[Zigurd]

> If we stop, how do we make everyone else stop?

Yet, somehow, dozens of governments that do not spy, because they do not have either the resources to do an effective job of it, or they do not have a mandate to do it, manage to continue to operate. The economies they govern continue to operate. Some of them very prosperously.

Spying by the US government could be cut back VERY sharply and do the US no harm, especially against those governments that are both friendly and that cannot support an effective spying mechanism against the US.

There is a ton of Hobbesian bullshit floating around here. We'd be cheating on all our treaties, too, just because some countries do that, if this whole "state of nature" bullshit actually applied.

[ewoodrich]

> dozens of governments that do not spy, because they do not have either the resources to do an effective job of it, or they do not have a mandate to do it,

Which countries are these? As far as I can tell, every country in the UN has an intelligence agency. Which would mean they spy on somebody, and "effectiveness" seems like a bit of a weasel-y standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

[Zigurd]

Latvian secret agency has potato for your zero day!

[tptacek]

Latvia spends hundreds of millions of dollars on its military. You think they can't afford an IE remote?

[Zigurd]

Which, these days, buys fewer than 5000 active duty personnel. Total. Including officers, enlisted, logistics, medics, etc. This is a speed bump between Putin and Riga. It is symbolic, to show Latvia could contribute some personnel to joint operations. Some parts, like the air force, are probably below minimum table stakes and are completely militarily ineffective.

I expect the signals intelligence effort to be proportionate and be similarly militarily relevant.

[tptacek]

I think you missed the question in my comment. That's OK. It was rhetorical.

[Zigurd]

No, it's a serious answer.

Let's say you have a sack of potatoes for that IE 'sploit. Now you have to target it, plant it, exfiltrate data, analyze the data, and provide a context for it among other data gathered, store the data and the analysis, etc.

Compare this to Latvia spending a serious fraction of the military budget keeping, maybe, a couple obsolete, militarily irrelevant, and expensive to maintain Russian helicopters flying. There is a level below which simply saying that you have an air force, or signals intelligence, amounts to nothing of any significance.

Many many nations are in that condition, or are able to do no more than haphazardly tap their own switches and harass some dissidents.

The scale at which the NSA operates is commensurate to that of a navy with a dozen carrier battle groups. Even China cannot put an air wing on one antique (ok, "vintage") carrier. Nobody on the whole planet operates the way the NSA does. The people of the US have vast scope to change that before it even comes close to affecting a balance of effectiveness versus actual adversaries, never mind being in all our supposed freinds' pants.