How far should national security intelligence go?

[Maharg67]

Recently the USA has come under the spotlight about its 'spying' on its allies in ways taken to be illegal, intrusive and perhaps even a form of betrayal. But I do not wish this topic to focus on any nations, including the USA. One reason for this is that many nations have been caught out doing the same activities. My own nation of Australia was discovered to be illegally tapping telephone lines in a number of smaller Pacific nations.

 

Does any nation have the right to do what ever it wants to in order to survive? If no, what sort of restrictions, regulations, need to be put into place to keep such activities from going to far? Indeed, what is too far?

 

I think that there needs to be strongly enforced restrictions, some strong transparency, to stop any nation from going too far in such matters. I include Australia in my concerns.

[Commander19]

Recently the USA has come under the spotlight about its 'spying' on its allies in ways taken to be illegal, intrusive and perhaps even a form of betrayal. But I do not wish this topic to focus on any nations, including the USA. One reason for this is that many nations have been caught out doing the same activities. My own nation of Australia was discovered to be illegally tapping telephone lines in a number of smaller Pacific nations.

 

Does any nation have the right to do what ever it wants to in order to survive? If no, what sort of restrictions, regulations, need to be put into place to keep such activities from going to far? Indeed, what is too far?

 

I think that there needs to be strongly enforced restrictions, some strong transparency, to stop any nation from going too far in such matters. I include Australia in my concerns.

 

Part of the problem is the very government institutions and entities carrying out these illicit activities (i.e. invasive surveillance, espionage, sabotage, etc.) operate everything in secret and in some cases absolute "shadow law" in which they answer to no one. Should any nation be permitted to survive by any means necessary? In theory, no, the human rationale is meant to supersede the "survival of the fittest" rule of biological impulses. In practice, however, it has proven to ultimately lead to the same conclusion, there will always be a nation pushing the bounds of the law to gain an edge in the international community. The main caveat of regulating such practices is transparency. Think about it. Say for instance you are a major corporation working on a top secret project which involved stealing data from a competitor, would you really announce that to the world? No. The only answer that would make such regulations possible would be the establishment of a globalized nation where, for instance the UN Reps would be president and the pyramid would descend from there, but then you have to worry about the potential power those at the helm would possess. That would be another bridge we'd have to burn when we come across it.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Being German I've got quite a lot of this in the media lately. When the tapping of the line from our chancellor's mobile phone was found out the US president was friendly asked to 'investigate' this. On the next day the White House representative publically announced there never was and never will be such a thing. A friendly request of 'investigation' was immediately answered by flat-out 'denial', only to later down the road be proven 'lies' by their very own secret services announcing the exact opposite together with several 'buts', like claiming how it is their right to do so considering others do it as well and all this stuff. The whole thing escalated quickly, as they say.

 

Now at the end of the day the US has lost an ally... or at least all trust they ever had from its people. Their public image in Germany now is "liers who can't be trusted", which isn't exactly a good base for an alliance.

 

Was it worth it? I don't know. Maybe it's the purpose of this debate to find out.

[Alyzabeth]

It's an act of war.

[HeyYou]

Just because everyone does it, doesn't make it 'right'. Most of these activities are already illegal, so, slapping more restrictions on them won't make any difference at all. Back in the early 2000's, our government (USA) passed the Patriot Act. (misnomer....) That bit of law made it 'legal' for various agencies to tap phones and such. Supposedly, they weren't going to tap AMERICAN phones, just foreigners. We see how that worked out.

 

The US seems to be in the business of alienating our allies. Or, simply abandoning them, when it is no longer expedient to support them. (Egypt, the 'arab spring' took hold, and we basically tossed our ally of decades, in favor of the muslim brotherhood....)

 

What is the point of being an ally, if you 'friend' taps your phone, and will abandon you when you no longer seem to suit the social trends of the day? Being a 'fair weather friend' pretty much assures that you are not going to have any friends in relatively short order. Obama WAS on a path of reconciliation with various foreign powers, including our allies.... seems he has changed direction on that. Not really a good plan.

[colourwheel]

The German chancellor was being tapped way before Obama took office. To be exact it was before she became chancellor around 2002 when bush was president. This being said Obama probably didn't even realize the NSA was tapping her phone nor was even in a position suggesting he had any knowledge of it being done. The white house comments on the issue could be easily true being the fact the White house doesn't have considerable amount of oversight on the exact and specific things the NSA does.

 

Don't get me wrong I am not trying to justify what has been done in the past as being an "ok" thing to do. To me it isn't a huge shock that the NSA has been doing this since we have known about this stuff since the Snowden leaks.

 

If it is known that other countries have been doing stuff like this for the past decade just imagine what people would think if Germany had their own version of Snowden too or another allied country.....

[rizon72]

Honestly, such things have been going on for centuries. There is nothing new about information gathering, nor will there be, the only thing that changes is the technology we use to spy on other nations.

 

If the truth ever came out about how much nations spy on each other,, I think the average person would be shocked (or maybe not). I don't think there is a leader out there who isn't being spied upon by at least one nation.

 

We only seem to be shocked about it when someone comes out with such information. Everyone is suddenly like, 'OMG, how dare country xyz do such a thing'.

 

Really, the only thing that has changed is the speed upon which an agency can gather the data on someone. Computers, e-mails, cell phones, texting can be hacked, phone lines tapped, mail intercepted, and conversations overheard. Is it right or wrong, I don't know. On one side we all want our privacy, on the other, when something happens, one of the first things people say is why didn't the government know. Generally they can't know without spying, which infringes on our privacy.

 

The question is what is too far? I don't think that question is easily answered either.

[RGMage2]

There are few true friends among nations, mostly they are competitors playing nice with each other for reasons of self interest. If any leader of a nation is honestly surprised by any of this, then that person is not qualified to lead a nation.

 

The real wakeup call here for nations like France, Germany, Japan(?), should not be the revelation of spying, but rather the revelation of the five-eyes nations (USA, Briton, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and their agreement to not spy on each other and pool their intelligence. This suggests that America regards these four other English Language nations to be their only true allies in this world.

 

What is going too far? Getting caught and leaving yourself vulnerable, that’s when you know you went too far.

 

I’m not saying it’s right or anything. If we lived in a perfect world then none of this would happen, but we’re not in a perfect world. It is what it is, like a loaf of bread crawling with maggots, and if you are hungry then you know what you have to do.

[HeyYou]

Don't pick the maggots off your food, they provide necessary proteins.

[JimboUK]

The security services in the UK have been out of control for decades, they keep dossiers on the very MPs who are supposed to be overseeing them and it's no coincidence that Prime Ministers who cross them find their careers nose dive shortly after. Parliaments reaction to Snowden has been very telling, they've not sought to reign in the security services, they've instead been attacking The Guardian for printing the facts. As for France and Germany kicking up a fuss, one has to wonder if their ultimate goal is access to Five Eyes, Der Spiegel seems to think so. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-impedes-eu-privacy-efforts-despite-outrage-at-nsa-spying-a-930488.html