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WaPo: CIA secretly owned Swiss company that sold IT software to >120 countries, allowing it to spy on all communications
- Thread starter chadskin
- Start date
From the 60s until 2017/2018 (germans left the programm in 1990 so it was US only since then).
100%. Theres no morality in state craft, might as well admire efficient use of power and laugh at the stupidity of others.
So listening to civilians being thrown out of airplanes over the atlantic is statecraft now?
Have this comment pack to end any thread about counter intelligence from now on.
This comment pack is the best justification for having the best possible counter-intelligence, so no. But least you guys are approaching the point.
You forgot the guy admiring efficient uses of power a.k.a people getting thrown out of airplanes.
Someone (you) has no idea about the global order the U.S.A has envisioned, it seems.
All the coups backed by the U S in L.A. all the interventions in the middle east, and Africa.
Sure, the US has not killed its own people (sic), but they sure have helped to kill MILLIONS of foreigners.
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User banned (1 week): Dismissing concerns surrounding imperialism.
As much as nations holding the right of capital punishment over its citizens and the righteousness in killing civilians during war.
What are you guys talking about?
What exactly did you want the US or West Germany to do? Literally every country with an intelligence agency hears horrible things all the time, but for the most part do not have the actual ability to act on even half of what they hear. Things are murkier now with drones, but naturally even those have their own host of issues.
Reading the WaPo article they don't even bring it up?
The german article has much more information
While US has a metric shitton of problems let not compare it to China in those regards.
If I were trying to defend the US government, the global order they've tried to enforce over the last century is the last thing I would bring up.
For all the evidence we have the US has been far more infringing on peoples rights in the last century but i guess it's "smart" or "badass" when it is foreigners affected
generally i try to tailor my posts to the level of the ones I am responding to
also because no one here clapping about this actually seems to have read the article (and I am simply being charitable in this assumption because this is already being discussed):
among the many other things that the program enabled that has already been brought up and you might have seen if you actually read the thread (again, very charitably assuming no):
but yeah the usa and china are so different. one variety of regime changes, coups, assassinations, and ethnic cleansing is good and the other is you know. bad.
Yeah, I absolutely and deeply appreciate and share people's fervor when it comes to being aware and critical of injustice even at home and in allied countries, but to suggest that the US is comparable to China in this regard is so ridiculous I don't even know where to begin.
Oh yes that I agree on, but compared to human rights and what is happening today China is by far much worse then the US is. So you have to take that into context when the different countries do intelligence gathering, while both are bad and horrible, one is using it to fill death camps for muslims and throw dissisents into jail.
Indeed. I mean they did put this intelligence to good use, such as aiding the British in the Falklands War.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Come closer.
*in hushed whispers*
Governments spy on other governments. The role of the Central Intelligence Agency is to spy on foreign governments.
*backs away, slowly*
Yes, it is a swell morning.
Nobody has said anything of the sort, but by all means, have fun arguing with a straw man.
Most Governments though dont have these kinds of resources. To infringe on other nations privacy etc without FEAR of REPRISALS. Well, that sounds like it takes a special kind of asshole to run the US Government. I'm sure this worked out quite well with Israel selling secrets to foreign Governments like South Africa during apartheid (Rooivulk and AH60 projects) or other covert intelligence dealings involving business and investment etc. Theres a side to this we arent seeing.
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Give me one piece of evidence of a country stealing billions of international communications per day that is not the US
Why do i have to choose between hitler and stalin?
Why do I have to choose? Can people not think both governments do terrible things?
User Banned (3 months): Xenophobia
The only reason people say USA ok China bad is because we have much more personal freedom and more advancements/regulations in medicine, hygiene, and overall health.
it's not about what the us 'is', this conversation is explicitly about what the cia and the us government either were complicit in or directly enabled. for all of the ccp's many faults and human rights abuses it's probably a lot less responsible for south/central american lives than the cia and the usa is
i thought that was being suggested when the only defense for the substantially more muted response to a decades long spy operation involved with killing or imprisoning at least tens of thousands of people is that of course it's different if china were doing it instead. it's just different.
About to go ask my Iraq War refugee friend if he thinks the US or China is a greater evil.
Still, nothing beats the British getting America involved in World War I by basically wiretapping their communications:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
It's ok, I have bad takes too. Everyone does. But this is not 'badass', it's frightening.
Yours is the most sensible of the bunch, it's just that these stories of widespread spy operations seem so common place nowadays that i don't even know what to do or how to react.
The threads tend to boil down to who's the worst offender.
Spying on other governments at the level the top players do so is not the sole reason to not trust a government.
Not really frightening. This shit has been normalized. We may not know the exact extent of US spying but what the CIA, etc does has been completely normalized by all forms of media. Most Americans don't really care.
The nations the US has invaded or destabilized don't enjoy those things. Do they not count to you?
That's the whole point of my statement. Both are evil but yes unfortunately you have to choose in this reality as both are vying for your displacement. And both are effecting you in some type of way in this world.
What are you asking me? I don't see the connection you're trying to make.
this isn't even actually about china in the first place. like the point is simply the cognitive dissonance those in the western sphere maintain around extremely sinister things that allowed or directly caused lives to be destroyed simply because they can rationalize it as happening in 'their' interest (as opposed to something else's)
there is material, irreversible damage that stuff like this has done to human lives and the trajectory of history in general and I highly recommend some self reflection on why it's ok to give out a free pass for our side when we would rightfully be horrified if it was anyone else's
there is material, irreversible damage that stuff like this has done to human lives and the trajectory of history in general and I highly recommend some self reflection on why it's ok to give out a free pass for our side when we would rightfully be horrified if it was anyone else's
I'm not seeing how you come to that conclusion. I can think both governments are doing bad things and should stop. Who I "side" with does not affect their ability to commit atrocities.