Meeting on "spying on our allies"

We had our discussion about the appropriateness of states spying on their allies as the US was caught not too long ago listening on the German chancellor's mobile phone.

Just about all the people at the meeting thought spying is something we have to do and that it is not enough to trust someone's word just because they are our "allies".

The famous saying that "countries have interests, not allies", that sovereign states can change their interests and find themselves at odds with their previous positions and therefore it is to every states individual interests to monitor others.

Here, I have to clarify that by spying, I do not include legal legitimate actions of research and monitoring. 

It is not spying to keep tabs on the website of another sovereign state to see what they are telling the world about their latest position on a particular issue.

Spying is the act of getting information by clandestine means, through lying about one's identity, tapping into communications without the other sovereign state's permission, and in general, getting information that the other states do not want to be publicized.

Spies and undercover police officers by necessity lie about their identity in order to get information.

We justify their existence because we cannot control the other sovereign state with our laws and criminal elements do not respect our laws.

However, everyone agrees that we should not have private investigators checking on our spouses even though the relationship is of great importance to us and our spouses have independence to act as they wish.

The act of monitoring without the other party's knowledge destroys trust which is central to an intimate relationship.

We can draw a scale of relationships where rogue states like North Korea on one end and our spouses and love ones are on the other end with everything in between. 

We definitely need to monitor states and people we do not trust and especially if they operate outside of our legal structure.  There is little to loose in trust when the monitoring or spying is revealed as it is expected.

With intimate relationships, clandestine monitoring is so damaging to the trust and the relationship that it causes more damage than it is worth.

Then there are the middle situations with so call friendly states where spying on each other is something we say we don't do but we cannot afford not to do,........ just in case.

Should we check on our business partner to see if they are about to break our business agreement to join with our competitor?

It all depends on the closeness of relationship and the sensitivity of the trust involved.

What surprised me most is that most people at the meeting thought it was appropriate for the Canadian federal government and the provincial governments to be spying on each other. 

There are heated debates from time to time about federal provincial matters and then there is the possible matter of Quebec separation.

Perhaps the group was confused about my definition of spying being limited to illegal means of collecting information and not about legal monitoring their counter parties.

It is unimaginable to me to find our different levels of governments "spying" on each other when negotiating transfer payments and other matters of a sensitive nature.  The electorate will simply think we have a bunch of criminals running our countries.  What else are they doing that is illegal?

So spying is really all justified on a utilitarian basis of necessity with parties that have no obligations to us like other foreign sovereign countries or criminals that live outside the law.   The lost of trust among civilized citizens within a good judicial system is too high a price to pay for the possible information to come out of spying.

Or am I just too naive?