[Natsu]

That's what makes me surprised that both political parties are on board with this. It has the potential to make the Watergate burglaries look positively small time.

What, exactly, stops one political party from using this system against the other one? They're all up in arms about the IRS thing, but either party could very easily adapt a system like this into the most powerful opposition research tool ever known.

Even more interesting is that, with loose controls like these, we have to assume that enemy spies are able to see everything. So every other country with half-decent spies can just tap the whole country's communications and blackmail any and everyone in power with whatever they find using the systems we set up on our own.

[logn]

"So every other country with half-decent spies can just tap the whole country's communications and blackmail any and everyone in power with whatever they find using the systems we set up on our own."

I'd imagine the spy world has already realized this, and we're already at a level of mutually assured blackmail. :)

[abalashov]

I was about to say the same thing, but you said it much better.

In fact, I think this state of affairs by and large predates the digital age, which is why there are so many "gentleman's agreements" and semi-informal reciprocal codes of honour among intelligence organisations. They have their roots in the Cold War.

For instance, Russia's FSB recently received some opprobrium for revealing the identity of a CIA operative in Russia. It's not because the FSB doesn't know who they are; the FSB knows who they are, and the CIA knows that the FSB knows who they are, and they both know far more about each other's intelligence operations than we realise. It's just not the custom to come out and publicise this information.