[chowell]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the explicit purpose of intelligence agencies to gather intelligence about foreign countries (allied or otherwise) to further the national interest? I don't really see how this is a creep of power (as opposed to, say, counter-terror activities, where an agency that previously only surveilled foreign powers may now monitor its own citizens).

[pyrale]

French intelligence services are using this to ask more money and less restraint right now, that's how funding and manpower comparisons made it in the article. US intel services probably did the same a couple of years back when Obama moaned about chinese spying.

Overall, a significant share of these powers have been and will be used in ways and for goals that are detrimental to the well-being of democratic political systems.

[peterkelly]

It's a bit like saying that the explicit purpose of hitmen is to murder people for money.

Doesn't make it right.

[watwatwatwat]

I'm not defending any state spying, but geopolitics is different from individual interactions. Not anticipating the moves of the other nations means risking millions of lives of people from you country. Wars, nuclear wars, economic depression, etc. It's sad but we haven't yet solved many problems to fully become a democratic Earth (e.g. distribution of knowledge, election of politics. which basically are the same problems we see in distributed computing systems).

[trendia]

There is no such thing "national interest." There is only the interest of individuals. Sometimes they align with the majority of people, sometimes they do not.