The NSA's answer to charges that it spies on the phone calls of citizens in the European Union is that it isn't spying, it is analyzing information provided to it by the intelligence agencies of allied governments.  See, the NSA doesn't spy on Spanish people's phone calls.  Spain does.  Then they tell the NSA all about it.  Glad we cleared that up.

This is very close to a defense of the metadata collection that the NSA engages in at home -- the NSA doesn't "collect" the data, says the argument, the phone companies do.  Then they tell the NSA all about it.  I'm not sure why that's supposed to make me think differently about the whole endeavor, but it works for some people.

To me, the explanation that all of this is just the result of voluntary agreements between the U.S. intelligence agencies, private companies and foreign intelligence agencies just makes it all worse.  My clickbaity headline about the world's shadow government refers exactly to this --

Our NSA is not transparent and is minimally accountable to the public.  If Spain's version of the NSA is also not transparent and is minimally accountable to the Spanish public, then it is very dangerous to have these two entities making agreements, in secret, about who gets to share what.

Surely. all of these agreements make whatever rules about what U.S. agencies can and can't do with regard to U.S. citizens pretty meaningless.  Gee, says the NSA, it is illegal for us to spy on that particular target but maybe Spain can do it?  Then we can spy on something for them in exchange...

There's no point in limiting the behavior of these agencies if we are going to let them collaborate with public and private entities that are not prohibited from taking those actions. In essence, it's a giant gun show loophole in intelligence regulation.  At least Spain and France are democracies.  Imagine what would happen if our intelligence agencies were to cooperate in secret with agencies run by dictatorships where torture is legal.

Oh, wait... this already happened.

Maybe globalization isn't the best model for spy agencies.