[ttul]

The right to attorney-client confidentiality does not apply in the context of national security intelligence gathering. The United States was within its rights to gather intelligence about a foreign person in a foreign country.

Such intelligence would be absolutely inadmissible in court. But intelligence agencies aren't interested in prosecuting people. They are tasked with national security, not prosecution.

[Xelbair]

Spying, by it very definition, is an illegal act.

It might've been legal(i doubt it) to spy on foreign person on foreign soil inside (another) foreign embassy according to US law... but that doesn't matter at all when it comes to both Ecuadorean law and UK law.

USA is not a world police, nor is ultimate force of good that all good counters bow to.

[furyg3]

This can't be overstressed. Spies are, by the nature of their work, criminals. Even if their presence and activities are known by friendly countries (e.g. CIA operating in UK), they are usually operating outside the host countries legal system.

This is why rule #1 of spying is: don't get caught.

[farisjarrah]

This doesn't make sense to me, please educate me as to what I am missing. Why is the United States within its rights to gather intelligence within the Ecuadorian Embassy within England? It seems like embassies of foreign countries, not located within the US's borders means that the US government has no legal rights to any of that. To me it looks like the US violated the rights of not just Ecuador's sovereignty, but also Great Brittan's.

[roywiggins]

Yes, it's a violation of sovereignty. It's probably illegal under those countries' laws. But it's legal for the US government to do abroad, and breaking other countries' laws and sovereignty to obtain intelligence is more or less the entire job of our intelligence agencies. This is the job of every foreign intelligence agency. Otherwise they'd just be investigative journalists.

Friendly countries spying on each other is super common. The US bugged Angela Merkle's cell phone! We do this. Everyone knows we do. They live with it, because they spy on us, too.

For good and ill, this sort of thing has been considered playing by the rules for decades. You can compare the response to the Russia assassination campaigns on British soil, which (when too public to ignore) created a big public response because that sort of thing was considered out of bounds previously. And the response to American kidnap-and-torture plots in Europe.

That's not to say we don't catch, try, imprison, and deport spies in the US and other countries do the same against us. But this is all part of a decades-long iterated prisoner's dilemma about what the "rules" are in international espionage.

[furyg3]

That spying is the status quo is not really the concern of a UK court. In this case, the court does not care about whether or not agents in the UK were breaking US law, or even if there is some treaty between friendly nations to give them immunity. Well they may care, but this is a separate matter.

The court is faced with an extradition request, which will hinge on questions such as: are the charges well laid out and supported? will the defendant get a fair trial? and does this fit within our extradition treaty?

That second point - getting a fair trial - is heavily undermined if there is evidence the US government has privileged information that came from spying.

[tomjakubowski]

The overwhelming German public response to Merkel's bugging was one of outrage. Accepting your argument, doesn't that suggest it was actually out of bounds and not normal?

[wil421]

A quick google search turns up this article[1].

> The German intelligence agency used the selectors to surveil telephone and fax numbers as well as email accounts belonging to American companies like Lockheed Martin, the space agency NASA, the organization Human Rights Watch, universities in several U.S. states and military facilities like the U.S. Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the secret service agency belonging to the American armed forces. Connection data from far over 100 foreign embassies in Washington, from institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Washington office of the Arab League were also accessed by the BND's spies.

[1] https://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intelligen...

[tptacek]

That outrage is pretty rich, since Germany spies flagrantly on other nations, including their embassies, as well.

[Tomte]

Most Germans wouldn't really believe that they do, not because our services wouldn't do it on principle, but because unlike in America, we usually think of our intelligence services as bumbling idiots that fail at spying.

In reality they seem to be somewhat competent at some things, and reports that they do indeed successfully surveil foreign embassies seem to be true.

[kube-system]

The only part that wasn’t normal was it becoming a publicized story. What do you think intelligence agencies normally do, ask politely for confidential information?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

You’re right: for the German public foreign intelligence gather is out or bounds and not normal.

Context matters.

[threeseed]

Curious what you think intelligence agencies actually do.

Do you think the US/Israel respected Iranian law when they infiltrated nuclear facilities ? How about all of the Russian poisoning in the UK ? And I don't believe all of the various drones are qualified to operate in their respective airspaces.

[Rebelgecko]

Spying on foreign people in foreign countries is pretty much every intelligence agency's raison d'etre

[raxxorrax]

Yes, and part of the game is if you get caught you get into serious trouble. Ignoring it is a complete wrong approach.

Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be angry at Russia? They just did their job, did they?

[blaser-waffle]

> Yes, and part of the game is if you get caught you get into serious trouble.

Only if there are consequences. If you get caught killing another country's spies or otherwise behaving badly, they may retaliate and kill yours. They may invoke treaties or launch ICJ cases. If they have leverage, they may use it.

Ecuador has no leverage.

> Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be angry at Russia?

They were Russian agents killing Russians defectors. That's an egregious violation, but they were ultimately taking care of their own. Wanna be a dissident, fine -- play dangerous games, win dangerous prizes. These killing also got a lot of attention because 1) they involved polonium / radiation poisoning, which is a particularly ruthless way of killing someone, and 2) they were in the western media.

All of the people the CIA or MI6 had shot in response didn't get any airtime...

> They just did their job, did they?

Moral arguments notwithstanding, this is just another day in the spy game. I would take years of cloak and dagger casualties over another Iraq, or Vietnam, or a World War. Geopolitics gonna geopoltic.

[raxxorrax]

Then we must do something wrong, since we seem to get both.

I don't know how many people the CIA and MI6 kills, but I am very certain that it is the end of a career of a spy if caught with extrajudicial killings. Even in Russia. Otherwise you quickly have imitators.

But why waste our time with a story then?

[catalogia]

Basically, people have rights only insofar as governments consider that a convenient arrangement.

[threeseed]

Your rights are within the context of a society you live in.

People in different countries have different rights. And governments can usurp those rights as needed e.g. jail you, kill you.

[77pt77]

Or in other words, rights only exist when both parties have a similar level of power.

[SamReidHughes]

Maybe U.K.'s citizens have a right to be free from trespass, but extending that right to governments is a bit of an extrapolation.

[Bayart]

>The United States was within its rights to gather intelligence about a foreign person in a foreign country.

According to whom ? US law makers ? I'm quite certain no sovereign nation aknowledges the "right" of anyone else to gather intelligence as they please on their premises.

[18monthsin]

The problem is parallel construction, the prosecution will use the evidence to build a case then claim they found the information elsewhere.

[pnongrata]

What? A country has a "right" to spy on a foreigner in a foreign country??

So I guess Russia has every right to spy on americans, right?

[raxxorrax]

Within its rights? This is just completely false. Incredible reasoning...