NSA Spied on European Union- Leak from Edward Snowden

Originally posted by an0nThinker
reply to post by dominicus

 

Nope nothing is going to be done, when far worst things have come and passed. The Europeans however might not be so kind. They might downgrade some diplomatic relations or intelligence sharing, but that would be the extent of their anger..

You're forgetting the impact this has on American business too.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple... these are all major US corporations, and billions of people around the world are waking up to the fact that America (and Britain) cannot be trusted, therefore our business systems cannot be trusted either.

Considering the UK and US are the financial hubs of the world, how many of those financial institutions will be entirely comfortable now working in these cities? How many of them will be happy to sign a contract with Dell, Microsoft or Apple now that they know their private business practices can be watched by the NSA?

Businesses will start to move away from American companies because of this. Contracts that could have gone to any of those American companies will likely be reconsidered, and if an alternative can be found in their own countries, they could choose that instead. If you were a branch of German government, would you be contracting anything out to any of these American corporations after this? Nope, I don't think so.

MP's in Russia have already gone on record demanding that their government create or encourage national competitors for global American corporations - something that should have been done a long time ago. New systems will be put in place to monitor and scrutinize all tech used, from mobile phone networks to internal computer networks. This could lead to further scandals in the future as more and more tech is analyzed and more complicit companies are brought to light. How did they get these systems in place? Some hardware was needed in at least some of these instances, and that requires someone with access to those systems.

Governments around the world will already be looking into new ways to encrypt all their information against the NSA and GCHQ in response to these revelations.

It could hamper diplomatic relations, and increase the costs of such efforts too, with government officials no longer able to trust their surroundings in the US and elsewhere, choosing instead to install shielded locations where face to face conversations can take place instead.

This could cause a devolution of diplomatic staff around the world, all constantly fearful of communicating by phone, email or even through supposedly secure systems, they could revert to a slow and painful process rather than risk something being picked up by the NSA.

It could also lead to governments creating more smokescreens and false intelligence to throw the NSA off their actual intentions. For instance, a wise government might create a secure system, but maintain a false one, feeding the NSA completely fictitious information in an effort to confuse them or even to get revenge.

If anyone here wants to be guaranteed a good income in Europe in the next ten years, you would be wise to go into the field of anti-espionage tech, encryption systems, secure data and the like. There is about to be a growing market for defense against this all around the world for the foreseeable future.

Originally posted by dominicus
IS anyone, anywhere, ever going to do something about this?

Or is it just going to carry on as usual?

Nothing can or will be done, that's my guess. The world is in a downward spiral.

Originally posted by Plugin
Not sure what you mean with that that but that existing U.S.- EU agreement is 1 sided. It's about giving the US access to all money tranfers going on in Europe to fight terrorism (but more likely for other reasons (like downgrading EU country's for example?). Of course the EU can't see money transfers from the US.

edit on 30-6-2013 by Plugin because: (no reason given)

This has probably been brought up many times before, but think about the "insider trading" possibilities for those who might have access to all this secret financial data.

Originally posted by WhiteAlice
reply to post by an0nThinker

 

And Germany's Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, called the contents of the report "reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the Cold War," adding, "It is beyond imagination that our friends in the US view Europeans as the enemy."

This particular quote stuck out to me as it totally reminds me of when I was in Moscow in 1987. A young Russian girl that I had befriended had shown me the new US Embassy--an imposing slab of brick--and then talked about how the USSR had convinced the US to allow them to build it and had filled the entire place with bugs (the eavesdropping kind--not cockroaches). The US would have done the same really if the shoe had been on the other foot. The thing is that, she's right--it is a cold war type of move and it really makes me wonder if what, collectively, the NSA suffers from is actually an information addiction. That's one explanation I can think of as to why a country would treat one who was to be an ally like an enemy. The other thought is that perhaps ally doesn't equate to friend for the US and considering that a lot of big business (trade agreements) are the ties between the US and the EU, maybe it's just all business to them.

That's right. So where's the story?