> Do you routinely monitor the calls, emails and communications of your closest friends and relatives?
No, but I don't do joint military exercises or globally coordinated bank bailouts with them, either. I don't think NATO easily analogized by my Thanksgiving table.
Yes, sort of I do. I check the FB-Pages. ;-) Sorry, but something like this seems to me to be the reason, nobody really cares about NSA spying on him (at least here in Germany).
We all do it. We all give in to our voyeuristic urges. We all "spy" upon our neighbors, spouses, friends and so on. We do not get the scope. We do not know, what it means, if states do this. We do not think about different hierarchical power levels and so on.
We just do Facebook and feel, that it is more or less the same, what the NSA does. At least, that is what was being said, when I asked around.
The big difference is Facebook pages are public, or at least semi-public.
If you go through the e-mail account or texts of a spouse or close friend, you're engaging in a massive breach of trust, and better expect to have them break up with your or refuse to deal with you going forward.
Likewise, the US will now have to face the expectation that US diplomats can not be trusted with any kind of information, including phone numbers that may previously have been considered "safe" to give to allies.
Especially since the document made clear that the NSA did not know all the numbers, hinting that cycling numbers and keeping numbers from US diplomats may still be a viable strategy to reduce the odds of having your calls monitored.
If I was in a position of power now, the first thing I'd do is demand that all senior government officials change numbers, and allocate a wide range of different numbers per person, and allocate one set for the exclusive use for giving to US diplomats and communication that I want the US to pick up, and cycle other numbers frequently and compartmentalise their usage more, since it is clear that the US can not be trusted.
OK; really too few. I am with you there. But less then (felt) 0,1% cared, until "Der Spiegel" broke the news, that our Mutti (OK, Chancelor Merkel)'s phone was spied upon.
So it feels like nobody cares here, when the truth is, that nearly nobody cares.
But herd-immunity will never be reached with this level of care by the German people.
Do you routinely monitor the calls, emails and communications of your closest friends and relatives?
At some point, those people are going to cut you out of their lives for being so disrespectful and immoral.