I would imagine that any G20 host and it allies would use the opportunity to gather intelligence. I would also assume that where ever it is hosted, many intelligence agencies would be active.

If not, then what are these agencies for? They were never designed for crime fighting or mass surveillance of populations. There were and still are for spying on nations. G20 summits are a prime and legit target.

IMHO, this is a proper use of such agencies.

These actions are in breach of Articles 27 and 30 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (of which the US and UK are signatories):

Article 27: 1.The receiving State shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes.

Article 30: 1.The private residence of a diplomatic agent shall enjoy the same inviolability and protection as the premises of the mission. 2.His papers, correspondence and his property, shall likewise enjoy inviolability.

How many countries will attend the next G20 in London?

How many countries will attend any G20 summit in any country??

If spying on them is fair game...

I really can't reason about this suff, so someone help me out here. To me the whole existence of such agencies is borderline immoral.

Also, morality? Intelligence agencies? This is realpolitik man. If we assume high level politicians resemble executives they're 20% pstchopaths. The other 80% are also quite capable of reasoning amorally about goals and power.

As far as my view(which is rather ignorant, hence why I would like to know and discuss more) is concerned, I'd think that some form of international agreement on spying/intelligence gathering should be formed and enforced. For example the NSA hacking to Hong Kong machines should be a criminal offense, and the same should go the other way around. This stuff should really go through the legal system and people should be punished accordingly. Just because it is some form of governmental intelligence agency shouldn't ever put it above the law.

As we have seen with the case of NSA, it is used for domestic spying too and nobody really knows for what else.

Your proposed system requires a world government with real powers of enforcement. It is not in the interests of the USA, China, Russia, India, Pakistan or France to do this. Absent wholehearted cooperation by them this cannot happen. If you got all of them on board you might be able to get the rest of the world on board.

In the world we live in, and will continue living in until there is a world government there are bad people everywhere and some of them work for other governments, who can and will protect them. This doesn't even touch on the fact that your/my/any human values are not universal, and universal law is about universal enforcement. Whoever wins the last war gets to tell everyone what to do. That's what world government is.

Yeah, fuck 'em, burn the village to the ground.

And burning the village to the ground is probably a stupid idea, which is a sufficient reason not to do it. But if it can be done and is the most efficient way of achieving the goal there are people doing it.

Service to the state, glory to the Race!

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!

One would imagine that every country attending a G20 summit would expect to be spied on like this, because they would be doing the same to others.

I think the status quo should be less offensive and competitive and more trustworthy and collaborative. But then again, who would trust a liar, especially in situation where one too would lie?

I was under the impression they were there to protect a nation's security against foreign threats, not to spy on delegates at international conferences for economic and political advantage.

If our behaviour is essentially amoral and we are willing to break diplomatic treaties and international law in secret (as you are advocating), we should expect the same in return, and have no right to talk about international law, human rights, democracy, national sovereignty or expect anyone else to respect them when we need them. Why shouldn't Russia simply cut off the gas supply to the UK next winter when they don't get what they want, or start murdering government ministers rather than dissidents with Polonium? Realpolitik is a dangerous game to play, particularly when you are a declining power (as the UK is), and I think it better we at least try to stand up for the values we think are right, and hold ourselves to the same standards we would hold others to.

>If not, then what are these agencies for?

Mitigating actual threats to our national security, our allies' security, the security of our citizens abroad maybe. And not for helping Boeing outbid Airbus.

You left out one important distinction -- that the thing they are designed to do constitues an act of aggression or at the very least undermines trust. These are supposedly allies.

I wonder what Snowden is thinking by leaking the real cloak-and-dagger stuff though. Diplomacy has been at least somewhat adversarial since the world's "second oldest profession" came about, and the flipside to advancing your own citizens' negotiating position by spying is to allow the other nations to conspire against you behind your back.

Diplomacy is a dangerous, dangerous game to insert yourself into, Mr. Snowden, and will never have clear friends or enemies.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3488548.stm

On a more serious note, perhaps this will spur further investment in open, reliable encryption technologies around the world. After all, governments can put vast amounts of money into this, that individuals and most companies cannot.

And on a further note, I hope that these revelations keep coming, keep the outrage up, and force politicians to realise that they're in the crosshairs too.

In the worst case, use the telephone in your hotel room to setup a SLIP or PPP connection back home using a known-good and known-clean laptop brought from home. But an Internet cafe? Really?

But there's a lot more to this than countries not taking proper security measures. It's not easy if your "adversary" has a 0-day exploit for your Blackberry that came straight from the company that made it (which may be the case).

Seeing secure, totally open hardware come out of this would be great.

The bigest takeaway from all of this is that you can't trust closed software that was developed by foreign corporations.

I do agree (and have for years) that people with Important Data should rely exclusively on open-source software if it is important that the data is handled properly, but OSS is not a panacea to this by any means.

"For the first time, analysts had a live picture of who was talking to who that updated constantly and automatically," according to an internal review."

That drunk Swiss guy that Snowden knew about may be some distant echo of this exploit.

I'm very interested to see where the argument for forcing manufacturers to include back doors goes once events like this are part of the public consciousness.

[1] Whenever there's doubt, there is no doubt.

I would have assumed that a government would have enough cash (and sense) to purchase and run its own BES software, keeping the keys out of RIMs hands.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime.

So, are the diplomatic and political representatives of allied powers suspected criminals or suspected terrorists then?

I'm not sure how they can possibly wriggle out of this one without much egg on face, and possibly some significant consequences for diplomatic standing too, with the G8 summit taking place this week.

I disagree with the article here. PRISM absolutely raises serious questions about the boundaries of intelligence agencies. But spying on other governments - which is the whole reason for GCHQ existing - that's exactly what these agencies exist to do.

It's like all those Russian sleeper agents in the US back in 2010. It was highly embarrassing for Russia, but there was virtually no change to diplomatic or political relations...because it's what spying is about. And exactly the same thing happened a few months ago when Russia threw out a US 'diplomat' (or, as it turned out, CIA agent) for totally botching a recruitment job. Embarrassing for the US, but no diplomatic consequences of any noticeable kind.

But it doesn't reflect well on all the politicians rushing to defend mass surveillance/dragnet operations on the grounds that these capabilities are only used in serious crime/terrorism/whatever other specific cases they admitted to.

It's also rather surprising that some of these tactics were used or worked at all, not because there was any real doubt that these kinds of organisations could use them if they were willing to commit enough resources, but more because anyone attending a high profile event like that actually fell for the tactics and made it worthwhile to bother trying them in the first place.

I suppose you could say it was an ethical issue, but I can't imagine attendees not being aware that they were probably under surveillance. I would bet the countries caught out were those inexperienced in high-level foreign intelligence. The Guardian article alludes to this somewhat - it says GCHQ managed to "[target] the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party", but only "receive reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader". "Attempt" is the operative word here.

It would be incredibly naive for the Russians to go to a G8 conference in the UK and not expect to be bugged - and vice versa, if the conference was in Moscow. It's not as if the spying just stopped when the Cold War ended.