On a related note, JFK was trying to shut down Israel's nuclear weapons program in the months before his murder.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kennedy-letter-to-ben-g...
Again I don't have concrete proofs so I could be 100% wrong. But reading world history especially cold war history makes me be sceptical to certain things.
As for the USS Liberty, some do argue that it was intentional, but both the Israelis and Americans ended up agreeing that it was a mistake. The US is no stranger to such mistakes either, even more egregious ones like when they killed close to 300 civilians aboard a regular passenger flight following an approved route and in contact with ATC (Iran Air 655).
In the end both the US and Israel are amoral states that act only according to their economic and strategic interests and I feel that this unites them. I wish it didn't, though.
How would the sailors on the ship being attacked be able to know anything like that (e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one)?
The sailors would know because they have access to the same information that you do, but a greater incentive to actually do the reading. The Israeli pilots knew it as a US ship, their radio traffic questioning their attack orders - after visually identifying the USS Liberty as a US ship, was recorded and the transcripts widely known about. This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing? Because the US wasn't onboard with the Israeli preemptive strike and they didn't want a signals intelligence boat tipping off the Egyptians. Israel doesn't appear to reciprocate the fond feelings expressed by American politicians - the mere idea of the "Samson Option" is proof enough of that.
To that point, it's worth noting here friendly fire incidents happen all the time in war, as well as attacks against neutral parties. For instance: the US has bombed its own troops probably more times than anyone can count, and it also bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and shot down an Iranian airliner. Why would they do such things? Honestly, it's plausible they they may actually have had the memory of a goldfish, at least occasionally.
Because an imputed motive is not proof of anything, and there's no way "accounts on the ship" could provide the information you claim they do (knowledge of the attackers mental state).
I don't think anyone disputes that the Israelis attacked the ship intentionally, but you can say the same about most friendly fire incidents. The question is if the people who made the attack deliberately decided to attack what they know to be an American ship.
Given the general incompetence of governments in general (Europe is no exception) I doubt it is (b).
Reminder that France vacuumed up messages on Enrochat after deploying malware globally, and they have clear text messages from users in any arbitrary country and have not disclosed what they will do with it or what they have.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aza95/how-police-took-over-...
The US spies on everyone because they can, and because they have prepared to do basically anything they think might be in their interests; when Germany discovers the US spying on them, what can they really do about it? Whereas if it was the other way, all hell would break loose.
Establishing mere capability is pretty trivial: they have diplomats in the United States who can talk to people.
You don’t think the French would love to have known about AUKUS submarine deal before it was made? It’s detrimental to not attempt to spy. The French were blindsided and I’m sure they don’t want to be blindsided again.
[1] https://www.space.com/arianespace-soyuz-rocket-launches-cso-...
It gives you an idea how powerful their lobby is.
NSO should be declared a terrorist organization.
>because they didn't like that we were watching them
That is the American conspiracy theorist interpretation of the incident that (understandably) also gained traction among a few of the survivors. The Israelis disagree.
It was most likely a case of mistaken identity. Just like friendly fire incidents. Friendly fire incidents happen all the time, including between US forces in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.
> IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.
> Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship - I can see the flag!
> IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.
https://archive.md/KNYBR/again?url=https://www.haaretz.com/u...
For some reason I feel like the US government officials probably share the sentiment of their Icelandic colleagues of old. These immoral activists that obviously step out of line, but the only thing that bothers the US officials is that they got caught. But even then it is not such a big deal.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/19/nsa-surve...
But I can hardly see how the quoted part of the OP comment maybe explains by
> simply wrong about some of the facts
to me it seems that OP comment was just pushing for agenda using some hyperbole and hate.
The operative word in that sentence is seems, and you can't know that for sure so you shouldn't respond as though you do. HN has some pretty specific instructions about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_to_the_Secretary_on_the...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/09/20/the-truth-about-...
As far as I know there are few (if any) restrictions on encryption R&D (and even publication) in the US.
What is restricted (due to encryption being classed as a 'munition') is the export of robust encryption products to specific countries.
Broadly speaking, circumventing the export controls wouldn't be in the interest of the US Intelligence Community, unless those products have backdoors or vulnerabilities known to the IC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)
Then there's the time they stole nuclear material from us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair
Then there's the time they slaughtered several dozen US navy and NSA personnel with repeated attacks on an unarmed vessel because they didn't like that we were watching them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident