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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Come on everyone spies. There’s no point in establishing an embassy if you’re not also getting an understanding of both stated and unstated intentions.

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> Come on everyone spies.

That's what they want everyone to think so that they can use it to excuse their antisocial behaviour.

Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Peru, Mongolia... there's a very long list of countries that don't.

They would if they could. Those are mostly tiny countries with almost no resources to spy.

I don’t know about all of them, but a quick Google search shows that both Mongolia and Puru have intelligence agencies, which means very likely they have some sort of collection capability for HUMINT and/or SIGINT.

The ones that don’t have intelligence capabilities are probably the exception rather than the rule, and I doubt they’re doing out of good will vs just not having the resources for it.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or genuinely giving a list of minuscule island chains, culminating in the country that's literally the universal metonym for 'middle of nowhere'.

That's not the issue. The issue is the US getting mad at counter-espionage by Uganda while they are themselves engaging in espionage. It's very hypocritical.

It is the issue. Everybody spies. Everybody spies and is hypocritical about it.

But USA is the most hypocritical about it. It systematically spies on its allies, with the exception of Israel and these 2 countries take active measures for some cybertools not to spy on each other. (or Israel tries to make it seem that way).

I guarantee you that the US spies on Israel and vise versa. I'd honestly be surprised if there was a single country both didn't spy on. But I'd say the same about Germany, Australia, France, Spain, UK, Russia, China, and many more.

Hell, DLI teaches Hebrew (once euphemized as "special Arabic" in some settings) [0]. That's not just for exchange/liaison officers... Not to dig up that bucket of worms, but there were Hebrew linguists aboard the USS Liberty.

[0] https://www.dliflc.edu/about/languages-at-dliflc/

That is simply false. Few countries hypocritical about counter-intelligence. You absolutely have to draw the difference between intelligence work and counter-intelligence work. Saying that going after someone for catching your spies is normal is totally insane, no one except the US does it.

If Uganda was spying on the US in the US, then you would have a point. That's not what happened.

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