The citizens of a representative democracy have the right to know what the government is doing on their behalf, either domestically or abroad. Saying that the Snowden revelations damaged relations with another country is like an adulteress complaining that her snitching boyfriend damaged her relationship with her husband. The crime occurred long before the revelation...

>The citizens of a representative democracy have the right to know what the government is doing on their behalf, either domestically or abroad.

While I agree in a domestic context, that ideal can't really be applied to a foreign context with any specificity, at least in terms of intelligence activities.

The vast majority of intelligence operations rely on secrecy to be effective, and you can't maintain secrecy when you inform your citizenry about it.

I know that sounds bad, but the result would be that the representative democracies of the world wouldn't have effective intelligence agencies, and the other countries would. Not exactly an ideal outcome.

>Saying that the Snowden revelations damaged relations with another country is like an adulteress complaining that her snitching boyfriend damaged her relationship with her husband.

Sure, and if we extend my example using your analogy, the husband is and has been a cheating asshole the entire time. His hobbies include perpetrating various human rights violations on a massive scale.

oh, i didn't know your uncle Bob's spying on me (a "westerner") was in my interest. thank you so much for the enlightment!

in other news, Indonesia's oppressive regime has been propped up by the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto

If an oppressive regime is created or perpetuated by Cold War-era anti-communist policy, that's certainly a bad thing. Especially so if the regime then commits atrocities (e.g. as in Indonesia).

That said, I fail to see how such history should have any bearing on whether or not Indonesia is a valid signals intelligence target today. If anything, it provides compelling justification to continue such programs.

In my opinion, countries that have terrible human rights records generally lose their right to complain about privacy when spied on by countries with significantly better records.

Not sure what you mean by your last sentence; the US has a pretty abysmal human rights record, as well.

Relative to most other western democracies, the human rights record of the US is obviously profoundly deficient in certain areas. When compared to Indonesia however, in terms of how citizens are treated, I'd argue it's actually quite good.