Such intelligence would be absolutely inadmissible in court. But intelligence agencies aren't interested in prosecuting people. They are tasked with national security, not prosecution.
It might've been legal(i doubt it) to spy on foreign person on foreign soil inside (another) foreign embassy according to US law... but that doesn't matter at all when it comes to both Ecuadorean law and UK law.
USA is not a world police, nor is ultimate force of good that all good counters bow to.
This is why rule #1 of spying is: don't get caught.
Friendly countries spying on each other is super common. The US bugged Angela Merkle's cell phone! We do this. Everyone knows we do. They live with it, because they spy on us, too.
For good and ill, this sort of thing has been considered playing by the rules for decades. You can compare the response to the Russia assassination campaigns on British soil, which (when too public to ignore) created a big public response because that sort of thing was considered out of bounds previously. And the response to American kidnap-and-torture plots in Europe.
That's not to say we don't catch, try, imprison, and deport spies in the US and other countries do the same against us. But this is all part of a decades-long iterated prisoner's dilemma about what the "rules" are in international espionage.
The court is faced with an extradition request, which will hinge on questions such as: are the charges well laid out and supported? will the defendant get a fair trial? and does this fit within our extradition treaty?
That second point - getting a fair trial - is heavily undermined if there is evidence the US government has privileged information that came from spying.
> The German intelligence agency used the selectors to surveil telephone and fax numbers as well as email accounts belonging to American companies like Lockheed Martin, the space agency NASA, the organization Human Rights Watch, universities in several U.S. states and military facilities like the U.S. Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the secret service agency belonging to the American armed forces. Connection data from far over 100 foreign embassies in Washington, from institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Washington office of the Arab League were also accessed by the BND's spies.
[1] https://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intelligen...
In reality they seem to be somewhat competent at some things, and reports that they do indeed successfully surveil foreign embassies seem to be true.
Context matters.
Do you think the US/Israel respected Iranian law when they infiltrated nuclear facilities ? How about all of the Russian poisoning in the UK ? And I don't believe all of the various drones are qualified to operate in their respective airspaces.
Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be angry at Russia? They just did their job, did they?
Only if there are consequences. If you get caught killing another country's spies or otherwise behaving badly, they may retaliate and kill yours. They may invoke treaties or launch ICJ cases. If they have leverage, they may use it.
Ecuador has no leverage.
> Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be angry at Russia?
They were Russian agents killing Russians defectors. That's an egregious violation, but they were ultimately taking care of their own. Wanna be a dissident, fine -- play dangerous games, win dangerous prizes. These killing also got a lot of attention because 1) they involved polonium / radiation poisoning, which is a particularly ruthless way of killing someone, and 2) they were in the western media.
All of the people the CIA or MI6 had shot in response didn't get any airtime...
> They just did their job, did they?
Moral arguments notwithstanding, this is just another day in the spy game. I would take years of cloak and dagger casualties over another Iraq, or Vietnam, or a World War. Geopolitics gonna geopoltic.
I don't know how many people the CIA and MI6 kills, but I am very certain that it is the end of a career of a spy if caught with extrajudicial killings. Even in Russia. Otherwise you quickly have imitators.
But why waste our time with a story then?
People in different countries have different rights. And governments can usurp those rights as needed e.g. jail you, kill you.
According to whom ? US law makers ? I'm quite certain no sovereign nation aknowledges the "right" of anyone else to gather intelligence as they please on their premises.
So I guess Russia has every right to spy on americans, right?
This shouldn't have happened. We need international law with some teeth, and better norms for behaviour on the international stage. I absolutely agree that we shouldn't concede to 'of course'.
> The Spanish lawyer Aitor Martinez, one of the lawyers in Julian Assange's legal team filmed by UC Global, tells Repubblica: "Over the years Mr. Assange and his defense team held legal meetings inside the embassy. Those meetings were protected by the lawyer-client relationship and the fundamental right to defense.
What about this fundamental right?
> However we can see those meetings were spied on, according to the videos published by different media. Under these conditions, it is clear that extradition must be denied. We hope that British justice understands the scope of what has happened and denies extradition as soon as possible".
Interesting take, if this would become the end result for this very reason someone shot themselves in the foot.