Reposted because the other thread was beyond stupid on an interesting topic that deserves some proper discourse:

Not cool, guess they trying to stay ahead of the game.

Not a fan of any of the business we have apparently found ourselves in. Obama came off like "Don't act like you guys don't do it too." when questioned on it. I don't really care if they do it or not. It's unbelievable that we apparently have to have the "If your friend jumped off a cliff..." talk with our senior politicians.

that's what happens when people start trusting Businesses rather than ask a country that is considered a very close ally..

I have been trying to get out of here since the Revolution.....

Everyone spies on eachother to some extent. Those in positions like USA/China and such as the biggest powers will do it much more than the rest.

spying doesn't deserve any proper political discourse. everybody does it. everybody lies about doing. guess it's kinda like sex.

how many Canadians steal US TV satelite broadcasts? I spy an I-Spy.

crap. i don't do it. my eye might linger when i see an attractive woman, but i don't actually spend much effort on keeping track of other people.

The EU countries will act outraged to appease their domestic audiences. In practice they will still toe to the US's line like they did when they forced the Bolivian President's plane down.

France will try to use it as an opportunity to sabotage the EU-US trade deal, because they are protectionist. Germany will try and separate the two, because they are pro free-trade.

It all depends how you see things. 'In theory' all US citizens have complete right to privacy from their government, but non-US citizens don't have the same right. If you believe that a governments job is to protect its own, then allies, and everyone else in that order; this isn't very controversial. The European mentally though is more towards a government trying to aid all of humanity rather than just their own, and will just chalk this up as another crime the US government has committed.

i don't agree that the European mentality has anything to do with protecting rights. they just want to make sure that everybody understands the correct pecking order.

People also like dogs as pets. Let the shock wash over you!

I really do wonder if they would have shot the plane down if they had refused... how would that have looked in the public eye, with the killing of another Head of State?

I very much doubt they would shoot the plane down. Moral considerations aside, doing this would have serious negative implications for their trade aspirations in North/South America.

It sounds crass, but I really don't care about spying on foreign citizens or governments--even so-called "allies." Aside from probably the UK and Canada, maybe Australia, could the rest really be described as allies who would help us no matter what? I don't think so. Even then, we all know Canadian beer has gone to the wayside and the Brits are obsessed over the birth of a royal baby, so....yah.

Shooting the plane down would have been an overt act of war that would have led to some sort of military retaliation.

Are you guys freaking living in a cave? Of course we are spying on our allies and I hope to god our allies have sense enough to be spying on us.

'Nations have interests, not friends.'

And Flamey, for the record, no where in the US constitution is privacy a protected right. The very notion of privacy is undefinable, especially in this day and age.

It is natural for a nation to spy other nations. One of the problems that Brazil is having with it is that we (and it seems India as well) are being spied more than our size would point as reasonable.

That said, things are mostly our own fault, since we don't invest money to assure the security of our communications (we don't own any sattelite or transmission lines, all our telecoms are multinationals, etc). Not even the software we use is national. At most we encripty some of our sensitive fluff...

Our intelligency agency only spies the opposition and allied political parties, nvm quase-terrorist internal moviments or foreign powers.

But it could be worse. We could be total lapdogs of the USA as portugal, spain, france and italy showed themselves to be just last week. We are just half-lapdogs here kekeke....

Is HOPE and CHANGE working for you YET?

http://en.wikipedia.org/..._to_privacy#United_States

It starts out "The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the Constitution implicitly grants a right to privacy against governmental intrusion." and continues on from there with multiple sources and case rulings cited.

IIRC, the Supreme Court is the interpreter of the U.S. Constitution, above archaic. ;)

BOOM Headshot!

This was a thing on West Wing. The supreme court justice didn't get the nomination because he didn't think privacy was a protected right. Well, POW, right in the kisser -- it's implicitly granted by the Constitution.