Edward Snowden Reveals A Good Idea: The NSA Spies On OPEC
THERE have indeed been some revelations from Edward Snowden and the rest over things that the NSA and GCHQ are doing that shouldn’t please the rest of us. Widespread spying on us, the citizens that actually pay for the spies for example, isn’t one of the things that we want them to do.
However, spying on the enemies who would do us harm sounds like an excellent thing for them to do doing. And they have been, they’ve been spying on OPEC:
The latest earth-shattering Snowden revelation emanating from the Russian Front (aka Der Spiegel) is that NSA and GCHC have spied on OPEC.
A couple of responses.
1. Duh. Or in the words of a Navy chief who left an indelible impression on me during Youngster Cruise: “That’s a real no sh*tter, son.”
2. Good!
Please. OPEC is of major economic and geopolitical importance. Of course it is a prime target for intelligence collection-and a legitimate one. It is also an organization representing governments, many of whom are hostile to the US (Venezuela, anyone? Iran?), or of quite doubtful friendliness. Many of its members-and I could probably say, all of its members-are hopelessly corrupt, and/or connected with terrorist organizations.
What would be scandalous is not that we’re watching OPEC with every means at our disposal, but that we were turning a blind eye. I will sleep better tonight knowing that the NSA has not been delinquent in its duty to collect information on an economically important cartel that is really a congeries of corrupt anti-American nations.
Quite. The entire point of OPEC is to screw us over. That’s what the organisation exists to do. It’s a producer cartel that exists only to charge us more money for oil so as to enrich the other people who produce said oil. Damn right they’re enemies.
And spies are there to spy on enemies. It may well be true that the NSA spying on Americans, GCHQ on the British, is wrong, bad, illegal and something that we want to stamp out. But spying on people like OPEC is what the damn spies are therefore in the first place so of course they should be doing that.
Blimey, if they’re not allowed to spy on OPEC then soon enough someone will say that we’re not allowed to spy on true enemies and then where would we all be?
Photo: Members of the OPEC countries continue their conference on Monday at Kuwait. Date: 25/12/1973
Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Money, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
