All cooped up and nowhere to go, US and German spooks spied on each other Allies US and German spooks cooped up in a windowless structure dubbed the Tin Can have been found secretly spying on each other. The revelations reveal the absurdity of a secret agreement between spy agencies, the NSA and the BND, to operate from a former US base in Bad Aibling, Germany, that was in 2004 handed over to German …
There is a big difference between spying on people [general] , and people [foreign officials/entities].
The second is what spies are paid to do, and what Everybody Knows happens. It's just a case of Bad Form when you're found out.
The first is a good indicator of a government out of control, and the birth of a tyranny.
Our spies have counter spies,
Behind their backs: espy 'em
And their spies have anti-spies,
who in turn decry 'em.
But the master spies, themselves, it seems
Have fewer rules to go on;
While higher up have fewer still,
And higher still, and so on.
Their civil overlords to placate,
The spooks will prevaricate.
And the public so is served
In a matter most undeserved;
All the while Spies Black, Gray and White
Covertly scheme us all to spite.
We've learned that at the NSA, mid-level managers would try to recruit lower level employees to report on conversations in the lunchroom, in order to glean intelligence of the order of office politics. A total Scanner Darkly situation, how sane people can go on year after year like that is something for the psychiatrists to figure out.
Read 'Harlot's Ghost' - at some point the CIA had become a completely dysfunctional agency trembling in a paranoid mental clusterfuck because there was a mole hiding under every desk.
Spycraft has its place, but when you've built up institutions with hundreds of thousands of spies, eventually the situation becomes quite absurd, and serves nobody.
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