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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many years with of jail time Aaron Schwartz's prosecutors would be talking about if this'd been done by a mouthy kid instead of the NSA?

I wonder which non-US country, where the NSA's actions aren't made "legal" by secret FISA courts or acts of (US) Congress, will be the first to start throwing that kind of legal threat at NSA staff responsible for this?</wishful-thinking>

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When you hold the Poisoned Chalice of Power you get to decide who is legally justified and who isn't. "Morals" doesn't even factor into things....unfortunately.

Only in a limited way though, the NSA can decide (or at least exert considerable influence over) what's legal in the US - but criminal actions in, say, The Netherlands or any other (non five eyes) country, cannot be "justified" or "excused" legally by another except those countries.

I guess a _lot_ of what goes in in state sponsored espionage happens outside the civilian legal system - at least in "major" countries - but surely there's scope for a criminal trial and civil damages case against NSA/GHCQ operatives when their espionage involves widespread network exploitation and privacy violation of corporate networks and staff. Crimes which would _clearly_ be aggressively prosecuted if committed by Anonymous Skript Kiddies or criminal credit card fraud gangs. Why shouldn't NSA agents be held just as accountable in this case by non US legal systems? Sure, root the embassy network and expect to be held diplomatically responsible if you get caught. Private companies and citizens though? Go to jail just like anybody else.

Plenty of spies on all sides have been killed and jailed over the years. If a country can prove a specific person committed a crime. But that's a lot harder to do with tech crimes.

But how do you identify an anonymous NSA hacker?

You send them all to Guantanamo Bay and beat a confession out of them?

But if you've been following the Firstlook disclosures, and the response to it from different governments, you'll notice that they don't really want to hold anyone accountable - likely, they are all on it some way or another.

Ireland rushed to retroactively OK british spying. Germany ignored it (with some theatrical "I'm insulted" remarks from Merkel, but no real action).

The assumption that any government out there actually wants to enforce its laws with respect to mass spying against its people is not supported by facts.

Germany's investigation found that it likely didn't happen and that the documents saying it did were possibly forgeries.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0JP1QG20141211?irpc...

> "the document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database.

> "There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel's phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped."

Did you RTFA?

The one I linked? Yes. Did you? What did I misrepresent, exactly?

What do you think spying is? By definition it is illegal. Other countries won't do anything but cry a bit because their hands aren't much cleaner.

...they will probably cry a bit and up their game. by a lot. Until someone stops just crying and boom.

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