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Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by dragonwriter on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @05:26PM (#6643522)
> It's debatable that other countries are "above" it in moral terms

It's really not, since many of the releases of information about what the US is doing -- including the current one -- have other countries also neck deep in it. I mean, the actual spying in the article that this comment thread is attached to is done by the UK's GCHQ, NSA is just a consumer of the data.

Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by danbruc on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:02PM (#6643742)
As pointed out above, misconduct of other countries does not justify the own behavior. There is really no big difference between collecting the information on your own or letting someone else do the dirty work and then just crabbing the results. I should have pointed out more clearly that I am not especially against the behavior of the USA but against behavior like this in general but I did so in some other comments.

Besides that the US are doing (almost) unique things among to most developed countries, for example I can not even imagine any EU country doing something like Guantanamo or having the death penalty. To make it clear again, I am not primarily angry because of the spying on its own but the sentiment as to human rights beyond it.

Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by dragonwriter on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:25PM (#6643894)
> for example I can not even imagine any EU country doing something like Guantanamo

By the information that has publicly come out about the "black sites" operated by the US and its allies -- from which prisoners were later transferred to the not-secret facility at Guatanamo where at least a show of adhering to international humanitarian law was made, several EU countries were actively involved in the system, and the UK was not only involved but actually operated prisons in the system.

So, yeah, EU countries have, contemporarily with Guantanamo, done things as much like the worst aspects of the Guantanamo detention as is possible.

Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by danbruc on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:50PM (#6644038)
Source? If true, I completely missed that side of the story. The worst I could find after a quick search was that the UK allowed extraditions to Guantanamo even after learning about the torture happening there.
Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by mnordhoff_ on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @11:31PM (#6645058)
IIRC, Poland was the EU country that was the focus of attention.

Skimming Wikipedia's most definitely totally truthy article on the subject [1] (actually, it has a lot of citations, so it should be easy to verify), the UK's only alleged black site was the US base on Diego Garcia, which is "UK", but not "basement in London".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_sit...

Edit (T+18 minutes): Wikipedia lists numerous other European countries as possibly being involved. Information is really sketchy -- they are called "black" sites. Another question is which officials in the lucky host countries even knew about it.

Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by tptacek on Thursday October 31, 2013 @12:33PM (#6647791)
Nobody suggested a "basement in London".
Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by dobbsbob on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @10:15PM (#6644832)
"5 eyes alliance" countries are neck deep in domestic spying, it appears they are their own independent spy service, accountable to no country and all collaborating to avoid each other's laws. Impossible for any of those countries to have free elections anymore with this kind of surveillance. Everybody being watched all the time makes for easy political blackmail to avoid any serious attempts to dismantle the global Stasi state they've been busy making under our noses for the last decade