[riversflow]

Huh. I completely agree with this justification for spying, to the point I would be upset if they weren’t spying in this way. To me spy craft is where personal ethics become less important than realpolitik. The most powerful country in the world should have an inside track on whats going on in important markets, by hook or by crook. That’s the governments job.

On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG?

[schoen]

Huh, I have a radically different intuition from you. :-) I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world. The people who do things are moral agents.

> On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG?

Among other things, their confidentiality is protected by Brazilian law. If hackers break that law, Petrobras should be entitled to a remedy against them, just like Americans should be entitled to a remedy against Russian hackers, whether they intend to steal money or private information.

As far as I know, all governments harbor criminals in this sense, but I think they should be incentivized to do so much less, including by pointing out that the espionage is a crime and not glamorizing it (or being upset with governments for not doing it!).

[riversflow]

This just seems incredibly idealistic to me.

Brazilian law isn't US law, if Brazil wants to it can try and arrest spies I guess. That's all there is to it.

> I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world.

I think that spies have the moral agency to gather and report information in order to better promote the welfare of their countrymen.

> I think they should be incentivized to do so much less

How? That's an impossible task in my book, and the main reason I think that spies are ethically just is because it's the nature of the beast. If you figure out a good way to do this, might I suggest focusing your efforts on de-militarization instead of de-espionage? The people with bombs and tanks are the one's who do the most damage.

[feoren]

Please see my sibling comment to yours for three reasons why this is a terrible justification for spying.

> The most powerful country in the world should have an inside track on whats going on in important markets, by hook or by crook

We can get a pretty good idea of what's going on in important markets with publicly available information. Why is this the job of a spy agency and not its economics departments? I would like the U.S. to have a strong understanding of upcoming weather patterns, but that doesn't mean we ask the CIA to spy on everyone who's using aerosol sprays.

[riversflow]

> We can get a pretty good idea of what's going on in important markets with publicly available information.

How can you possibly know that, are you claiming to be privy to the forecasts generated by the information gathered by US spies? Further, as stated later, spying is the status quo, if spying stopped wholesale wouldn't keeping information private be significantly more valuable?

> Reason 1 . . . literally any spying could be justified this way.

I don't give a solitary care about the spying a foreign government does. Why should I? They don't have jurisdiction over me. I care about what it does with that intel, but that is completely separate, which gets us to your Reason 2.

> Essentially anything that's outside of the status quo is suddenly classified as a risk. Basically our spy agencies' jobs become protecting the entrenched interests of those already in power

No, that isn't the job of spies, they gather intelligence. You are confusing other government actions with spying.

> Reason 3

Again, do you have some sort of inside track on the DoD(or some other 3 letters)? You have concocted a hypothetical about a Joe Shmoe, being caught in a dragnet filter. Is that actually a real problem? Or just a hypothetical about where this slippery slope goes.

Overall I think the burden of proof is on the group who wants to go against the status quo; nations constantly spy on one another. Justify why we shouldn't spy, rather than pointing out it's pitfalls.

[schoen]

> I don't give a solitary care about the spying a foreign government does. Why should I? They don't have jurisdiction over me. I care about what it does with that intel, but that is completely separate, which gets us to your Reason 2.

In the "realpolitik" environment you mentioned, when you lose control of your private information, you lose control of what's done with that information. That's is a good reason to care about protecting information and not regard this as "completely separate".

An example that people mention a lot in the domestic context is that laws and governments can change, so that information that was innocuous before could be sensitive in the future.

Someone doesn't need to have jurisdiction over you in order to harm you with your secrets. They could taunt you about them, they could blackmail you with them, they could use them to compete with or undermine your business, they could pass them to your government as a tip, they could reveal them to your political opponents...

You might say that this is all Reason 2 and not Reason 1 material, but if a government has unauthorized access to secret information of its choice, it's going to be hard to control or predict how it may use that information against your interests later. But, you might say, I also can't actually control whether they get unauthorized access to my secrets, so I just have no power over them at all, so why even talk about it?

Well, I'd say that lots of people who read HN have practical opportunities in their careers to engage in espionage or not, to make it harder or easier, to expose it or not, and so on. Governments are going to ask some people reading this thread to do them favors. They can't necessarily guarantee the safety of their own information, but they can significantly affect the safety of other people's information. It matters whether they think that's desirable or not!

[riversflow]

> Governments are going to ask some people reading this thread to do them favors.

I mean, my expectation is that those are the kind of offers you can’t refuse.

Why do you not find information asymmetry completely harmful?

[feoren]

> Overall I think the burden of proof is on the group who wants to go against the status quo

That attitude definitely benefits those who like the status quo. I think the "burden of proof", if such a thing exists, is on the position with the least prior evidence. That something is the status quo is pretty weak evidence in its favor; I can point to many instances in human history where the status quo was pretty awful.

> if spying stopped wholesale

Strawman. I never said spying should be "stopped wholesale". Never anything even remotely close to that, in fact. I'm not responsible for defending a position you completely fabricated.

> I don't give a solitary care about the spying a foreign government does ... I care about what it does with that intel, but that is completely separate

I don't believe the gathering of intelligence is "completely separate" from acting on that intel. I don't believe the accumulation of guns and ammunition is "completely separate" from the act of using those guns. I don't believe the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium is "completely separate" from building an atomic bomb. I don't believe building an atomic bomb is "completely separate" from using it.

> No, that isn't the job of spies, they gather intelligence. You are confusing other government actions with spying.

"Spies don't kill people, bullets kill people. Actually, bullets don't kill people, a rapid transfer of momentum from the bullet to the human body kills people. Actually, momentum doesn't kill people, a rapid loss of blood from the resulting tissue damage kills people. You are confusing human physiology with spying." Right: nobody is ever responsible for anything.

> You have concocted a hypothetical about a Joe Shmoe, being caught in a dragnet filter. Is that actually a real problem? Or just a hypothetical about where this slippery slope goes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition#Histor...

You don't need a security clearance to know of many instances of this happening.

[riversflow]

Bullets don’t kill people, the guy pulling the trigger on the gun does. Spies don’t pull the trigger.

I believe literally all those things you don’t believe about having something being completely separate from using it. A car can kill people just as easily as a gun. So what? It’s who used the object who is responsible for what it does and owning something doesn’t necessarily imply using it or even imply it at all.

How do you justify that point of view? I really don’t get that perspective.

I can’t say for certain, but I doubt extraordinary rendition is only using "terrorist-detector model” and not relying on analysts/tips. Also worth noting is that it seems like it hasn’t happened in ~20 years, and was a product of 9/11 fervor.

Let me put it another way. Why should the powerful countries take weaker ones at their word and not employ fact checkers? Nations are only really beholden to their constituents and greater powers. Why would any country tell a major power who wasn’t spying the truth?

[feoren]

> A car can kill people just as easily as a gun ... How do you justify that point of view?

Right, and we have some oversight and regulation about who can operate a car, what kind of (admittedly low) bars they need to pass, and when their license can be revoked. What oversight and regulation do we have on what the CIA and NSA are doing? Congressional, obviously, yet it hasn't prevented the many abuses of the past.

[schoen]

> Strawman. I never said spying should be "stopped wholesale". Never anything even remotely close to that, in fact. I'm not responsible for defending a position you completely fabricated.

I think this is more in response to me than to you; one might correctly infer from my posts here that I think that a significant majority of espionage activity is morally wrong and should be stopped.

That's just a perennial difficulty in having a multi-way conversation.

[riversflow]

Correct.

[kwhitefoot]

Presumably the same grounds that the US DoE has a right privacy, a right not to be spied on by Brazil.

[riversflow]

I don't contend that the DoE or any other agency has a right to privacy from Brazil. Spy craft is just a part of international politics, turnabout is fair play.

[schoen]

Do you think it's bad if the U.S. prosecutes Brazilian spies who spy on U.S. organizations? Shouldn't we care whether the things that the justice system is punishing people for are things that are actually good or bad? (I mean, I guess your intuition probably says "no, not really"!)

I think if it's wrong we shouldn't do it (because we shouldn't do things that are wrong), and if it's not wrong we shouldn't punish other people for doing it (because we shouldn't punish people for doing things that are not wrong). Yes, this is exactly attempting to apply personal morality to the "international system". Which is made up of people who make conscious decisions about how to behave toward other people.

[riversflow]

> this is exactly attempting to apply personal morality to the "international system"

I can do that. Nobody should lie, it's wrong. So, as long as every nation stops lying, they can stop spying too. Easy Peasy.

> Shouldn't we care whether the things that the justice system is punishing people for are things that are actually good or bad?

Absolutely. Which is why usually friendly-nation spies don't seem to get in trouble. Take a look at this list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies

I think lying/misrepresenting is bad and very harmful, however I also think it is human nature, and spying helps to alleviate that information asymmetry.

[hatboat]

"Sorry, I didn't pick the game - it is what it is" said LeBron to Neymar as they lined up for some one-on-one.

[saalweachter]

Do organizations and governments have rights?

[schoen]

They have legal rights under the jurisdictions where they're established, and presumably the people working for them also retain their individual human rights.