British intelligence hacked Belgacom then sabotaged investigation

NSA spying on Petrobras[0].

NSA spying on EADS (Airbus)[1].

NSA spying on Eurocopter[2].

NSA spying on Siemens[3].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr...

[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/bnd-und-nsa-die-chronolo...

[2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/geheimdienst-affaere-nsa...

[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edward-snowden-says-nsa-engage...

I’m pretty sure until recently they didn’t even share information that would help protect companies from state level actors.

>maybe your ally can't admit something that they know to be true, because it happens to be unpopular domestically.

It's not like diplomacy is done in public, there are ample opportunities to convey your true intentions.

>How can they ever be fair if it isn't?

Sure, you're right that "true" fairness is likely unobtainable. This system adds an unnecessary additional component that serves only to further the aims of the powerful. Calling it a normal, necessary part of diplomacy makes it seem like it's in everyone's best interest.

I don't think it's legal to use NSA/CIA to spy on political adversaries and sabotage them politically and economically.

You are comparing states with groceries...let's compare the Afganistan war with an afterschool fight or terrorists with pranksters and see where it leads us.

Spying activities are hostile actions. They are used to gain unfair economic advantage, overtrow governments, win elections(for their fav candidate) and other nasty stuff.

If the british government needs more data to find terrorists they could use their political power to improve the data sharing at the EU level.

Although Russia has plenty of satellites in orbit, do other nations have fleets of Hubble grade satellites pointing downwards as per UK/USA? Nope.

Okay, telecoms now go by cable, but do countries in mainland Europe have cables reaching out across the world leading back as happens in the UK? Nope. When it was just phone lines all cable for communication across the British empire led back to England, if you wanted to place a call from country A in Africa to country B in Africa it would not take a direct route, it would go to England first with a nice BT switchboard operator connecting the call. This infrastructure was built upon over time to have the fibre optic magic we have today. Much has changed but this inheritance from history is not to be overlooked. If a European company on the continent is trying to get a trade deal with a country that was formally coloured pink then that call is likely to be routed through Five Eyes comms, not some dedicated fibre. Clearly France have plenty of cables going across the border to Germany, but not to Australia.

Every king since the beginning of time has had his spies, there is no country on the planet that does not have some capability. However, The Five Eyes operation is on an entirely different scale to what nations outside of UK/USA have. Essentially the other three eyes are only there due to geography, they are lesser partners without the need or resources to participate at the level that the other two do.

The UK is also a junior partner, the reason GCHQ is so big is that there are laws in the US that are there to prevent the three letter agencies spying on the domestic population. GCHQ does that for them and has been built with the help of US contractors. It is one and the same operation with conflicts of interest on occasion - Airbus for instance.

I know it sounds wrong but I sometimes wish there was more spying going on from countries outside of Five Eyes. It would at least be possible to keep US/UK politicians a bit more honest if other countries has a bit more of an appreciation regarding what is going on. The reality though is that other countries just do not have the resources, people, skills, technology to do that. They buy the stories Washington and London tells them with no inside information to give them a more informed view.

As you can appreciate it can be hard to get reliable sources when the Official Secrets Act is involved. But I do have something for you in the public domain.

Quick question though - did the STASI spy on NATO countries? Yes. Was their primary mission domestic control and keeping tabs on the domestic population? Yes. Is it reasonable to think that the UK/USA spy agencies were any different? Did they spend time monitoring the Soviets? Yes. Did they spy on Arthur Scargill and the miners? Yes. What about Greenpeace? Yes. Fundamentally the miner's strike was an existential threat to the ruling elite whereas the Soviets weren't ever going to invade. Hence the mission creep.

Furthermore, if you do have mates from school days that do work there and, after plying them with lots of alcohol in an effort to find out more, you soon realise that they are all working in isolation, not knowing much about the big picture. There are only 'tells' such as their reason for doing the work. Yet amongst the tells a picture emerges, for instance overall capabilities or that your friends aren't actually working on the things in the mission statement. For a while the war on 'kiddy porn' was an acceptable reason for working there alongside fighting organised crime and The War Against Terror.

But when you examine these noble efforts you soon realise that a little bit of a fig leaf is being presented. GCHQ are not the ones unearthing the Panama Papers, the 'kiddy porn' mission ended up becoming regular police work rather than what the UK needed GCHQ for and then The War Against Terror certainly was not anything that the public were led to believe, despite the public diplomacy that existed at the time regarding 'intercepted intelligence chatter'. Now is not the time for in-depth discussion on this latter aspect, however, you can check how 'intelligence' was gathered during the war, for instance the 'Dodgy Dossier' that Tony Blair prepared for Iraq, that was based on some paper found in the public domain by Number 10 and 'sexed up a bit'.

So, on to what is available in the public domain. A good place to start is with Duncan Campbell, the investigative journalist that brought knowledge of ECHELON to the world. This is now a long time ago and very much from the Cold War. The report made for the European Parliament is a very good place to start, here is a little overview of that:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire...

If you then dig a little bit deeper and read the testimony of whistleblowers that spoke to Duncan Campbell you will find that there is much to support my assertion. There is one story that almost made daylight concerning Menwith Hill, a listening station that was supposed to be pointing east. There weren't Russian voices coming in over the ether, however, there was the voice of Strom Thurmond, a big believer in the war machine and a congressman definitely in the pockets of the arms companies. Despite this GCHQ were doing the listening for their counterparts on him, who was as trustworthy as you could have wished for and definitely not a Soviet asset.

In war you do not have complete information and reliable sources of what is going on in other people's kitchens. However, if you study what is in the public domain and do a little bit of asking around then you can get a glimpse of what is going on. History is important too, with the UK there is the former empire and the 'Special Relationship', both shaping what the doughnut is really about.

   a singularity in Central Europe

Lucky they aren't in Central Europe, then - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe#/media/File:Cen... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe#States

To be honest, I'd like to cast some doubt on the NATO putsch and the fascist network too, but I have no idea what' you're even talking about. Bende Van Nijvel and Vlaams blok/belang maybe? The Dutroux cover-up is the only thing that might be upgraded to crackpot theory.

There are serious problems with non-integrated muslims here, and they are a serious worry. But terrorism is the smallest part of that, even if delivers the nicest stories for the media.

There is also a lot of EU bureaucracy. Bruxelles lives almost exclusively on that, these days.

I think that's a bit much. Most people who work there probably do believe in the "mission", and believe that they are protecting the interests of not just British citizens but a broader set of "goodies" against the "baddies". It's a long, long time since the average employee could have seen themselves in terms of a "ruling class".

The real problem is, when all you (think you) see every day are "baddies", it's too easy to forget that the vast, vast majority of the world are not "baddies", and that what might, possibly, in the right light be suspicious behaviour for a "baddy" isn't even slightly suspicious most of the time. From there flows a slightly paranoid mindset of "we must stop ALL the evil in the world at any cost".

This is compounded by the fact that they appear to have rather less accountability than the typical civil servant. Some elements (but by no means all) do like it that way and actively campaign to limit any increase in oversight because (as they see it) "making our job harder makes the world less safe".

You often see the same thing in law enforcement and it's very hard to protect against that culture over the long term. We don't have enough people in politics or government who are willing to say "this will make your job harder but it's not worth doing unless you do it ethically".

I'm surprised this is the first of this sentiment I'm seeing in the thread; I totally agree. I feel the same way about some other services; the police, for instance, which enforce unjust laws.

Language and history of the field matter quite a bit.

Salaries are most certainly not crap everywhere, btw. I bet Russian, Iranian, or Turkish cyber-forces are well-paid for their regions, and in Israel there are matters of practical survival that somewhat trump the allure of money.

Sounds more like it.

I’m not really in tech, and took about a 20% pay decrease (on-paper) for public sector pay.

But they pay 12% on top of my salary to a real pension plan, I get 1-2 extra holidays that most others don’t get. I get paid to be on-call. Better disability insurance. Education fund. Benefits package includes RMT massage therapy without a prescription. Better parental leave coverage.

When you add it up, the “lower-pay” in public sector ignores total compensation, but probably is true in tech.

I’ll take a good paycheque over a games room and free snacks.

“One study says the close relationship between the government and banking insiders during the financial crisis affected trades.”

Obviously it was Democrats who secretly deployed Novichok as part of a false flag operation.

You forgot there are people outside US? Outside its media bubble

The principle of the European Union is based on democracy, and you can vote for an European party that would better defend your view at the European level. In my opinion, a country leaving the EU is equivalent of saying that democracy doesn't work and this message is dangerous. For information, less than 50% of Europeans voted at the last European elections in 2014 [1], it only depends on people to build a democratic Europe.

If you disagree with your own country's laws or current government, you are not allowed to say "alright, my house is not from this country anymore, and I wont pay any taxes". In practice, you will still use all the infrastructure everybody else contributed with their taxes, plus the healthcare, and you will still want to trade with other people.

Country's problems won't magically disappear after leaving the European community, the European Union is made to find collaborative solutions between countries, taking into account each countries' interests and capacities.

Now, you can legitimately disagree with recent EU laws about online ads for example, but as another European myself, I welcome this regulation. So we are 2 Europeans with different opinions, and the best way to solve this is democracy, if we still want to trade together in 25ish different countries.

I agree with you about politician salaries and bureaucracy, but I only see it improving in the future, when information will be better communicated and people more interested in Europeans scale issues.

Anyway, we achieve balance by participating and talking, not by closing the doors in front of difficulties.

[1] turnouts for EU 2014 election, by countries : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2014-results/en/turno...

Edit : If you disagree with your current country government, maybe you will have more success at the European level, which in turn will balance your country government. Also, European politician salaries are transparent and follow a strict procedure : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/13/salaries-and-pe... so maybe still expensive, but it could be possibly less corrupt than some of the individual countries themselves.

"Schools of thought" seems generous. Most of the opinion on the subject (aside from reasonable criticism of cack-handed implementation) is shallow and visceral.

That said, most of the evidence that at least has the dressing of empiricism favours Remain. There are two things that reliably help an economy, immigration and lower barriers to trade; Brexit damages them both, in favour of up-sides based largely on ideas relating to jam, so economists have fairly uniformly come down against it.

I’d prefer we don’t attempt to deflect valid criticism with snarky or otherwise variations “other people do it too”...

I didn't express any sentiment that it was ok for the UK to do it or in anyway justify it. I just pointed out the naivety of thinking the other EU states don't do it.

> You either get called "complacent" or "naive."

Your original comment is certainly not naive, with the current state of affairs being undeniably ripe for spying operations.

> This stuff is going to happen regardless of how upset people get

Statists will only go as far as their people allow them to.

> The actual topic at hand was nation-states spying on one another, apples and oranges.

Believing there is any effective distinction, on the other hand, is not merely complacent but incredibly naive indeed.

Do you see a point at which spying stops being ok, or any lines that shouldn’t be crossed? The agencies involved in spying don’t have a good track record and often have fairly limited oversight.

I'm confused by what you mean when saying 'Tradition'? Flanders would be the correct naming for the northern part of Belgium (Vlaanderen).

Anyway, as far as the original comment, something much worse would need to happen for it to trigger a war between these two countries. Western Europe has seen enough way the past centuries indeed ;)

True. But in this event, the potential would very likely impact all of Belgium, so there is no reason to differentiate flanders from the rest of the country. On top of that, both part of the country has suffered similarly throughout history of wars and bombs, so again there is no need for differentiation here.

There are very good reasons to differentiate the north and south part of the country on a lot of subjects since they are so different. This is not one of those reasons. Defense is a federal issue and there is no reasons to make it regional.