack into the Chinese government, and even their corporations to get unfair information for our corporations, would that be so terrible? Would the sky fall? Would China change anything that they do? What, would they do some hypocritical bitching about it? Maybe Americans would be uncomfortable with that use of government resources, but they might not. They're doing the same to us, after all. Either way, that seems like something that we should decide as a society. But we can't do that unless it's public information. It's not just domestic spying that should be public. This is an interesting and different opinion about the nature of successful intelligence. I don't think the idea of moving away from secrecy is such a good idea, though, given that secrecy is absolutely crucial to intelligence: Definition 1: Intelligence is secret state or group activity to understand or influence foreign or domestic entities. Definition 2: Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. Definition 3: Intelligence errors are factual inaccuracies in analysis resulting from poor or missing data; intelligence failure is systemic organizational surprise resulting from incorrect, missing, discarded, or inadequate hypotheses. Secrecy is important to the very nature of intelligence, so it seems strange to me to suggest removing the element of secrecy from it. In fact it seems a bit misunderstood given this information: Furthermore, Shulsky explains, these activities are conducted by organizations and those organizations have something in common: they have as one of their "most notable characteristics...the secrecy with which their activities are conducted". Secrecy is essential because intelligence is part of the ongoing 'struggle' between nations. Shulsky thus emphasizes the need for secrecy in intelligence activities and organizations. Indeed, he comes close to calling secrecy a constitutive element of intelligence work, saying the "connection between intelligence and secrecy is central to most of what distinguishes intelligence from other intellectual activities." In 1958 a CIA operations officer noticed the same tendency that puzzled Shulsky. Rather than setting it aside, however, he attempted to explain it. Writing under the pen-name R. A. Random in the CIA's then classified Studies in Intelligence, he suggested that intelligence, by definition, always has something secret about it: "Intelligence is the official, secret collection and processing of information on foreign countries to aid in formulating and implementing foreign policy, and the conduct of covert activities abroad to facilitate the implementation of foreign policy". ...the addition of "counterintelligence" hints that Bimfort has missed one of the essential elements of Random's definition: its assertion that intelligence is a state activity that involves secrecy. If Bimfort had grasped that point, he should have conceded that an activity that is official and secret ipso facto implies subsidiary activities to keep it secret. Thus Bimfort's addition--"the protection of both process and product, as as persons and organizations concerned with these, against unauthorized disclosure"--is not only ponderous, it is superfluous. It is, moreover, unhelpful, because it reaches beyond counterintelligence and subsumes all sorts of ordinary security functions common to many government offices and private enterprises. Michael Warner, “Wanted: A Definition of ‘Intelligence’,” Studies in Intelligence 46, no. 3 (2002): 15–22. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol46no3/pdf/v46i3a02p.pdf Now, this doesn't address whether it's good or bad to conduct intelligence activities on allied and friendly nations, but it does suggest that recommending the removal of secrecy from intelligence is, by definition, silly. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On October 25 2013 10:00 Souma wrote: Alliances are built off of trust/a certain understanding. Spying contradicts such trust. Say what you will but these kinds of distinctions are important to the public, and understandably so. Sure, everyone's after their own self-interests, but as allies you are expected to work around those in a professional and cordial manner. Spying is anything but. See, I thought you were expected to work around those in a professional and cordial manner not only for allies, but also for other sovereign nations. In any case, I don't see revealed spying as being specifically damning for military alliances (especially when the spying is not military in nature). Nor would I see trust, in absolute terms, as its essential component, as the mutual need to affect the international balance of power would be sufficient for an alliance imo, trust or no trust. | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
How do you know what the spying is or is not? That's a pretty bold claim when the U.S. has not and will not release all the information they've been gaining. This kind of scandal has possible far-reaching repercussions. Public sentiment is critical when you're trying to get a country to do something for you. When you piss off an entire country (make it 35 countries) you're using up a ton of political capital which may make it harder in the future to get unpopular things done. Everyone has a limit to how much shit they can take. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On October 25 2013 11:33 xDaunt wrote: The problem isn't just that Obama was caught spying or that he was caught spying on allies. The problem is that this scandal has emerged when Obama already is in the doghouse with all of these countries for his previous foreign policy boondoggles. It's a cumulative problem, because Obama does not have any good will to spend. The problem isn't obama, it's the united states. | ||
KwarK
United States42749 Posts
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furymonkey
New Zealand1587 Posts
Every major country spy on everyone, but most don't have the U.S. technology or financial resources $10.8 billion for fiscal 2013, according to a budget document Snowden leaked. The NSA is rivaled only by Britain's code-breaking Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, an agency the U.S. works with closely, according to the Snowden documents. U.S. ally Israel is one of the top counterintelligence threats, and targets, for American spies. U.S. spies and diplomats who work in Israel expect to have phone calls intercepted, and conversations in public overheard. The CIA station chief in Israel even had his house rifled through by Israeli spies. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
Now tell me - if it does come to a point where we did indeed piss off 35 different countries (many of whom are allies), do you have confidence that the information we gained was worth the endeavor? I guess the problem here is that we may never know. | ||
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furymonkey
New Zealand1587 Posts
If Merkel's phone can be earsdropped by its allies, it can and surely is by less friendly countries, such as Russia. This is to be expected by government officials or their nation intelligent advisers. | ||
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