[ExI] europeans say yanks are spying

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:08:22AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Of course intelligence agencies are up to a lot of surveillance of
> friends and foes. But there are presumably certain gentlemen's
> agreements about what Is Not Done. Flouting these are not just
> embarrassments, they are signs that a government is no longer in
> full control over their agencies.

This is a common narrative, but I doubt it ever was true.
Some countries are little more than US vassals -- occupied
Germany would be a good example (Sweden, the sixth's eye, 
another -- witness the Assange charade, for instance --
and last, but not least the UKUSA members).

Do you think BND has installed the surveillance capacity
in Germany? It's an open secret NSA is operating all the
sigint, and throwing the three German intelligence
services a few information scraps from their table.
The only gentlemen's agreements exist between national
intelligence services, where there are no formal (secret,
of course) obligations to collect and share.

Why do you think there are US drones over Bavaria,
officially limited to certain flight corridors?
And that Germany can't train their own military
pilots but leave it to the US? Allies, yeah, right.
 
> I think the US is seriously losing allies right now. Worse, we are
> seeing further breakdown of an international system that - while
> never perfect - at least kept trust and interaction habits
> functional.

Was that any trust to start with? The mix of economic
and outright petrodollar-maintenance warfare seem to 
keep the "partners" firmly on the leash. 

What we're seeing it little more than kabuki theatre,
played for the masses in managed democracies.
Any outrage is staged, or comes from real ignorance
(of course, neither interpretation is favorable, it
it comes from our designated leaders).