[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.