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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

#71
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if at the same time NSA had for instance a concurrent program running along with for instance Germany (or any other EU country for that matter) to spy any other european countries, including Danemark.

Bellum omnium contra omnes, "the war of all against all".

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

#73
post #44
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 any moderately sized nation state quickly develops an inner state with autocratic tendencies. Democracy combined with a healthy press and strong protections on free speech are a strong check on the domestic powers of this inner state, but are much less effective in curbing the autocratic inner state overseas.

The nation state hasn't ceased to be democratic, but its internal autocratic state is running amuck overseas.

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

#74

Why Europe does not develop a new system to encode/encrypt communications?, that would make tapping the line useless.

No new systems need to be developed, only a will to deploy existing systems. To the best of public knowledge, Curve25519 with AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 is good enough to keep the NSA out for years. These are available in TLS, OpenVPN, and WireGuard.

Longer term, TLS, OpenVPN, and WireGuard all need to standardize post-quantum key exchange (such as Chrome's TLS experiment to run Curve25519 and RLWE key agreement protocols in parallel and run both outputs through the final key derivation function). But, for today, the main problem is deployment.

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

#75
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

Any state which enforces private land tenure in a non-reciprocated manner will tend towards autocracy over time. A distinguishing feature of high functioning republics is the ability to organize reliable public assessments of direct taxes on landed property within their borders. Under corrupt governments the assessments are never kept up to date and the nobility is given arbitrary and excessive privileges and exemptions to shift direct contributions to the least advantaged members of society. Maybe 50% of local governments and 20% of regional states in the U.S. are high functioning. The federal government was able to organize assessments in 1798, 1813-1816, and 1861 but is generally not high functioning.

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

#76
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?

Because nothing happens when you spy on your satellite states. 40 years ago people said it was wrong to have Soviet satellite states in Europe, and they seemed right. Only that they just meant the "Soviet" part of the sentence.

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

#77

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.

I'm so glad your government is helping to keep us safe! To express my gratitude I'll help boost your economy with some ad revenue today and aid the good fight. The profits should trickle down to you eventually. On a more serious note, I think (possibly in my naive ignorance) the geopolitical implications are quite different. I have the impression that American cultural influence has become increasingly prevalent thro…

> I'm not sure to what extent I should consider this to be problematic.

Okay, I'll help you: By doing this shit, the US is losing goodwill and Germans will align more with Russia, e.g. by building pipelines instead of buying US gas.

Russia is a long-term threat to the expansion plans of the EU and is hindering us at creating a true union across all of Europe.

The US is a threat to our economy. China is becoming our biggest economic partner. We cannot trust them, but by doing shit like this, the US shows time and time again, that we cannot trust them either.

China and Russia are ultimately not to blame for the big migration crisis caused by ISIS filling the power vacuum left behind in Iraq and Syria. This is causing real consequences for us over here.

So Germany is more and more pushed towards aligning with Russia and China. Of course culturally we are much closer to the US. We condemn what these countries do to their own people. But in the end unfortunately, the US is stupid enough to make itself look worse and worse, when it comes to outcomes for our own people.

This cannot be what the US wants. Once you have fully lost Germany, you are basically done in Europe and can go look East and see if you can hold on to Korea, Japan and Australia.

I think, it would be much easier for the US to stop doing shit like this and keep the countries, which already kind of think like you, and would want you to stay number 1.

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

#78
post #49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? Such an agency operating outside of the visibility of those voting is by definition not democratic. But that doesn't mean the rest of the democracy isn't there.

IMHO, people prefer "trust, but check" over "blind trust". You can cast a referendum, if you are unsure. Hitler was elected in a democratic way, so it's possible that your democratic ally can turn into a totalitarian enemy at a next election.

Also, it is easier to check for Russian spies in a government from outside, than from inside. For example, soviet agent in Germany government, called "D-104" in memories of Yurii Drozdov, is still not found. I suspect Schröder, which works for Russian Gasprom now, but he may leave a replacement agent, to work after him. (Merkel?)

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

#79
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,…

Missing a few steps between "having an administrative state" and "spy on everyone" there, buddy.

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

#80
post #40
post #5

and in 2015 it was reported Germany was helping the NSA spy on European politicians. NSA doing what the NSA does really. https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8489477/bnd-nsa-informati...

And not just the NSA. Despite their feigned outrage every time stuff like this hits the news, both Germany and France actively spy on US government and industry all the time. Every nation spies on every other nation, friend or foe, to look out for their own national interests. https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar... > Bernard Squarcini, head of the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur…

I think Squarcini might have a bit of a bias towards minimizing the importance of that kind of spying, since France is one of the most aggressive state-sponsors of industrial espionage, after China and the US.

But the gist of the article is "yeah, of course they're going to do it, if we give them the opportunity".

We european countries really shouldn't be giving the US so much opportunity to spy on us.

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