Exactly. As an American I really do not see why I should care if we spy on our allies. We have everything to gain from gathering privileged knowledge and very little to lose.
Arrogant? Maybe. But it's the exact thing every country in the world has been doing ever since there was a such thing as nations and diplomacy. I think it's naive to think that anybody really cares about some objective notion of fairness.
As for their help, whether or not they want to help has never mattered. They will continue to either help or not help (or impede) for the same reasons they always have - whether it's in their own national interest to do so.
You're a private citizen. You're not worth spying on and it would be wrong to do so. If you were the Chancellor of Germany, it would be ridiculous of you to expect not to be spied on by anyone with the capability.
Private citizens are now targets for the NSA and GCHQ because their personal vulnerabilities (and devices) can be used to compromise infrastructure that is used by "interesting" players.
Who is our allies? Who are our enemies? Do we spy on them equally?
Is the information yielded from spying only used for valid national concerns?
The answer is of course you cannot see why you should care, since any duplicity is hidden behind the cloak of good ole patriotic national security there is nothing for you to see. Continue on brave blind soldier.
We should spy on all foreign states equally. We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.
Please define what you consider a valid national concern.
All of this said - I am wholly opposed to any and all domestic spying without proper legal and constitutional authorization. Further, information learned about America citizens through foreign espionage must never be used and should be destroyed as soon as it is discovered.
Good luck taking on the U.S. military, which, even if you could defeat via some joint coalition involving the EU, China and Russia - the economic fallout from such a war would probably be globally devastating - much worse than whatever damage the US inflicts by blatantly spying on foreign entities.
I think it is up to you to define valid national concern. Since you are OK with it the onus for explaining how policy is carried out in action and why it is OK is with you.
As far as I can tell many resources both human and otherwise have been expended by the US govt to solidify US corporate grounding. Many of those corporations seek to maximize profit and revenues by offshoring labor and finances. I do not accept this byproduct of excessive lobbying as valid national concerns.
If the nation's sovereignty is a conduit for corporate profits, and immense personal profits by the few monied enough to lobby state actors, then the nation is not very sovereign at all.
I essentially did in the first sentence of my original reply - any foreign affair that could potentially involve our defense or economy is a valid national concern and therefore should be the reason we perform significant foreign espionage.
I do not follow where you are going with the lobbying/off-shoring concern? I do not have a position at this time, one way or another on the idea of whether a nation controlled by corporate-interests is sovereign or not... I could see arguments for both - I will say such a system is not democratic however - and I strongly opposed to non-representative forms of government.
