Definition of espionage

[draco664]

es·pi·o·nage
[es-pee-uh-nahzh, -nij, es-pee-uh-nahzh]
noun
1. the act or practice of spying.
2. the use of spies by a government to discover the military and political secrets of other nations.
3. the use of spies by a corporation or the like to acquire the plans, technical knowledge, etc., of a competitor: industrial espionage.

and of course...

4. whistleblowing on illegal government spying.

[Nyoibo]

I think the ridiculous part is the US demanding that counties they were shown to be spying on do what they say

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

You do get into the wacky area where frankly everyone is doing this but we get iffy about the government doing it.

Your credit cards leave a trail that can and is sold to other companies for marketing purposes.
Your twitter account is aggregated and sold to marketeers as well.
We just heard the story about cameras on cable boxes.
China nationalists (read as Snowden/Anonymous types with a nationalist bent) regularly raid American industries for trade secrets
I can't even begin to name the number of virus and money scams out of Russia that aren't necessarily Russian.

US Government mines phone numbers for a detectable pattern? Fuck them. Scan for key phrases? You can't do that!

I guess what I find ridiculous is how atypical people think this is for any government with means. This also isn't whistleblowing since no crime was being committed. This isn't anything that wasn't authorized by the Patriot Act which I thought was a ridiculous overreach at the time, but whatever. Don't like it, remove any person that votes for it in the government you can in the next election. But the outrage is a bit much. And realize that it is a security vs. privacy issue. There will be things they miss in the future because of that choice.

As for Snowden... I've read most of his stuff. There's nothing really heroic about him. Seriously, if you are an absolutist you don't work in clandestine services. The entire game is maximizing good amongst bad possible choices. He had a political outlook and took a job that violated it. He stayed consistent, did something and then went on an American foreign antagonist tour. Wow. That's amazing. Where's the TV movie?

[Nyoibo]

I guess what I find ridiculous is how atypical people think this is for any government with means. This also isn't whistleblowing since no crime was being committed. This isn't anything that wasn't authorized by the Patriot Act which I thought was a ridiculous overreach at the time, but whatever. Don't like it, remove any person that votes for it in the government you can in the next election. But the outrage is a bit much. And realize that it is a security vs. privacy issue. There will be things they miss in the future because of that choice.

I'm more focused on the international actions of the US government, whos patriot act meens sweet diddly-fuck all outside of the US.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Well fuck, if this is an international complaint forget about it. Most countries have valid issues with the others because what they do is constant. How the US operates really hasn't changed nor have the Russians, the Chinese, the British, the Israelis, the Germans, the Iranians...

Diplomacy and clandestine operations have existed in this realm of BS since before the US was founded. Raging against human nature isn't very productive. If clever about it, you realize that with everyone doing it, power remains rather stable. It's just an unnecessary expenditure. Still, prisoner's dilemma: unless you can get everyone to play nice the result of playing nice is disadvantage.

[Greenday]

You know, I keep hearing about people complaining about the government illegally spying on its people but I'm having a hard time finding the illegal part about it. A federal court already hearddd this case years ago and said it's legal. Where was the outrage then? The people knew about this years ago but made no effort to stop it.

Second, it's annoying to me that people are blaming Obama for starting this spy program. This EXACT SAME story came out in 2005. Obama wasn't in office yet.

[Gravekeeper]

Facebook is a bigger spy on your life than the NSA. Thats why the NSA just hired Facebook's former security chief. ;p

Also, God I hate political "cartoons". Especially American "conservative" ones. They have all the subtlety of a brick to the head. >.>

[crashhelmet]

Facebook is a bigger spy on your life than the NSA. Thats why the NSA just hired Facebook's former security chief. ;p

Also, God I hate political "cartoons". Especially American "conservative" ones. They have all the subtlety of a brick to the head. >.>

Speaking of FaceBook...

Norton Mobile Insight Discovers Facebook Privacy Leak

[Andara Bledin]

Speaking of FaceBook...

Norton Mobile Insight Discovers Facebook Privacy Leak

I've pointedly not used Facebook on my phone. Because I really don't trust them to be secure.

[MadMike]

This also isn't whistleblowing since no crime was being committed.

Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. Slavery was legal at one time.

[mikoyan29]

At first I was a little upset about this but then I went back into my vaults and remembered that the Patriot Act was gleefully passed in the aftermath of 9/11. Since then a few other revelations have come out in regards to the monitoring apparatus and most of those have been met with a whimper. That is until 2009 came around. What's really funny is that the people who are screaming the most about this will be the first people asking what could have been done to prevent the next 9/11.

[MadMike]

The "last" 9/11 could have been prevented if our wonderful elected officials hadn't ignored the intel they already had. So basically, they dropped the ball, so now they want to take away more of our rights.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Thing is, officials ignore things on a daily basis. They sit there with a plethora of leads to sift through, work on the ones they think will pop and if nothing happens like it does 99% of the time, they look like geniuses.

You get to events like 9/11 and yes, you have people missing things. But in the end, that was at the time one foreign terrorist act on American soil in quite a few years. We had had domestic guys like Tim McVeigh and the Olympic Park bomber, but for the most part not a whole hell of a lot.

In the end, you were still more likely to bite it about 40 different ways than terrorism before and after the Patriot act. Its just these events crystalize in people's minds to such a degree that they can't wait to sign up to defend themselves.

As of yet I still haven't seen the movement to authorize the government to portion out fast food in response to heart disease.

[draco664]

The "last" 9/11 could have been prevented if our wonderful elected officials hadn't ignored the intel they already had. So basically, they dropped the ball, so now they want to take away more of our rights.

And even then it's not making you any safer. The Boston bombers used facebook and email to communicate and plan, and look how well that turned out...

[wolfie]

The "last" 9/11 could have been prevented if our wonderful elected officials hadn't ignored the intel they already had. So basically, they dropped the ball, so now they want to take away more of our rights.

At least the U.S. government is consistent - they ignored the intel they had which indicated a high probability of an attack on 12/7 as well.