The Spying Game

Spying on Eros

NEW YORK So now we Americans know. We know that our government is spying not just on foreigners it is also spying on us.

They returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days.

They returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days.

He had said, in January, that he would not sign a bill that granted telecom immunity for possibly warrantless spying on American persons.

It was reported that these five persons were arrested in September 1998 in Florida on charges of spying for the Government of Cuba.

Not long after it came out, Augusten was waylaid in an airport and he was hiding out in the bookstore spying on who was buying his books.

They claimed that some recruiters, including Ugandan nationals, had been arrested for their recruitment activities or for spying at the behest of ex FAPC elements based in Uganda.

At a meeting with the governor of Sinaloa the day after Valdez was killed, Ramirez accused authorities of spying on journalists and having them killed for telling the truth.

Reacting to Snowden s allegations, US figures, like former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, made no reference at all to America s obligations under international law, to its interest in protecting diplomacy, or even to the unfairness and bad faith involved in spying on partners with whom one is supposedly negotiating in a transparent way. Nor did Hayden suggest any national security concern that might justify spying on the EU (there is none).

(a) Mr. Muhannad Qutaysh and Mr. Haytham Qutaysh were investigated and found to have been engaged in spying activities, to have established contacts with foreign agencies and to have disseminated false information about Syria.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the controversy over government spying on its citizens seems to have died down, mostly because people are now convinced that their government will only look at the really bad guys.

Nor did Hayden suggest any national security concern that might justify spying on the EU (there is none). Instead, he sought to dismiss the entire issue by hinting vaguely about intelligence gathering by some EU member states.

The US contends that China steals intellectual property for competitive reasons, inflicting grave damage on companies and workers. China, for its part, claims that the US is guilty of equally egregious violations widespread cyber spying on international leaders, trade negotiators, and foreign firms.

Personally, I am reluctantly willing to accept the US government spying on people, especially foreigners, as long as it is constrained by rules that are public and enforced. The argument that the other guys do it is lame, but it is also true.

And that means bumbling Johnny English himself, now employed as a schoolmaster in some posh establishment, but giving off the record lessons in how to be an undercover operative some nice gags here, as English offers a School of Rock type academy of spying.

So it was only just the other week that I heard London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner talking about why the police need access to all of our communications, spying on us without any judicial oversight, and he said it was a matter of life and death.

PRINCETON Now that the economic crisis looks less threatening (at least for the moment), and forecasters are spying green shoots of recovery, an ever more encompassing blame game is unfolding. The financial crisis provides an apparently endless opportunity for unmasking deceit, malfeasance, and corruption.

The US certainly has an interest in gaining deeper analytical insight into its European allies decision making than can be gained by simply calling, say, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Accepting that spying is realistically part of the US toolkit, we Europeans expect it to be conducted responsibly.

MELBOURNE Thanks to Edward Snowden, I now know that the US National Security Agency is spying on me. It uses Google, Facebook, Verizon, and other Internet and communications companies to collect vast amounts of digital information, no doubt including data about my emails, cellphone calls, and credit card usage.

But fighting terrorists requires an entirely different kind of spying from uncovering traditional spies, or neutralizing unpopular oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky. To meet today's threats, troops must be able to take individual responsibility and initiative, and need to be trained to react resourcefully and at a moment's notice.

Some of America s allies, now professing outrage at disclosures of US spying, have been known to do the same thing to the US. According to the US, when it inspects a non American s e mail, it is searching for terrorist connections, and has often shared the findings with its allies.

Although Murdoch remains chairman of both, everyone expects him to focus more on the news business. That portfolio includes both customer pleasing tabloids with a troubled history of pandering, spying, and bribing, and the venerable journalism of the Wall Street Journal s news pages a contradiction that splitting the parent has not resolved.

At the same time, both governments constantly hack into each other s computers to steal traditional political and military secrets. Spying is not a violation of international law (though it often violates various domestic laws), but the US argues that theft of intellectual property violates both the spirit and letter of international trade agreements.

Especially in the case of Chinese, fears of divided national loyalties and fifth columns have been strong. One need only recall the recent case of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who was unjustly accused of spying, to be reminded of how yin and yang are America s feelings about minority members in sensitive positions.

MADRID The recriminations over US spying activities, triggered by the revelations of the former American intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, have now reached fever pitch. Questions abound about what President Barack Obama knew and when, about the legitimacy of eavesdropping on friendly foreign leaders conversations, about the future of transatlantic relations, and even about the meaning of the term ally.

The current spying scandal is the product of a rudderless US foreign policy focused on narrowly drawn tactical objectives that exist outside the conceptual funnel of a comprehensive vision. The result in this case has been damage to the transatlantic relationship, with some in Europe even calling for a halt to the talks on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The Obama administration appears to have failed to ask itself some basic questions. How could it justify spying on a leader who is among America s closest allies in NATO and in the Afghanistan mission a leader whom he invited to the Rose Garden to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that America can give to a foreigner?

In both Germany and South Korea, economic strength seems to have produced an illusion of policy independence that is opening a chasm between the two countries and their allies a chasm that revelations of US spying, on Merkel in particular, have deepened. Germany and South Korea, however, will gain little, and risk much, if they downgrade their alliance ties in favor of commercially motivated, if unofficial, neutrality.

One cause for this shift toward authoritarianism is that many countries no longer view the United States as a beacon of democracy and a model of stability and prosperity to be emulated. Putin s claim that democratization is actually an American plot to gain unilateral advantages resonates with many societies following the disastrous invasion of Iraq and revelations about the National Security Agency s spying on citizens and leaders worldwide.