The realities of spying game: so unshocking

The news regarding the Snowden's "revelations" of NSA spying on everything and everyone, the POTUS himself possibly included, has totally failed to make any kind of lasting impression on this here cynic. Not being an expert on espionage matters, I have used a bit of common sense and a lot of skepticism to come to a simple (and trivial) conclusion: everyone spies on everyone to the best of everyone's abilities. This healthy outlook goes a long way to make a person's day more pleasant and allows the person to dedicate more time to better things. Like wondering about the next shocker Miley Cyrus is busily planning for the eagerly attentive humanity...

So the latest disclosure was no more than another part of the already known and somewhat boring puzzle, easily set into its place:

US spies shared information garnered through eavesdropping with Jerusalem, but also secretly tracked Israeli military actions, new papers on the breadth of Washington’s intelligence gathering activities revealed Sunday morning.

So what? The only question is... cut it, there are no questions really.

I know that there are a lot of people still incensed by the thought that someone drools over their most intimate moments conveyed over the phone or e-mail to somebody who was supposed to be the only recipient of their highly personal information. Too bad.

Thus, the piece titled The Realities of Intelligence: The French View not only confirmed to me that it is not for nothing that France produced so many outstanding thinkers, known for their realistic and cynical dissection of human nature, but also added a new word to my arsenal of cynical terms: "unshocking".

In an interview with the Parisian daily Le Monde, Phillippe Hayez, a former assistant director of DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence agency (equivalent to NSA and CIA combined), explained just how unshocking these vaunted revelations are to anyone who knows how espionage actually works. Allowing that the present public uproar represents “more like climate change than a mere passing cloud,” Hayez added that, diplomatically speaking, this is but “a mere episode in the cascade of ‘revelations’ about intelligence unleashed by Edward Snowden.”

I only hope that this "cascade of ‘revelations’" will eventually bring something more exciting than another item of proof that everyone... yawn...

For full disclosure: the author of this post is not known for his voyeurism (at least no more than an average person) and isn't thrilled by listening to other people's phone calls, reading mails or peeking into their bedrooms. And the author definitely doesn't support NSA and its colleagues elsewhere in their drive to know all about us.

Update: Brazil Admits It Spied On U.S. Diplomats. Tsk tsk... what is the world coming to?

Cluster-what, did you say? Or didn't you?

Via Sad Red Earth.