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Comment by alluro2

8 days ago

It's quite wild to think how US wouldn't want access to their data on a plate, through AWS/GCP/Azure. You must not be aware of the last decade of news when it comes to US and security.

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alluro2

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arcfour  8 days ago

The US and South Korea are allies, and SK doesn't have much particular strategic value that I'm aware of? At least not anything they wouldn't already be sharing with the US?

Can you articulate what particular advantages the US would be pursuing by stealing SK secret data (assuming it was not protected sufficiently on AWS/GCP to prevent this, and assuming that platform security features have to be defeated to extract this data—this is a lot of risk from the US's side, to go after this data, if they are found out in this hypothetical, I might add, so "they would steal whatever just to have it" is doubtful to me).

  • cyphar  8 days ago

    The NSA phone-tapped Angela Merkel's phone while she was chancellor as well as her staff and the staff of her predecessor[1], despite the two countries also being close allies. "We are allies, why would they need to spy on us?" is therefore proveably not enough of a reason for the US to not spy on you (let's not forget that the NSA spies on the entire planet's internet communications).

    The US also has a secret spy facility in Pine Gap that is believed to (among other things) spy on Australian communications, again despite both countries being very close allies. No Australians know what happens at Pine Gap, so maybe they just sit around knitting all day, but it seems somewhat unlikely.

    [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-g...