Spying is here to stay, so why not enjoy it?

One of the curious things about people in the United States is that they think they own their government. This plays out in a number of ways, but there is one constant: Ordinary citizens want to know what the government is doing in their name. And when it does something secretly to which they object, they want it dragged into the sunshine.

Edward Snowden provides one example.

A survey published in Newsweek magazine after Snowden's first revelations about NSA spying found that 55 percent of US respondents thought he was right to expose the government. Only 29 percent thought he was wrong.

A whopping 82 percent also said they believed business secrets, not just military ones, were being monitored. Now we know that, in fact, the National Security Agency spied on China Telecom, Huawei and Pacnet, an operator of undersea fiber-optic cables. Surely, there are many others.

A look inside the NSA's inquisitorial head is sobering. Leaked documents said the agency's mission was to "acquire the capabilities to gather intelligence on anyone, anytime, anywhere" - to "collect it all", "process it all", "exploit it all", "partner it all", "sniff it all" and "know it all". It was an overreach that risked core values such as privacy and turned government officials into adversaries. The people did not approve.

For some in the US, Snowden is a traitor. They trust their government and are willing to give it carte blanche, sight unseen - and the less seen the better.

Then there are those who decry spying as a matter of principle. The US shouldn't be sneaking around, they say, and Snowden is a hero, a catalyst for positive change.

And then there are the hybrids, caught on the horns of a dilemma, who fear Snowden might have compromised national security but who also know that without him the tentacles of the NSA had the potential to enslave them. And so Snowden is part traitor, part hero - but more of the latter.

Of course, the spy game has been played for millennia. It has only become more noticeable in recent years as technology has changed the rules by several orders of magnitude. A nation expresses outrage at being hacked one day, only to be accused of hacking the next. Unlikely people are arrested, like Sherry Chen, a Chinese-American hydrologist who was falsely accused in October by an overzealous FBI of stealing trade secrets for China. Two weeks ago, a professor from Tianjin University, Zhang Hao, was arrested in the US on charges of economic espionage - an accusation he and his school vigorously deny.

In the flurry of charges and countercharges, it can be hard for ordinary people to know where the truth ends and the theatrics begin. Such is the world we live in.

One thing is certain, however: Espionage is alive and well, and it isn't going anywhere. In fact, spying goes hand-in-glove with national sovereignty. A case can be made that nations actually have an obligation to spy. Information has value, and everybody's looking for an edge. Just don't get caught.

Maybe what's needed is an international scorecard and a new TV game show.

Contact the writer at randy@chinadaily.net.cn