[mpchlets]

The real surprise is everyone is shocked an agency designed to spy is doing just that. And successfully for a long time. I don't like it, but it is not really news - they compare spying on the UN and loved ones in this article ... is it really related?

[simonw]

Read the Guardian's editorial from a few days ago, which directly argues against the "Spy's spy, so what?" line of argument.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/surveil...

[jacquesm]

There is this in there:

"Some weeks later the tone of these and other discussions changed. There was, by mid-July, an explicit threat that the government would, after all, seek to stop the Guardian's work and prevent publication of further material by legal means. To have resisted such action would have involved handing over ultimate control of the material to a judge and could have meant that no stories could have been published for many months, if at all. The first amendment of the American constitution guarantees its press protections of which British editors can only dream. For more than 40 years − since the publication of the so-called Pentagon papers in 1971 − it has been accepted that the state will not succeed in trying to obtain prior restraint of the press. So we will in future report this story from New York. We have shared some material with, and will collaborate with, the New York Times."

So that was the reason why the Guardian moved the reporting on the story out of the UK.

[beedogs]

Absolutely. It shows these systems can be used for anything the analysts or their superiors want.

[mpchlets]

Again - that is what they are designed to do. The system is based on trust and espionage . . . it is a complicated relationship there, but again not news just the job description.