Snowden, Nuland, and Spying

For many of you, the story of Victoria Nuland's outburst, and sudden publication smacks of "everybody does it", with the meaning that the Russians spy too, but I think we are missing something here.

Let's ask this question:  Is the interception of a phone call really spying?

First of all, let's make some assumptions, number one being that this phone call was not encrypted.  Why a high-ranking diplomat in the EU, should not be encrypting her phone calls should not escape anyone.  Why Angela Merkel should be using a phone that wasn't encrypted is beyond comprehension.  Heads of State who don't use the security God gave them, are idiots.

I can sit at home and listen to mobile phone calls made by people on normal cell phones.  It is illegal, but I could do it, and there is probably nobody who will ever find out I'm doing it.  I'm not hacking into messages, or publishing stories about the content of any of those conversations.  I leave that to the press.

Second, is it really spying if the source is doing this kind of thing in public? Either one of the women, and lots of other diplomats, have over the years, thought they knew more than the security teams that watch over them.  We can all remember the Moscow Embassy fiasco.  That was real spying.  The Russians crammed that embassy with listening devices, because they could.  We made it easy for them to do.  Our illustrious Ambassador thought the Russians would never take advantage of our good will.

Is it really spying, if the other country acts as if it is OK?  This is the point of the whole thing.  Snowden, and apparently his helpers in Russia, took advantage of several flaws in our security system.  More recently, they intercepted text messages where the people sending them should have been a lot smarter about how they handled their communications.  So, do we get up on high horses and start pretending we are above all of this and the Russians are taking advantage of our openness?  That is idiocy.  They are taking advantage of ours.

Spys have a lot of better things to do than collect a lot of junk that is easy to get.  The lazy ones will suck up this kind of thing and pretend they are doing real spying, but all they are doing is taking advantage of others who are not very adept at protecting their secrets.  Anyone who thinks this is deft work on the part of the Russians, better think again.  Oh, they are doing some pretty good things, I'm sure.  They have always been capable, but so are a lot of other countries who are taking advantage.http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Secrets-Military-Business-Threaten/dp/1484131487/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397574616&sr=1-3&keywords=dennis+f.+poindexter Keeping Secrets