All major gov'ts intercept each other's traffic and do espionage (industrial or intelligence) on each other. It's a kind of gentleman's agreement. We know you spy on us, you know we spy on you, but let's pretend we don't, publicly, and if something becomes public (one of us is careless), act outraged and protest. (the Lady doeth protest too much)
Possibly a bit of commercial opportunism as well. Regardless of whether it improves security, it would be in Germany's economic interests for more Europeans to use Europe-based webservices rather than U.S.-based ones.
Just like Captain Renault in Casablanca - though when I was running a dark aws server (bare ip no domain assigned) for my employer it was funny that all the attacks came via Chinese/Russian IP ranges.
>All major gov'ts intercept each other's traffic and do espionage (industrial or intelligence) on each other. It's a kind of gentleman's agreement.
1) What about the no-major gov'ts? Are those OK to be spied on? Like half of Europe's population and most of the rest of the world?
2) And, no, that "all major gov'ts intercept each other's traffic and do espionage" paints a BS naive picture. As if, say, Austria is in the same level with the US on this.
No major country does this at the level the US does or with equal resources. For one, the rest of the "major gov'ts" don't "own" the internet, from ICANN to all the major players (Google, FB, Apple, MS, Amazon). Not to mention most (all?) credit card companies are also American.
And even if they did, they would not know what to do with it. They don't have the diplomatic upper hand or the major interests in almost every field the US has.
All major gov'ts intercept each other's traffic and do espionage (industrial or intelligence) on each other. It's a kind of gentleman's agreement. We know you spy on us, you know we spy on you, but let's pretend we don't, publicly, and if something becomes public (one of us is careless), act outraged and protest. (the Lady doeth protest too much)