[ExI] saving us from the United Stasi of America

[Andrew Mckee]

On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 03:54:20 +1300, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> This article fails to mention what I think is an important point.   
> USians have these 4th and 5th amendment rights, but none of these deal  
> with the legality of a foreign power gathering intelligence on American  
> citizens.  The US is free to observe Germans under our constitution, and  
> I assume Germany is free to observe Americans.  Then I see nothing  
> preventing the American and German government from watching each other's  
> people (and everyone else for that matter), perhaps running some kind of  
> data reduction software, then swapping results.  Both governments then  
> cleanly sidestep those bothersome legal restrictions, depending on how  
> one defines the term "cleanly."


Surely you jest?

That is after all exactly how and why ECHELON (now  FIVE EYES ) was set up  
after all, just not with the Germans, since half of them were Commies at  
the time, IE the very people they were supposed to be spying on, as  
opposed to todays spying on everyone on planet earth.