How are the motivations and risks different? The motivation seems like "country wants more information to use against people" and the risk is that they do it. At least in recent history (~50 yrs) the US has done way more damage globally through its intelligence agencies than probably any other country
But that was in military context, with higher risk tolerance to loss of human life. (for getting intel, way more dangerous methods are applied all the time)
The purpose of the National Security Agency is to gather intelligence to protect National Security. Terrorism is but a small piece of it, though it's the one easiest to sell to the public. But even serious terrorism doesn't accomplish much without state support (you might consider the Taliban a "state" for this purpose) and it's well within the purview of intelligence to spy on other states.
But ultimately, the real reason of intelligence? Look at it this way: the US is sitting at a poker table with Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, and so on. Some of the other players might be our friends--Britain and the US have a deal that we'll share each other's winnings and cover each other's losses. But nonetheless, everyone at the table is playing to win. And everyone at the table is trying to sneak a peek at everyone else's cards. This is why the distinction between spying on Americans and spying on foreigners is such a big deal--if you spy on a Japanese industrialist, you get to see some of Japan's cards, and that helps in the game. But there's no reason to spy on your own country because you already can see your own cards. If you're spying on your own people, maybe your intentions are not what you purport them to be.
It would lose wars, basically. Now, this matters less than it used to in this age of the nuclear bomb, but knowing what other nations are doing and planning is still useful in trade and technology. Knowing more about the market than others means you get better deals and China isn't the only nation doing industrial espionage.
Terrorism? It's a pretty pedestrian intelligence agency whose primary aim is to prevent terrorism. The NSA is stuffed full of paranoid people with information addiction. They don't care about terrorism; they just want all the world's secrets. An intelligence guy is just as likely to respect other's privacy as a security researcher is to accept other people reading his files. It's in their nature not to.
Setting aside the fact that US intelligence agencies can and will subvert foreign servers with impunity, foreign intelligence agencies operate with less oversight within their own borders than the US agencies do within its borders AND they tend to cooperate with US agencies (or, worse, Russia's or China's).
Because it's a little more complicated than "entity does bad things = entity is bad". Intelligence agencies have a inherent high risk of abuse by their form and function. This has been true all throughout history and all over the world. But they are also absolutely required. So you accept the risks and try to deal with them as best as you can.
You might be surprised what an intelligence agency can tell you about your country based off of those "larger" indicators. Especially when tied to other data points. Knowing what another state is capable of is by far the most important part of intelligence gathering.
The DIA has models to determine food supplies in China based off of the number of farm tractors and price fluctuations of dog food in the USA. It amazing how accurate they are considering the data points.
Really isn't a question of whether the information is a security risk or not. It is a question of freedom vs security.
Two things afterwards having worked in intelligence:
- your examples are really child’s play, I have seen much more sneaky stuff. For example if you think NSA is interested in you, how would you acquire a new computer?
- The flip side is that there is still reasonable oversight that is adversarial. At least in the country I’m from. And different branches of government is a real difference from China, at least from now although the executive branch clearly has too much power in the US.
Why is relying exclusively on information that's been filtered through a foreign government, possibly with its own agenda, a sensible way to gather intelligence?
Intelligence services may operate outside of the Law in pretty much all countries but the difference is that democracies typically have a Rule of Law as to how the data can be used against you. Not a perfect safeguard but way better than dictatorships where power has a blank check to do anything to you, anytime.
There's a conflict there, but generally the intelligence agencies try to avoid doing illegal things. They do morally wrong things, for sure, but finding a legal argument is difficult, because they try to operate within the law.
Ostensibly, requesting large amounts of data about broadly targeted foreign intelligence targets is to protect American interests, one of which is keeping terrorists from blowing us up (some might claim the most important one).
And, no bullshit, I prompt you this way because I know you to be wickedly smart and I assume good faith. I almost always learn something from discussing things with you, even if they turn out to just be little tidbits here and there.
I've probably learned more from you and rdl than the rest of HN commenters combined.
When we had the march to war in Iraq, suspect intel was being selectively and deceitfully pulled out of context specifically to build a case for war in Iraq. By politicians, not by intel professionals. A bunch of former intel people went on record calling BS on it.
Right now, nobody's making a case for war with Russia. Retaliatory sanctions at best. They mostly just want to harden our election process and systems to prevent it from happening again, or worse.
Yet we see constantly moving goalposts from people who don't want that hardening to happen. What's their motivation?
Is this true? I've thought a lot about this of whether it's better for domestic or foreign intelligence services to have your data. Like, yeah foreigners likely have less regard for me but it's not like the CIA gives a shit about my life. And they're much more able to act on any information they have compared to the CCP.
That being said, it's probably mostly academic because in reality it's likely that my information is accessible by both types haha
And yet strangely, I'm not surprised. There seems to be a race by intelligence agencies to collect as much data as possible in recent years (well, the past decade). And while in the West, the Americans is leading the pack, the others aren't shining away without a fight.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it has become more a sport than a national security measure by these agencies. They have gone cocky, so to speak, thinking that because they are government agencies they are above the law that regular hackers supposedly are not.
Where's the national interest in revealing how the US and its allies' intelligence services target adversaries like China and Russia, international drug cartels and terrorist networks?
The US has unparalleled intelligence gathering abilities, intelligence agencies with privileged access doesn't want to lose intelligence sharing with them. Similar to countries under US military security umbrella, FVEY and other intelligence alliances aren't equal contributors. Which leads to situations in many countries where intelligence interests conflicts with trade interests, and you get situations like UK firing their defense secretary who leaked secret meeting info in order sway decision making.
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