I don't really get the butthurt over countries spying on one another when countries spy on each other all the time. Israel spies on the U.S. regularly and it's still an ally. The safe thing to assume is that everyone spies on everyone else.
Well, as a German citizen I can say that I don't really care whether the American government is spying on the German government.
It's more of an issue of the American government potentially spying (or collecting data) on me.
Fair enough.
Of course, there is a school of thought that says actions against governments are
more serious than actions against private individuals. If someone were to steal my property, that would be a crime. But if someone were to steal the government's property, that would be an even bigger crime. If someone were to murder me, that would be a terrible crime, but if someone were to murder a government official carrying out his duties, that would be an even bigger crime. The idea is that government is a stand-in and representative of the people, so any action against the government carries with it not only the harms of the action in itself, but the effect of those arms against
an entire people. Hence, spying against governments is actually a more serious offense than spying against private parties. So if spying between governments is considered normal, than private parties cannot really expect safety from such spying.
Then there is the fact that private entities are spying on each other all the time now. The average worker and consumer now has dozens of different companies spying on their personal behavior. So if there is no problem with that, why not governments? It's really just an extension of the same thing. The idea that you can have Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. with mountains of personal data, and somehow keep that data sacrosanct and walled off from governments is just a complete fantasy.
Spying hasn't changed and governments haven't changed. What's changed is the technology and the way that we as human beings are
migrating our lives onto technology.
