[ExI] remote embassies

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 2:06 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] remote embassies

 

On Oct 23, 2015 1:51 PM, "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> So why do we need ambassadors on the ground in dangerous places?

1)      Legalities.  Many of those places will not recognize a remote presence for the purposes of an embassy.  …

Ja.  The ball is in their court.  Americans are not clamoring to get into their benighted and retrogressive countries.  If they want to deal with us, they need to do so on our terms.

 

2)      Assurance.  "But everyone knows cyber-anything can be hacked!  American movies show this all the time!"  …

Sure but we have military grade encryption.  Even private conversations can be intercepted.  If the bad guys think they can hack encrypted email, then let them demonstrate it.  The dangerous countries must meet us on our terms because we have the gold.

 

3)      Espionage.  You didn't really think that embassies weren't, from the start, a safe place for spies to drop their Intel, did you? 

This sort of thing can be done by phone, by encrypted email, by any number of untraceable channels.  Delivering hard copy of intel to an embassy is perhaps the lowest security means of transmission, because the couriers can be observed going in and out.

These three reasons are justification for closing embassies in foreign lands, particularly those with nothing we want.  For every commodity other than oil, the free market can do all the diplomatic tasks required.  The oil countries are rich enough to create a safe embassy.

I see little justification for most of the US embassies we currently have.  Shut em down, use the phone, or encrypted email, or a secure line.

When I read that testimony, I didn’t see anyone really taking ownership of the Benghazi attack, didn’t see any indications of how anything would change, or how safety could be enhanced.  I did see the former Sec of State stick with her story on the internet video, and the internet is not going to run out of blasphemous videos anytime soon, and the US isn’t going to suddenly develop either the technology or the legal means of stopping that.  

>From what I am hearing, the underlying cause is still there, the target is still there, the means of defense has proven inadequate.  So… shut em down, bring em home.

spike

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20151023/86f5856b/attachment.html>