Intelligence sharing question.

[ihhawk]

We know it is illegal for the US Government to spy on Trump.

If the UK or Germany spied on Trump (legal for them), would they be allowed to share the information with the US government under the rules that Obama changed in January?

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

We know it is illegal for the US Government to spy on Trump.

If the UK or Germany spied on Trump (legal for them), would they be allowed to share the information with the US government under the rules that Obama changed in January?

Pretty sure this sort of thing is done all the time about everything else. Not sure why we'd carve out an exception for POTUS.

By the way, we don't just get information from our global intelligence allies. And we don't just supplement that with info we snoop from our foes. We also buy it from commercial sources that aren't hampered by constitutional or legal restrictions.

Part of the revision of the PATRIOT Act made it somewhat harder for our government to snoop on US citizens. But it (and other laws) make it easier for private enterprise to snoop and sell what they learn. So all we may have done with those weak changes is to privatize some of our intelligence capability - which allows private enterprise to profit from the sale of what used to be kept secret.

Clever, huh? Bit by bit we sell off the government and the commons.

 

[Joes Place]

We know it is illegal for the US Government to spy on Trump.

If the UK or Germany spied on Trump (legal for them), would they be allowed to share the information with the US government under the rules that Obama changed in January?

They'd be "allowed" to share information regardless of any "Obama rules changes in January". It's their information and they can decide whether to leak it to our CIA/NSA or not.

 

[ihhawk]

If Trump wanted to spy on Don Lemon at CNN, he could get the word out to the UK and the UK could do the spying and then share the information with Trump? That way it isnt the USA spying on a USA citizen?