This is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles.
This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but domestic. Same playbook, different players.
Implying that Israeli spying on the US is some fringe "shadow government" sub-group of the Israeli government is strange given a long, long history of high profile Israeli spying incidents against the US.
Then there's the time they slaughtered several dozen US navy and NSA personnel with repeated attacks on an unarmed vessel because they didn't like that we were watching them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
By saying "shadow government" I mean groups within the US government that has connection to say NOS.
Again I don't have concrete proofs so I could be 100% wrong. But reading world history especially cold war history makes me be sceptical to certain things.
The US spies on its European allies all the time, and I'm sure they spy on Israel too, so that's not super surprising.
As for the USS Liberty, some do argue that it was intentional, but both the Israelis and Americans ended up agreeing that it was a mistake. The US is no stranger to such mistakes either, even more egregious ones like when they killed close to 300 civilians aboard a regular passenger flight following an approved route and in contact with ATC (Iran Air 655).
In the end both the US and Israel are amoral states that act only according to their economic and strategic interests and I feel that this unites them. I wish it didn't, though.
They officially decided it was a mistake, as it did neither government any good to officially announce that it was intentional. But the sailors that were on the ship say otherwise.
> They officially decided it was a mistake, as it did neither government any good to officially announce that it was intentional. But the sailors that were on the ship say otherwise.
How would the sailors on the ship being attacked be able to know anything like that (e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one)?
> e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one
The sailors would know because they have access to the same information that you do, but a greater incentive to actually do the reading. The Israeli pilots knew it as a US ship, their radio traffic questioning their attack orders - after visually identifying the USS Liberty as a US ship, was recorded and the transcripts widely known about. This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing? Because the US wasn't onboard with the Israeli preemptive strike and they didn't want a signals intelligence boat tipping off the Egyptians. Israel doesn't appear to reciprocate the fond feelings expressed by American politicians - the mere idea of the "Samson Option" is proof enough of that.
> This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing?
To that point, it's worth noting here friendly fire incidents happen all the time in war, as well as attacks against neutral parties. For instance: the US has bombed its own troops probably more times than anyone can count, and it also bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and shot down an Iranian airliner. Why would they do such things? Honestly, it's plausible they they may actually have had the memory of a goldfish, at least occasionally.
While I'm not aware of any formal study on the matter, I do remember them going over the subject at length in a forward observer course: the blame for the majority of airstrike blue on blue falling on the grunt calling for fire. It matched my experience as well - to the point that I'd avoid calling in close air support for anything short of a Custard's last stand scenario. This isn't anything like that, a command center continuously calling in attack aircraft on a target repeatedly identified as non-hostile - being put on and taken off of the situation board... unprecedented. Even if my opinion of the command staff was so low as to grant them a "well, maybe you are just that dangerously incompetent" - the lying makes that even harder to believe (technically impossible claims wrt speed and offshore shelling capability).
The Israeli government had strong incentive to do this, and accounts on the ship were that this was clearly intentional. Why is this so hard for you to believe?
> The Israeli government had strong incentive to do this, and accounts on the ship were that this was clearly intentional. Why is this so hard for you to believe?
Because an imputed motive is not proof of anything, and there's no way "accounts on the ship" could provide the information you claim they do (knowledge of the attackers mental state).
I don't think anyone disputes that the Israelis attacked the ship intentionally, but you can say the same about most friendly fire incidents. The question is if the people who made the attack deliberately decided to attack what they know to be an American ship.
If you can't prove that you probably shouldn't make such unqualified statements. There is plenty of proof for the opposite, afaik none whatsoever for the reverse.
Reminder that France vacuumed up messages on Enrochat after deploying malware globally, and they have clear text messages from users in any arbitrary country and have not disclosed what they will do with it or what they have.
The specific claim here is that EU countries spy on the US. I do not believe they have that capability, so if you have some proof that would come in handy.
Aside from capability, the relationship between the US and European countries is so biased towards the US that, politically, I just don't think they'd risk it.
The US spies on everyone because they can, and because they have prepared to do basically anything they think might be in their interests; when Germany discovers the US spying on them, what can they really do about it? Whereas if it was the other way, all hell would break loose.
We have plenty of proof of the US spying on allies in spite of those being secret foreign intelligence operations, there is afaik none whatsoever of say the Germans, the Belgians or the French doing something similar to the US.
Spying is intelligence collection. There many ways to collect intelligence. Some completely innocuous like going to a defense trade show and taking pictures. Or using satellites to capture imagery of sensitive locations or developments [1]. Military attaches at embassies who observe their host country’s military developments and operations [2]. These are capabilities that every developed nation has access to. For them not to use it puts them at a disadvantage.
You don’t think the French would love to have known about AUKUS submarine deal before it was made? It’s detrimental to not attempt to spy. The French were blindsided and I’m sure they don’t want to be blindsided again.
>because they didn't like that we were watching them
That is the American conspiracy theorist interpretation of the incident that (understandably) also gained traction among a few of the survivors. The Israelis disagree.
It was most likely a case of mistaken identity. Just like friendly fire incidents. Friendly fire incidents happen all the time, including between US forces in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.
The Liberty was also very far from where the Americans had told the Israelis where it would be. Finding the ship there was unexpected and calls to confirm its identity were not being answered.
The quote "I was actually able to wave to the co-pilot, a fellow on the right-hand side of the plane. He waved back, and actually smiled at me" is attributed to Larry Weaver, a crewmember on the Liberty. It was allegedly originally written in a book called "Assault on the Liberty" by James M. Ennes, but I ordered a copy to confirm
Anyone who doesn't think the USA and Israel don't spy on each other 24/7 is living in a dream world. Israel is an ally but I don't think that they are our friends.
The parent comment doesn't imply that it was the Israeli government that was doing the spying (and neither does the article), only that Israel delivered the tools. Who's to say this wasn't the CIA keeping tabs on the NSA, or the NSA using foreign tools for plausible deniability?
I come from a country which US intelligence has many times been caught spying on its officials as recently as 2009[1]. A more recent scheme involved recruiting a convicted criminal with proven antisocial personality disorder[2] to spy on Julian Assanges friends. This has been known about since the 1960s at least among Icelandic communists and other left wing individuals. But until really recently (like 10 years ago) the government has been very sympathetic to this spying.
For some reason I feel like the US government officials probably share the sentiment of their Icelandic colleagues of old. These immoral activists that obviously step out of line, but the only thing that bothers the US officials is that they got caught. But even then it is not such a big deal.
> to me it seems that OP comment was just pushing for agenda using some hyperbole and hate.
The operative word in that sentence is seems, and you can't know that for sure so you shouldn't respond as though you do. HN has some pretty specific instructions about that.
Why would the tail wag the dog? America benefits so much from all the R&D (in e.g. encryption) that can't happen on US soil. They are not our enemy in any way :)
> Why would the tail wag the dog? America benefits so much from all the R&D (in e.g. encryption) that can't happen on US soil.
As far as I know there are few (if any) restrictions on encryption R&D (and even publication) in the US.
What is restricted (due to encryption being classed as a 'munition') is the export of robust encryption products to specific countries.
Broadly speaking, circumventing the export controls wouldn't be in the interest of the US Intelligence Community, unless those products have backdoors or vulnerabilities known to the IC.
Yes, basically a state organization that the public has no control over it and is following its own goals, often against the goals of organizations under the control of the public.
It's often taught in political classes and it isn't a conspiracy that there exists a "deep state" or "shadow goverment".
For example, the roman elite troop, the Praetorian Guards, can be classified as a "deep state", as they had their own goals and if they were not meet, then they would just kill the emperor. At the same time, the emporer and the senat had almost no control over the Praetorian Guard.
They're both somewhat vague phrases that are heavily context-dependent and have somewhat different connotations, but yes.
There's nothing wrong with the phrase "deep state". If you're concerned about associations with Trump (which I think you should not be), you can use a former Obama official's favored term, "the blob". Both, and many other similar phrases, are common in the foreign policy literature.
I think the first time I heard the phrase "shadow government" was in connection to Iran-Contra, where it described Oliver North and the small group in charge or those operations, but it's a phrase with many uses. I can't remember when I first heard of the "deep state", but I'd be fairly certain it was before Trump or anyone connected to him started using it.
Regardless of the terminology, the supposed "deep state" is often a fill-in for one's own personal misunderstanding of institutional momentum and basic functions of the government.
"The Government" isn't really a single institution, but a surprisingly loose collection of various institutions that all have some level of momentum guiding the direction they move in. It's critical to note that these institutions may have interests that harshly conflict with one another. Even the intelligence community, insular as it is, cannot be thought of as a monolith, but as various institutions with various priorities, some which conflict with the interests of other government institutions.
When the government does something we dislike politically, or does something we don't understand, it's "the deep state" or "the shadow government" which betrays a deep misunderstanding of what the government is. There's no central, shadowy cabal controlling the affairs of "the government" from behind the scenes, the various institutions that comprise the government maintain momentum and do what is in furtherance of their particular interests.
You’re projecting your own interpretation of “deep state” onto a straw man and then tearing it down.
J. Edgar Hoover was a perfect example of what people are talking about with the deep state. You can claim that’s just “institutional inertia”, but it’s still some unelected official with massive power wielding it in nefarious ways.
"Deep state" is used extremely often to mean something non-centralized, and in a sense, aligned with what you describe as "a surprisingly loose collection of various institutions that all have some level of momentum". The reason it's a useful phrase is that much of that momentum was built in completely undemocratic and unaccountable ways, by groups that are illegitimately secretive and deceptive in their activities, and who feel free to use extreme means such as torture and terrorism.
It's a very imprecise term covering bureaucratic norms and blindspots, to unsanctioned domestic and international terrorism, so it's not really useful except as shorthand with ideological bedfellows, so-to-speak, and you're right that it's often used to mean "the government guys I don't like but am too lazy/ill-informed to describe". But OP mentioned Gladio -- I think that's context enough for this thread. Do some reading on the topic (beyond Wikipedia) if you haven't already, and you might get a sense of what this non-centralized deep state can do.
And I didn't make it clear, but I brought up the North et al "shadow government" as an example far on the small-scale end of the spectrum of meaning of "deep state/shadow government". It _was_ a centralized shadowy cabal doing a now-documented conspiracy. People argue about how much authority they "seized" and how much was delegated by Reagan (and how much capacity he had to delegate much of anything), but regardless, it was not democratic to illegal go around Congress. What I've described as the "deep state" is the more common usage, and it's on the "amorphous, non-centralized, competing institutions, largely free of any democratic accountability" end.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the few pieces of media that gets this right vis-a-vis conspiracy being conflated with the loosely coupled nature of government whose components are sometimes adversarial even in the face of external threat
> There's nothing wrong with the phrase "deep state". If you're concerned about associations with Trump (which I think you should not be), you can use a former Obama official's favored term, "the blob".
To me, 'deep state' implies an illegal conspiracy against democracy. 'The blob' is a large organization that is hard to change, which describes every such organization. Ask an executive at a Fortune 500 company about blobs. The executive branch has the added complication that the CEO has limited powers and doesn't make the rules, Congress does. At work, you follow the boss's instructions. In the executive branch, you follow the Constitution first, then the laws made by the American people via Congress (accumulated over centuries), then the President's instructions - including instructions of prior presidents that haven't been changed.
Maybe 'deep state' was used before Trump, but the meaning has changed.
If you can operate without democratic control and do things that would be illegal for anyone else to do, are you an "illegal conspiracy against democracy"? I think every intelligent US president since Eisenhower (which makes sense, as the relevant institutions largely came into being after WW2) has recognized that such a thing exists, with varying degrees of openness (Eisenhower), paranoia (Nixon), and glee (HW Bush).
> To me, 'deep state' implies an illegal conspiracy against democracy.
This is a very new, post-Trump/QAnon interpretation. The “deep state” has, for at least many decades prior, meant those aspects of government which persist from administration to administration, largely unaffected by those in power. E.g. the CIA keeps doing its thing regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in office.
Now in as much as these aspects of government are controlled by unelected officials who are willing to work against the elected representatives (think: J Edgar Hoover), that constitutes a shadow government.
I think it is more likely that 5) many high ranking government officials have sympathetic views with said forces and don’t mind the “occasional incident” as long as said forces are working towards their common goal (whatever that goal might be; but it is probably Islamophobia, settler colonialism and exploitative capitalism).
I won't contest that. I recognize that my post was a bit dramatic but it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable knowing what we do know about past behaviors.
> Imagine how much society would improve if all the dirt got aired.
Depends on the dirt. Some of it might be private and personal stuff, such as infidelity. That type of stuff, while blackmailable, doesn't really benefit the public much.
Don't believe representatives are elected because of their integrity and their willingness to serve.
They represent groups of interest. And being blackmailable is, in my opinion, a handy leash to keep them in check, for those groups which propose the candidates
The public is not concerned with corruption until they feel affected by it.
It sounds more like you're asserting that corruption has been redifined, because we expect elected officials to represent a group of interests... But this is quite circular.
It would be better for us to maintain our high expectations of our leaders, even if those expectations are not currently being met. It doesn't mean that they cannot be met. It feels so damned gamed that I cannot imagine what a genuine political candidate would look like, a member of the public deciding, yes, I will run for office, and then speaking to their friends and neighbors about it, and submitting the paperwork to make it official.
Can you imagine if that's what politics was? Wouldn't it be amazing? Sometimes I feel like there's too many smart people with way too much time on their hands, and they create these political storms as a way to generate money. I hope they all go into the gaming industry and make a tone of money without undermining a functional democracy. The problems we have don't always have money behind them. In fact, it's usually a trade-off we want someone with money to take, that they don't want to take. And the way we coerce an organization is through legislation. So it makes sense for orgs to take that control back and spend on PR campaigns and pundits to argue in their favor. Payola for sophists. But I digress...
Everyone has dirty laundry they would prefer not be aired, and if they don't then their friends, family, or partners do. I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
>I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
Don't worry, you live in a world where a man with a well documented decades-long laundry list of scandals and faux-pas can brag on tape about how he can get away with molesting young women because of how rich he is and still get elected President.
I'm actually wondering what you could effectively blackmail an American politician with, given how little Americans seem to care about the morality of their leaders. Maybe just the eponymous "dead girl or live boy," but then you have the Kennedys...
> I'm actually wondering what you could effectively blackmail an American politician with, given how little Americans seem to care about the morality of their leaders.
Well, in general anything that would get them prosecuted for a felony should be an effective stick. Add in a carrot and now they're on the hook for bribery too.
> I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
Well lucky you, we have the exact 100% polar opposite of that system currently. I think it would be fine to move toward it a little.
> Well lucky you, we have the exact 100% polar opposite of that system currently. I think it would be fine to move toward it a little.
I'm skeptical of the notion that outing public officials (when the blackmail material is personal in nature as posited by the GP) would move toward that goal.
I don't even think an exception should be made for material that would expose hypocrisy in policy-making (eg. 'pro-life' lawmakers that have had or facilitated an abortion).
Straight-up crimes though (bribery, corruption, theft, insider trading, etc.), sure.
Moral purity isn’t required, just some honesty. I don’t care if politicians cheat on their spouses or even if they rail coke out of hookers’ asses on the weekend. Just don’t pretend you don’t do someone has power over you if they find out you do.
remember when the cia interfered with the congressional investigation of their torture program, by getting the FBI to investigate senators for viewing the documents that the CIA provided them, and spying on the senate investigation activities, and then nothing happened
Yes, I remember! But I just got up to 2011 on my todo list and am playing through Borderlands 2. I'll follow up on 2014 matters which will hopefully take less than 3 more years.
Congress has blocked inquiries into their split loyalty as far as them having multiple citizenship in other countries. If you were McDonald's board of directors would you allow someone to be on both the McDonald's board and Wendy's?
Congress isn't personally harmed by a surveillance state unless you consider they may all be being blackmailed but that is another conversation. In fact mass surveillance widens the barrier to new entries into politics as they can use whatever dirty they find and give it to federally funded media mouthpieces.
This week we saw articles of sexual crimes against children being swept under the rug to "protect our country" do we really think that congress would actively pursuit this line of inquiry?
I can believe there are shadow organizations that lack oversight. In fact, it seems likely.
But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
I think game theory would indicate that your only chance of maintaining a shadow organization in the US gov for any length of time is going to be secrecy and maybe some heavily funded lobbying.
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able.
I'd be more than willing to bet that they do. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." and that only covers "honest" men who wouldn't have illegal coordination with PACs, bribes with lobbyists, personal communications filled with racism, or evidence of sexual activities that might upset their base. When "6 lines" becomes a record of everything you've ever done online, all of your communications, your GPS coordinates and the data of anyone around you it's going to get easier to find a noose around your neck.
Even if there managed to exist a single person in congress who wasn't screwing over the American people somehow for personal gain, or didn't have some skeleton in their closet they didn't want exposed to voters/campaign contributors when a group is capable of compromising your system and inserting whatever offensive material they want to use against you it's incentive enough to back off.
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
Why is it so hard to believe that a few powerful indivisuals at the top, with common interests and agendas, are banded together?
There's no official organization but a few indivisuals that streer things their way because they can.
I think there are enough hornery (and incidentally patriotic) congresspeople that they'd be okay exposing the CIA for blackmail even at the expense of exposing the secret.
The funny thing is that the worst of it is already exposed, and no-one seems to care. money-in-politics, the most serious problem of our time, is a "meh" issue to most folks, even though money poisons discourse on literally every other issues! And we know the precise mechanism and how to stop it (a law overturning Citizens United), and yet we do nothing.
how would you cut the budget of the CIA for example, an organization that doesn't really answer to anyone but itself ? an organization that can self fund when it wants.
Eisenhower, a general called out the so called military industrial complex in a way that befits a prophet
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
There's a long history of illegal domestic surveillance since at least the 1940s - why would it have stopped?
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
Secret blackmail files worked for J. Edgar Hoover[0].
Politics is a funny business. I have spent alot of time dealing with political people ranging from staffers to actual officials.
Many are very well meaning public servants, others careerists, some are… insane on various scales. Politics is a business with uncertain outcomes where “friends” are important and personal stakes are high.
From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them. But even the most boring congressman has a legal escrow account with irregularities, a kid with emotional problems that caused trouble, a campaign finance violation, etc.
I don’t think there is a shadow cabal, but some executive branch entities wield tremendous power.
> From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them.
I'd like to visit the Museum of Counterproductivity in the area of your brain that downgraded Bobert from business owner to bartender.
it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able
You don't need to control every congresscritter directly, just to control them by proxy is enough. The nomination committees have a lot of power on who stays and who goes, for example, and so do subcommittee chairs.
I'm all for sorting the problem out, but isn't the reality a little more complex given other countries? Doesn't cutting your intelligence / signals budgets give your "enemies" an advantage? By "enemies" I'm referring predominantly to foreign nation states.
It's difficult, you have to break down those brotherhoods who will fight to death to be "independent". And then you have to find a way to prevent them from spawning again. I don't have any idea how to do it properly.
I'd expect if we lived in the sort of society that would execute the head of the NSA for treason or something similar when the Snowden revelations came out, it would have societally beneficial chilling effect on intelligence organization brazenness.
Unfortunately, it seems intelligence is mostly immune from liability, and lack of consequences lets the rot fester.
Once the system is setup who is in control is going to be irrelevant. I believe the best approach is to educate the citizens so that 1) They follow scientific methods; 2) They are more resistant to advertisement/propaganda; 3) They are keen to corruption and willing to protest.
"1) They follow scientific methods.
2) They are more resistant to advertisement/propaganda;
3) They are keen to corruption and willing to protest."
You are asking way too much of people. "Normal" people can't fulfill any of those 3 requests. Not that they don't want to (most don't), or that they aren't taught to (this is conflicting through life)
They can't. #1 and #2 sound like something an autist would tend to do.
The types of societies that execute high level civil servants don't actually execute them for the reason given - the reason is an excuse for the masses, the real reason is they fell out of power or were a threat to someone important.
Israel has zero interest in spying on random embassy employees in Uganda who are working with protesters there. This is purely mercenary stuff, and the US is annoyed that a podunk nowhere country got its hands on first-rate tools.
What are you trying to suggest? It's just a typical reflexive reactive response to any comment that the government acts in ways other than presented to you by corporate media.
It only takes 3 minutes of google searches or even a daily scan of Hacker News to see endless examples of government corruption and malfeasance. Government employees are only human after all, and there are millions of them. To think this sort of activity ends once you become an agent of the government is absurd.
This weekend I was traveling and I put the stray $20 from my pocket in the bin at the TSA checkpoint. An agent quickly pulled it out and handed it back to me. He then said "a lot of good people work here, but they're still human". It's kind of wild that we endure that level of complacency here in the States.
That's a pretty weird statement, if one of his colleagues would swipe cash that travelers put in the bins then they should fire their ass and move them to the 'not good people' column. Stealing isn't something that defines you as human.
I don't think he has the power to fire his colleagues. I think that's reading too much into it, for a lot of people 20 is a lot and for a lot of people you just don't trust others with stray cash laying around. It doesn't say much about humans, except that a small portion of people are willing to commit crime and that's why we have to protect ourselves
I think the point the employee was making was that there is a lot of financial desperation among TSA employees, and also minimal supervision. This is pretty well-documented in the news media as well.
Trying to suggest nothing, I am explicitly saying there is nothing in the article to lead a reasonable person down the shadow government and deep state path
It seems vanilla spying or vanilla state backed industrial espionage
This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but domestic. Same playbook, different players.