Fair enough

Especially the French, the Spanish and the EU kleptocracy.

So, if the German intelligence agencies have, at any time during Angela Merkel’s time in power, been spying on any country that Germany would considered to be an ally, she will resign.

Obviously anything else would be mere hypocrisy.

And if the German intelligence agencies have not been spying on Germany’s allies, then their bosses should resign, as they haven’t been doing their jobs properly. An ally is an ally until they’re not. Are we seriously meant to believe that intelligence agencies only begin spying efforts on the day that a former ally’s interests suddenly no longer coincide with their own.

Jesus. This is the level of political debate in our country.

Spying between friends is unacceptable is it? Well she needs to have a chat with the French. Who really do live up to the Inspector Clouseau stereotype.

For a start, the French spy on themselves all the time. The Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux attempted to spy on everyone who played, or could play, a role in public life. Which was fine until they got caught out as well:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is taking legal action for libel and invasion of privacy against the former head of a French intelligence agency.
The move follows the publication of leaked extracts from diaries belonging to Yves Bertrand.
The extracts include unsubstantiated allegations about several leading politicians, including Mr Sarkozy.
Mr Bertrand’s agency reports to the government on internal political issues and threats to domestic order.
However, it is clear from the contents of his notebooks that as head of a domestic intelligence agency, Mr Bertrand viewed his remit rather more broadly.
Published in Le Point news magazine, the private notebooks contain all sorts of tittle-tattle about the financial, sexual and personal secrets of prominent men and women.
….
Mr Sarkozy believes – and the notebooks appear to bear this out – that during the early years of this decade the then President, Jacques Chirac, was using the Renseignements Generaux agency to dig up dirt on his rivals, of whom Mr Sarkozy was one.
Another – the former socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin – has also said that the intelligence chief tried to destabilise him by investigating his family and friends.

So Sarkozy abolished them by merging them with one of France’s many other internal security agencies.

How about the other main spy agency, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure?

In the early 1990s a senior French intelligence officer created another major scandal by revealing that the DGSE had conducted economic intelligence operations against American businessmen in France.

Between the early 1970s to the late 1980s, the DGSE had effectively planted agents in major U.S. companies, such as Texas Instruments, IBM and Corning. Some of the economic intelligence thus acquired was shared with French corporations, such as the Compagnie des Machines Bull.

November 2010, 3 operatives from DGSE’s Service Operations (SO) (formerly Service 7) botched an operation to burgle the room of China Eastern Airlines’ boss Shaoyong Liu at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Toulouse. The botched operation resulted in the suspension of all of SO’s activities and the very survival of the unit was called into question. SO only operates on French soil, where it mounts secret HUMINT operations such as searching hotel rooms, opening mail or diplomatic pouches.

And here is an article on the French equivalent of Echelon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon

@ Steve

If so, I bagsy Christina Hendricks.

The Thought Gang – damn. I’ll take… Catherine Tate? 🙁