My recent Taki's Magazine column points out that all the shocked responses to the news that the American government could spy on Americans' private communications seem naive considering that the well-informed have long assumed that the Israeli government could spy on Americans' private communications through the domination of commercial communications software for certain infrastructure tasks such as telephone billing by firms launched in part by former officers of Israeli military intelligence. It concludes:
What are some of the advantages of having the means to know who calls whom in the US? We can only speculate, but it’s perhaps not wholly coincidental that Israel has become a highly prosperous country, with investment flooding in. Moreover, the Israeli government is extremely popular in Washington, with Prime Minister Netanyahu receiving 29 standing ovations the last time he addressed Congress.
It could well be that Israel doesn’t actually have these snooping capabilities. But it apparently hasn’t hurt Israel that so many Washington and Wall Street insiders assume that Israel knows their secrets.
In other words, you might not have to go through all the work of actually spying on important people if you can get them to believe you are spying on them. Read the whole thing there.
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