> Ah so we are no better than China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: the world isn’t black and white, but shades of gray.

I think it’s both the case that the US does unsavory things and that the US is better than those nations on the subjects you’re talking about.

> The NSA and CIA are probably more interested in feeding Wall Street insider information on foreign economic activity so they can obtain advantages than anything else, and of course there's the kickback angle with the private contractors bloated secret budgets.

Compared to those nations you listed, I don’t think this claim is true.

"Democratic values and human rights" is just how we refer to "how we want it done" - when what we want goes against them, they fall away to the side and aren't talked about.

your first paragraph is just a reflection of the way the world works. You can take sides - most people do - or not. Either way the ethics are steeped in a complex of nationalism, ideology, media, state control, and everything in between.

Your second paragraph seems a tad hyperbolic. The intel machine is there to progress a country’s interests. Most of the time, it is for peaceful purposes, but agreed there is often a commercial interest at play.

Having met someone who was at the top of my country's intelligence machine: CIA is corrupt, other countries fare a bit better but not too well. It's a difficult problem to concentrate so much power and not have corruption.

> The NSA and CIA are probably more interested in feeding Wall Street insider information

Citation needed. What a ridiculous thing to say.

Well, the NSA and CIA and the State Department have long claimed that their cyber-espionage activities have nothing to do with securing economic information for the advantage of say, US oil companies, right?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/longhorn-cybe...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...

Those claims seem to be false. Engaging in cyber-espionage (and indeed, going to war) for economic advantage seems to be the name of the game. Why not just be honest about it, instead of spouting all this pablum about 'defending democracy and human rights'?

> Why not just be honest about it, instead of spouting all this pablum about 'defending democracy and human rights'?

Maybe the actual decisionmakers of the world all already know how the world works.

You want a citation for secret stuff the spook agencies do?

Are you kidding me?

I'm not taking sides either way, but Hitchens's Razor does still apply here (i.e. "claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence").

In this case, some people have industry knowledge and some trust is in order

> The NSA and CIA are probably more interested in feeding Wall Street insider information on foreign economic activity so they can obtain advantages than anything else

Wall Street has pretty much shied away since Clarence Beeks blew the orange juice corner in 1983.

> I guess that was just a two-faced con artist act?

Of course it was. Read Chomsky.