re: #358 lawhawk

Nope. Not going to do it.

I’m not going to show my shocked face. Really. Seriously.

Not shocked. Not at all. Nope.

Everyone spies. First rule of international relations.

Second rule? Everyone spies, but we don’t advertise who we’re spying on, because it’s everyone. And on or for nearly everything you can think of.

Some countries are better about narrowing the scope. Others scoop up massive amounts of information about foreigners. Still others turn that spying inwards to go after domestic threats as well as foreign ones (or claiming that the domestic threat is really a foreign one).

Just so. Even when countries are close allies, they still spy at least a little to find out how the other nation government functions internally. There is also the fact, as David Weber put it, “that spies can be used to provide information that nations cannot be seen exchanging publicly.”

It’s that second bit that really sticks in the craw of Julian Assange. He cannot accept the need for governmental secrecy in some matters and so he attacks governments with Wikileaks.