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NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

bbc.com

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Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#51

Post by gadf »

The problem is not the spying. Everyone's doing it. Privacy is an illusion. Encryption is meaningless to the state.

The problem is how the information is utilized and whether the staff and bureaucracy are professionals or pro-liars.

Professionals have integrity, operate in a facts- and data-based manner, possess a moral code guided by people's benefit, are fully accountable for their actions to an internally transparent independent oversight mechanism with legal repercussions.

Pro-liars are fabricators, blackmailers and betrayers, with zero integrity, adopting sloppy collection techniques, coercing cooperation, reacting on opinions that confirm their biases, abusers of the power they have, and of their targets, working in a constantly shifting amoral environment, guided by power and revenge, without oversight or accountability, and inoculate themselves to legal repercussions by hiding within secrecy protections.

All this official "shock and horror" comes across as crocodile tears, and would be better channeled into internally reforming the bloated security/intelligence bureaucracy (globally, not specific to any one region) that, although peppered with pockets of professionals, is also poisoned by the snake-tongued cancer of pro-liars.

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#52

Post by visarga »

jpz wrote: post #50

The EU project has always been a project rather paternalistically cultivated by US foreign operations, including intelligence operations, so I believe. It allowed them to remove a heap of troops from forward bases in the region.

I think Europeans have had enough wars to want a more stable Europe, with or without US support.

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#53

Post by bryanrasmussen »

sneak wrote: post #44
rsj_hn wrote: post #32

This all boils down to the question of how to reign in the administrative state, and the problem here is that no one really wants to reign it in, they want to control it and point it in the direction they prefer, that is, they want an extra-judicial, extra-legislative source of power to exist, but just not do any of the things they don't like. But I don't think this is possible, once you have an administrative state,…

Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? I have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious based on this assessment of yours what other people think about the implications of the situation.

I think it would be fair to say that any Democracy past a certain size (and that size is probably not going to be much bigger than a medium sized city) is going to have parts of it that will not be exposed to public scrutiny and operate independently of the public will.

I'm pretty sure the majority of Danes would be against helping the U.S spy on other EU nations. But it was done because the country was not asked. There are of course other things that the government wants to do that they are prevented from by popular sentiment.

Both Autocracy and Democracy are present in any system, their distribution just changes due to circumstances.

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#54

Post by hosteur »

BombNullIsland wrote: post #15
peteretep wrote: post #7

The Five Eyes have built a sufficiently valuable asset that the security services of other rich countries all want in. Denmark is in Nine Eyes, so they’ll happily sell out members of Fourteen Eyes (like Germany) to get closer into the circle.

You just assume that every electronic communication is dragneted now. Your phone, your car radio's bluetooth radio, toll transponder, alpr, everything. What I like about the signals-intelligence-only focus is that I can leave my phone at home, hop on an ebike with a legally mandated helmet obscuring my face from cameras, and I'm completely invisible to the state. I just don't exist. Unlike East Germany there's no HUM…

> Unlike East Germany there's no HUMINT apparatus in the west or in China.

You are very mistaken. Just because HUMINT are more discreet does not mean it does not exist.

Also, some of the stuff they do are very blatant. Just look at cases like Assange and Jake Appelbaum. Clearly HUMINT efforts.

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#55

Post by [deleted] »

rsj_hn wrote: post #32

This all boils down to the question of how to reign in the administrative state, and the problem here is that no one really wants to reign it in, they want to control it and point it in the direction they prefer, that is, they want an extra-judicial, extra-legislative source of power to exist, but just not do any of the things they don't like. But I don't think this is possible, once you have an administrative state,…

[deleted]

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#56

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #44
rsj_hn wrote: post #32

This all boils down to the question of how to reign in the administrative state, and the problem here is that no one really wants to reign it in, they want to control it and point it in the direction they prefer, that is, they want an extra-judicial, extra-legislative source of power to exist, but just not do any of the things they don't like. But I don't think this is possible, once you have an administrative state,…

Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? I have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious based on this assessment of yours what other people think about the implications of the situation.

[deleted]

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#57

Post by redis_mlc »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #3

I'm unsure what of this information is new. It sounds like the EU just found nine sources to confirm one aspect of the Snowden leak? Were people ever really doubting the authenticity of those documents? I'm sure some people have, but it never seemed like a common realistic belief.

Before his leak, even people in IT doubted mass government surveillance.

For about a year after the leak, people were asking for proof.

Now it's inverted, so that most people think he's credible, and require proof if somebody starts throwing the "debunked" word around.

Funnily enough, just like the corona lab leak theory. :)

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#58

Post by [deleted] »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #14
quyleanh wrote: post #8

I still wonder, what happens if other countries like China, Russia spy on other governments and are disclosed? They will be embargoed by US. But why there is nothing happens when US spying other countries? Because US does it with good manner and good intention?

Remember the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

[deleted]

Re: NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report

#60

Post by toxik »

justicezyx wrote: post #37
pcbro141 wrote: post #16

Listen Europe, this is good spying though. Not Huawei 5G spying. Just like American torture is good torture, because we only torture the bad guys.

Please correct your self. Huawei spying is a scam. No evidence whatsoever. This is reality. Confirmed multiple times and corroborated. Let's not drag a perfect fine private company to the same level of shadiness of the most corrupted national government.

Please don’t treat the comments like a battleground for your irrelevant CCP crusade. I have read your comment history and it’s fairly obvious what you’re here for. It turns the HN comments to a hostile place.
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