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My view is the NSA is fine with SSH - a security letter to a US provider if it the plain text is 'safe' on the US owned/hosted server.
If the encrypted message is passed on the hope is that a deep understanding of Apple or MS at an OS level will still allow for plain text to be recovered after tracking.
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/09/nsa-br-mx/nsa-br-mx.htm hints at the fun tracking part if your nation is in good with most telcos ~ Mainway, Association, Dishfire, Goal...
Would the average create an air gap for encryption and decryption on average using another computer for networking only?

Today's Fun Article was commenting on a version of the "first break the gag order, then wait for government attacking in court, and then defend" mentioned in the "Alternative solution".
The defence team did bring up aspects of the NSA's domestic surveillance program.
You also have a mention of FBI, CIA, and .... DEA - something that seems to be news in 2013.
You can read more at http://cryptome.org/mayer-016.pdf eg
"... May 11, 2006, that the NSA has engaged in a continuing program of intelligence gathering directed against U.S. telephone subscribers of ...."
The Total Information Awareness program is also mentioned and issues that surround warrant or subpoena needs and the United States telephone network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAINWAY may make interesting reading too. (Warning: link may contain classified data: ensure unclassified work computer is clean)

I wouldn't put it past the government to be the catalyst to initiate a stressful event for the sake of military testing. It wouldn't be the first time. http://www.policymic.com/articles/16852/the-federal-reserve-bomb-plot-why-the-fbi-helped-a-terrorist-try-to-blow-up-the-fed

After all, do YOU know anyone that "willingly" opted in to download this app? I wonder if it's already built into some phones... http://cryptome.org/2013/08/assange-google-nsa.htm

I suspected it was some mistake, but I still think they're evil.

Well, Edward Snowden pretty much confirmed that.

"Don't be EVIL..."

Never, NEVER use anything by these crooks.

Google and the NSA: Who's holding the 'shit-bag' now?

by Julian Assange

It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.

So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.

The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the acknowledgements.

Schmidt's book is not about communicating with the public. He is worth $6.1 billion and does not need to sell books. Rather, this book is a mechanism by which Google seeks to project itself into Washington. It shows Washington that Google can be its partner, its geopolitical visionary, who will help Washington see further about America's interests. And by tying itself to the US state, Google thereby cements its own security, at the expense of all competitors.

Two months after my meeting with Eric Schmidt, WikiLeaks had a legal reason to call Hilary Clinton and to document that we were calling her. It's interesting that if you call the front desk of the State Department and ask for Hillary Clinton, you can actually get pretty close, and we've become quite good at this. Anyone who has seen Doctor Strangelove may remember the fantastic scene when Peter Sellers calls the White House from a payphone on the army base and is put on hold as his call gradually moves through the levels. Well WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, pretending to be my PA, put through our call to the State Department, and like Peter Sellers we started moving through the levels, and eventually we got up to Hillary Clinton's senior legal advisor, who said that we would be called back.

Shortly afterwards another one of our people, WikiLeaks' ambassador Joseph Farrell, received a call back, not from the State Department, but from Lisa Shields, the then girlfriend of Eric Schmidt, who does not formally work for the US State Department. So let's reprise this situation: The Chairman of Google's girlfriend was being used as a back channel for Hillary Clinton. This is illustrative. It shows that at this level of US society, as in other corporate states, it is all musical chairs.

That visit from Google while I was under house arrest was, as it turns out, an unofficial visit from the State Department. Just consider the people who accompanied Schmidt on that visit: his girlfriend Lisa Shields, Vice President for Communications at the CFR; Scott Malcolmson, former senior State Department advisor; and Jared Cohen, advisor to both Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, a kind of Generation Y Kissinger figure -- a noisy Quiet American as the author Graham Greene might have put it.

Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San Francisco's Bay Area. But as Goo

Was RT story mentioned further down on http://cryptome.org/2013/07/rockcam-spy.htm ?
Interesting notes about 'imagery data being relayed between the rocks, so that conventional signals intelligence methods would be unable to view the encrypted image/video streams." before the UK story.

My office Internet connection recently went from about 30Mbps down to 1.5Mbps, then back to 50Mbps a month later. No explanation, and speed tests to our ISP all came through at full speeds. We only saw problems on routes going outside our city and headed west. There were also a few inaccessible sites, but those were in very specific local areas. Ultimately, the best guess anyone could come up with is that a network to the west of our city had some routing problems.

We weren't the only customers to complain about a slowdown, but our ISP couldn't really do much about it. The Internet is made up of many networks working together, and sometimes shit happens. I wouldn't jump so quickly to assume it's non-neutral throttling or the NSA, when it could just be a careless guy with a badly-aimed backhoe. Give it some time, see if it improves, and if not, it may be time to move your VPS.

As an aside, you're likely going through New York because that's how you're reaching Europe to get to your UK-based VPS. Many transatlantic cables end in New York City, mostly because the stock market pays dearly for the few nanoseconds of lower latency.

Nicky Hager seems like he is more against broad spying powers, so to me it would be a little strange for him to side witht he NSA to leak specific information in order to remove Don Brash - although it wouldn't entirely surprise me either way.

The Dunne issue is very interesting, why should anyone be prosecuted for leaking information about the innapropriate use of spying? If the government has nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear right?

Re What the has happened to my country?
What was once in books and magazines via people like http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm is now much more public.
The openness of telco networks, US/NZ/UK politics, US trade groups, favours and sharing is not something new.
What is interesting is how open the NZ side is. The public/press know knows enough to look way beyond what could have been passed off as basic NZ telco/police efforts.
The next question is how will departments (and trusted contractors) within the US/UK/NZ/Aus/Canadian spy networks respond to their coveted generational access been revisited in yet another very public way.
Eastern Europe/South America does provide some history on the prospects for the press.

Did you even check the source/link you posted?

The very first entry as of now, is Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

So much for your comment that

'The United States cannot target a foreigner to intercept the communications of one of its own citizens, nor can it use a second party nation (UK, CAN, AUS, or NZ), or anyone else, to target US citizens or anyone else it would be otherwise prohibited from targeting.'

They've moved beyond that, they're targetting citizens directly, without warrants, i.e. illegally.

What you're describing is called "reverse targeting", and it is just as prohibited as if the United States did it itself. Your comment is neither correct nor "insightful" (as it's currently modded).

The United States cannot target a foreigner to intercept the communications of one of its own citizens, nor can it use a second party nation (UK, CAN, AUS, or NZ), or anyone else, to target US citizens or anyone else it would be otherwise prohibited from targeting. Not only can it not do that, but the United States actually gives second party nation citizens the same protections (generally speaking) as US citizens, meaning we don't "spy on", say, UK citizens for them, either.

So if you want to believe that "information sharing" between the Five Eyes is designed to allow the US to skirt its own laws, be my guest; the only problem is that you would be completely wrong.

The latest declassified version of USSID 18 is an informative read.

There is no better way to motivate a journalist than to tell them that they aren't allowed to to report on something. I mean, seriously, what do these governments think they are going to accomplish. Whistleblowers leak information because they are worried about a surveillance state. And journalists investigate things because they want to find a cover-up. Cranking down on the surveillance state and forcing a cover-up is only going to make them redouble their efforts. And since information can be mirrored around the world in seconds, what could they possibly accomplish? The number of whistleblowers willing to give information to reporters looking for a big story has just exploded, thanks to the kneejerk damage control response.

In other news, another whistleblower has anonymously leaked information on PROTON, CLEARWATER and LEXIS-NEXIS, US government programs that are used to data-mine contacts for intelligence and criminal prosecutions because the government wanted to cover-up how they were getting probable cause to investigate DEA actions (with the bullshit DICE program). Read it and weep.

That reads like someone snarfed a bunch of acronyms from job postings and stitched together a rambling "story". ZOMG, the government uses Lexis Nexis, crazeeee, lots of people do.

There is no better way to motivate a journalist than to tell them that they aren't allowed to to report on something. I mean, seriously, what do these governments think they are going to accomplish. Whistleblowers leak information because they are worried about a surveillance state. And journalists investigate things because they want to find a cover-up. Cranking down on the surveillance state and forcing a cover-up is only going to make them redouble their efforts. And since information can be mirrored around the world in seconds, what could they possibly accomplish? The number of whistleblowers willing to give information to reporters looking for a big story has just exploded, thanks to the kneejerk damage control response.

In other news, another whistleblower has anonymously leaked information on PROTON, CLEARWATER and LEXIS-NEXIS, US government programs that are used to data-mine contacts for intelligence and criminal prosecutions because the government wanted to cover-up how they were getting probable cause to investigate DEA actions (with the bullshit DICE program). Read it and weep.

I suppose you could read the wikipedia article, but the EU report on ECHELON has a nice section (10.7) outlining the known history of state-involved industrial espionage: http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm#10

Reading into Glen Greenwald's comments and some of his other statements, it would seem that much of the spying is used not for security purposes, rather it's to give an edge to certain select US businesses.

Unless you can point to something firmer, you probably have that garbled. The situation is rather more subtle than that.

Why We Spy on Our Allies - By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central Intelligence.

Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort
Airbus' Presentation on Boeing 787 - Bad CI Ethics?

http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm a long list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
http://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-elint.htm way back to 1972.
The general public cant do much, they have to be on web 2.0 and US social media as all their friends are and now work contacts too.
As for the smarter people who write code...
From diplomatic communications between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin in the press in 1986..
to Clipper chips to Room 641A - looking back what can we say?
Software was always in beta with encryption to follow with next years better CPU's?
Congress would save us? It would be to hard to track/tap/store? Think of the press if a US brand was ever exposed? Never used for domestic..
The people who could have said something got security clearances, NDA's or their own stock or had loans....
Was the GCHQ right in that if people know they are been watched they self-censor ? Or the NSA - if you get everything you can shape any change.

http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm a long list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
http://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-elint.htm way back to 1972.
The general public cant do much, they have to be on web 2.0 and US social media as all their friends are and now work contacts too.
As for the smarter people who write code...
From diplomatic communications between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin in the press in 1986..
to Clipper chips to Room 641A - looking back what can we say?
Software was always in beta with encryption to follow with next years better CPU's?
Congress would save us? It would be to hard to track/tap/store? Think of the press if a US brand was ever exposed? Never used for domestic..
The people who could have said something got security clearances, NDA's or their own stock or had loans....
Was the GCHQ right in that if people know they are been watched they self-censor ? Or the NSA - if you get everything you can shape any change.

So when top US brands help with decryption, video, sound, plain text - just for legal foreign "metadata"?
Time to rethink the 4th Amendment?
A UK or Australian style "Telecommunications Interception and Access Act" would be better then?
A more happy updated living document that understands the need for changes?
The employees could then sit, listen, watch and read with less of the
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." to distract them?
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm shows a few did speak out :)

From The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies:

13. Alice in Wonderland Logic. Avoid discussion of the issues by reasoning backwards or with an apparent deductive logic which forbears any actual material fact.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

From The Gentlepersons Guide to Forum Spies:

"4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

From the Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies:

Technique #3 - 'TOPIC DILUTION'

Topic dilution is not only effective in forum sliding it is also very useful in keeping the forum readers on unrelated and non-productive issues. This is a critical and useful technique to cause a 'RESOURCE BURN.' By implementing continual and non-related postings that distract and disrupt (trolling ) the forum readers they are more effectively stopped from anything of any real productivity. If the intensity of gradual dilution is intense enough, the readers will effectively stop researching and simply slip into a 'gossip mode.' In this state they can be more easily misdirected away from facts towards uninformed conjecture and opinion. The less informed they are the more effective and easy it becomes to control the entire group in the direction that you would desire the group to go in. It must be stressed that a proper assessment of the psychological capabilities and levels of education is first determined of the group to determine at what level to 'drive in the wedge.' By being too far off topic too quickly it may trigger censorship by a forum moderator.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

From The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies:

"4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues."

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

Damn, dude. You are fucking stupid.

"Cold Fjord" responds to my post 2 minutes later with unrelated garbage...and gets modded upwards, +2 insightful 2 minutes after that? Does anyone else need proof that he is using numerous accounts to farm moderation points, which he then uses to mod himself up and others down?

Again, see the following link for a full explanation of his tactics, then compare to his post/submission history--his favorite tactic is "forum-sliding" where he posts inane/irrelevant crap to force other posts--the ones he doesn't want viewed--off the bottom of the screen, thereby decreasing the chance those posts are modded upward. He is currently trying to push another post of mine in this discussion that is currently at +5 further down the screen by posting above it. He is also attempting to distract from the post he just responded to (mine) by changing the subject.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

"This was submitted by cold fjord..."

Lets take a close look at what "Cold Fjord" has been up to for the last week.

July 24, 2013 Posting from 11:06am --- 11:25pm Total Posts:13 Submissions:1 Longest Break from Slashdot:8hrs

July 23, 2013 Posting from 12:09am --- 11:46pm Total Posts:30 Submissions:2 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs

July 22, 2013 3 Posts Total, 1 in the AM, 2 in the PM DAY OFF (no links in posts-posting from a phone?)

July 21, 2013 Posting from 8:54am --- 10:29pm Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs

July 20, 2013 3 Posts Total, all 3 in the AM DAY OFF (no links in posts-posting from a phone?)

July 19, 2013 Posting from 4:05am --- 9:57am Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 8hrs

July 18, 2013 Posting from 1;22am --- 10:43pm Total Posts:18 Submissions:0 Longest Break from Slashdot: 4hrs x2

11 Submissions total in the last month.

As I've stated in a previous post ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3948321&cid=44218623 ), I suspect "Cold Fjord" of having at least 2 other accounts--they all use Northern European references--so, if you do the math, posting at the rate he has been with this account, on 3 accounts, he has a full week of work doing nothing but posting on Slashdot.

Also, since I stated my beliefs about "Cold Fjord", my past posts are slowly but surely being moderated into the negative, where many of those posts were +2-3 territory originally. I've also not had a single post moderated over +2 since then, nor do I ever see the actual reason for the moderation (insightful, etc) unless I am in the negative.

Now that you know all of that, actually read some of the bullshit he spews in his posts, then read the following document outlining how forums can be manipulated, therefore manipulating public perception.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

I'll make no bones about it--I think "Cold Fjord" is a paid forum-manipulator. I can only guess who actually pays him.

Hey, I have an idea...why don't all of the luddites come out of the woodwork on Slashdot, the direct implication of their ideas which can only be that government must be restricted from using certain technology because it "could be abused". I have news for you: technology will ALWAYS make the job of government -- or anyone who uses it -- easier. That is why it is the LAW, not the technology, that is paramount. If you still want to believe the government is going to ignore the law and "do what it wants to do anyway", then there is no rational debate that can be had.

Also, you are completely, totally, 100% wrong about NSA, in two major ways:

1. NSA's mission, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, is FOREIGN signals intelligence. I know you think they're doing a lot of other things, but they're not. They would never get involved in anything like this. (I realize you may have been making the comment tongue-in-cheek.) If ANY federal agency would be involved, it would be the FBI -- and they are, in fact, because they're the ones who keep the national databases that many state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies use.

2. NSA cannot use contractors to "claim it isn't doing something." I have no idea where this completely false trope started, but it can't use contractors, second party nations, or anyone else to do things it can't do itself. This fact is extensively enshrined in law and policy, the chief guidance being USSID SP0018. (An older version is available for reading.)

All the nice sentences just to talk around full compliance with CALEA?
Its not like it was just some fax with a time, ip and port number from some city police department.. with an amazing letterhead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/edward-snowden-claims-microsoft-collaborated-with-nsa-and-fbi-to-allow-access-to-user-data-8705755.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/11/snowden_docs_detail_collaboration_between_nsa_and_microsoft/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-taps-skype-chats-newly-published-snowden-leaks-confirm/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
US Adult Computer and Adult Internet Users
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1158.pdf
The tiny % number wrt to big US computer use number and US MS marketshare seem to add up :)
Interesting http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm lists gov works, bankers, military, a call-centre-employee, health insurance PR, a few former NSA, CIA, FBI employees, people in sports and education, press, lawyers...
In this broad mix, how/why did so many within the US computer/CS/networking elite stay so silent? Did they feel it was just a domestic link to the FBI in continuous use?
Was the psychological profiling and testing of contractors near perfect Cash was great?
So few staff over so many product ranges over many years?

1984 Removed from Netflix.

Digital version of a book burning.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

See, this is why Assassination Politics is so interesting. There's no talk of "hate speech." No questioning of motivations. Just cold, hard, untraceable cash.

so much thought into his 'anonymous organization', this is meant to be a very thrilling novel or movie, he/she just needs to fill in the characters, etc,.
ask him or her to write the book

See, this is why Assassination Politics is so interesting. There's no talk of "hate speech." No questioning of motivations. Just cold, hard, untraceable cash.

Yes http://cryptome.org/jya/echelon-dk.htm
"....today they monitor everything and everyone. Politicians, organizations, companies, private individuals, even friends in allied countries. In 1985, their long-term goal was "total hearability", i.e. the capability to listen in on all communication around the world.""
Fun reading back in http://it.slashdot.org/story/00/09/26/1836244/ex-nsa-analyst-warns-of-nsa-security-backdoors
Now we have the Snowden news to reflect:
Did the risk of a stock crash and very bad press save your network/OS?
Chain of command and accountability save your network/OS?
Did some committee in Congress save your network/OS?
Complexity save your network/OS?
Did a .com refusing to cooperate save your network/OS?
They cannot use the data in court...
We would see the data moving
Someone would talk real 'soon'
They only care about "military" stuff..
Only outside of the US
Australia is safe :)

I don't see what the NSA/FISA has to offer in return, so its probably being done due to a threat, and at that point you have to wonder what other companies are also doing for the same reason.

In exchange, they get their share of stolen data in order to compete against other (probably mostly foreign) companies. That data can be used to win orders in a bidding competition, for example, and to get previews of planned production models and other strategic information. Don't think for a second that MS would not offer their eager help for that kind of intel.

See http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm for reference. Bit old, though.

Pretty every much hardware/software stack combination that I ever encountered over 30+ years of programming had a "back door" admin account to allow the vendor to get into the systems to repair damage. This is nothing new.

So trusting any vendor about any security is out of the question. Rolling your own stack is the only way to actually retain any control over your mission critical data.

But it's also standard practice and should come as no surprise to anyone

Or perhaps it is one of the "Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression" - 8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

I think this might be what you are looking for.

Why We Spy on Our Allies
Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

" Public opinion is made today by manipulating virtual peer groups on social media, discussion boards, online newspaper comment sections, newsgroups etc."

For more specifics on that:

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

"If you punish ordinary opposing views in debate you aren't committed to free speech. Prove me wrong."

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

To be honest, I'm pretty sure the "they already knew this" posts come from semi-automated bots by the COINTELPRO bunch of bastards.

According to NBC News, not every attack would lead to military retaliation. To qualify, hacks would have to be carry the same kinds of threats to American lives, commerce, or infrastructure as traditional military attacks. And even then, because it's often impossible to detect the true origins of so-called cyber attacks, commanders would have to present indisputable evidence that a particular country was behind a specific incident.

So whether or not the US was spying in the Revolutionary War era or not (which I'm not denying btw) they've made it clear that damaging their economy with computer activity is an act of war while at the same time most likely doing the same thing. if anything the EU should hold such things to the same high standard as the US and thoroughly investigate it and if they are, yet again, stealing industrial secrets then punish the US. Perhaps not in the same aggressive way the US punishes countries (drone bombing their children) but something. That's what happens when you get caught doing something wrong. This also covers US companies who most definitely operating in the EU and must follow our laws. If they haven't then they too need to be punished.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

Read and be enlightened. There's no proof but I bet every political topic has people hired to do this.

Now that there has been plenty of time for people to respond to this post, I'd like to ask that people take a close look at the responses, the previous posts of those responding and the "volume" of response and subject matter they have been responding to recently.

Once you've done that, I'd like to suggest the following reading material. Come to your own conclusions.

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

Do you have a citation on that? I did a little looking, but found some unexpected things instead.

Exclusive: Airbus Dreamliner Dossier Revealed

In a stunning and candid critique of its chief competitor, Airbus has crafted a comprehensive competitive analysis that touches on nearly every aspect of the troubled 787 programme gleaned from Boeing proprietary data and an embedded network of sources from inside the Dreamliner's global supply chain.

Competitive intelligence is a standard practice in the aerospace industry, but the information revealed in the Airbus analysis reveals a scope and specificity of the data collected.

The document includes what appear to be seven slides labelled BOEING PROPRIETARY with a format style used in Boeing presentations, including two that appear to have been photocopied, raising questions about the methods and sources the European consortium utilizes to collect its data.

Airbus claims the presentation, as well as its competitive intelligence gathering methods, fully comply with all laws. Though when approached about how the information was gathered, Airbus declined to address it specifically, suggesting that a lot of data labelled BOEING PROPRIETARY is freely available online. Airbus added that not all documents labelled BOEING PROPRIETARY are in fact proprietary. A spokesman emphasized that Airbus closely watches the market to draw its own conclusions, as do its competitors.

A search engine query for "Boeing Proprietary PPT" did not yield the slides in question.

Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort

The Boeing Co. was among the targets of a French government plan for a massive spying effort to learn U.S. technological secrets and trade strategies, according to classified documents.

The plan targeted 49 high-tech companies, 24 financial institutions and six U.S. government agencies with important roles in international trade, the French documents show.

The plan focused on research breakthroughs and marketing strategies of leading-edge U.S. aerospace and defense contractors that compete directly with French firms.

The French also sought advance knowledge of the bargaining positions of American negotiators in trade talks involving France. The 21-page assignment sheet, prepared by the French equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, is considered authentic by senior U.S. experts.

Why We Spy on Our Allies

That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot. So complicit are your governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-deductible.

When we have caught you at it, you might be interested, we haven't said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and the other country's bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal. ...

Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology. It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating, encouragin

You are wrong ! A simple search shows that it was illegal until very recently.

Seems to me with the amount of spying that they're doing with Germany they're doing just what they claimed the Chinese do and that's steal secrets to give their economy an advantage. The US thinks the Chinese doing it is an act of war so surely this is and the US should abide by their own standards so the trade deal should be called off, they should boot US troops out of Europe and make Obama apologise publicly for America's nazi-like spying regine.

The European economy isn't strong enough to be having Americans cheat in business.

It's not like this wouldn't be the first time the US has done this: http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm (section 10.7) and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon#Industriespionage:_Der_Fall_Kenetech_Windpower_Inc.

Oh and this was entertaining: https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

That's not quite what Theo said..
https://lwn.net/Articles/420858/ ...
  (g) I believe that NETSEC was probably contracted to write backdoors
                as alleged.
        (h) If those were written, I don't believe they made it into our
                tree. They might have been deployed as their own product.
        (i) If such NETSEC projects exists, I don't know if Jason, Angelos or
                others knew or participated in such NETSEC projects.
        (j) If Jason and Angelos knew NETSEC was in that business, I wish
                they had told me. The project and I might have adjusted ourself
                to the situation in some way; don't know exactly how. With this
                view, I do not find Jason's mail to be fully transparent.

BTW, the guy making the claim is named Gregory Perry. Here's a synopsis he wrote to Cryptome.org about the OpenBSD issue and the FBI's need to weaken crypto standards for the purpose of domestic surveillance.
  http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0032.htm

Obviously there is a lot more to this story than a one page synopsis, but I think what is important to make mention of is the close nexus between supposedly unfriendly governments such as Iran and the US. In 1995 the FBI was adamantly against any relaxation of encryption export regulations, yet they did an abrupt about-face on the issue in 1999 (for example,

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/11/business/technology-easing-on-software-exports-has-limits.html
?scp=1&sq=Gregory%20Perry%20encryption&st=cse).

I personally believe that the FBI, or at least certain officials within the administration at that time, willingly advocated the relaxation of encryption export regulations only due to their discovery of critical vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the RSA encryption algorithm not exhibited by the predominant public key encryption method used at the time which was Diffie-Hellman. Of equal interest was RSA Security's decision to not pursue an extension of the RSA patent after its 20-year expiration, which they could have easily obtained on national security grounds. They simply waived their rights and let RSA become an open and public domain standard despite their significant revenues in licensing of the RSA encryption algorithm in the USA based on U.S. Patent 4,405,829.

If any of this conjecture is the case, then it could reasonably be said that the FBI intentionally - and very seriously - weakened the United States critical infrastructure and our military capabilities by advocating the use of a fundamentally weak encryption algorithm as a tradeoff between US National Security and their need to observe domestic communications in the United States.

Sounded implausible back then, right? Now, not so much.

Mmm? Are you sure that's enough? It wouldn't be quite the first time NSA would have "helped" someone.

Yes Charlie, the image of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defection (1960 NSA cryptologists)
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Spies is been held up by a tame US mainstream media and warmed over rewritten talking points.
The US telco/ad/VoIP/chat brands and their support for bulk domestic access is now just part of life.
Snowden joins an impressive list of people:
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm

In the past there have been very suspicious deals where for example in China an Airbus contract was at last minute handed to Boeing, we don't need more of this crap were government organisations are doing dirty legwork for corporation.

There may be a different explanation. And, as noted below: "95% of U.S. economic intelligence comes from open sources."

Why We Spy on Our Allies - R. James Woolsey - March 17, 2000 (Also available here )

What is the recent flap regarding Echelon and U.S. spying on European industries all about? We'll begin with some candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

The European Parliament's recent report on Echelon, written by British journalist Duncan Campbell, has sparked angry accusations from continental Europe that U.S. intelligence is stealing advanced technology from European companies so that we can -- get this -- give it to American companies and help them compete. My European friends, get real. True, in a handful of areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing.

Why, then, have we spied on you? The answer is quite apparent from the Campbell report -- in the discussion of the only two cases in which European companies have allegedly been targets of American secret intelligence collection. Of Thomson-CSF, the report says: "The company was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection panel." Of Airbus, it says that we found that "Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official." These facts are inevitably left out of European press reports.

That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot. So complicit are your governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-deductible.

When we have caught you at it, you might be interested, we haven't said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and the other country's bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal. . .

Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology. It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing economic circumstances. You'd rather not go through the hassle of moving toward less dirigisme. It's so much easier to keep paying bribes.

The Central Intelligence Agency collects other economic intelligence, but the vast majority of it is not stolen secrets. The Aspin-Brown Commission four years ago found that about 95% of U.S. economic intelligence comes from open sources. --- more

Apparently there is more than one form of corrupt practice.

In the past there have been very suspicious deals where for example in China an Airbus contract was at last minute handed to Boeing, we don't need more of this crap were government organisations are doing dirty legwork for corporation.

There may be a different explanation. And, as noted below: "95% of U.S. economic intelligence comes from open sources."

Why We Spy on Our Allies - R. James Woolsey - March 17, 2000 (Also available here )

What is the recent flap regarding Echelon and U.S. spying on European industries all about? We'll begin with some candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

The European Parliament's recent report on Echelon, written by British journalist Duncan Campbell, has sparked angry accusations from continental Europe that U.S. intelligence is stealing advanced technology from European companies so that we can -- get this -- give it to American companies and help them compete. My European friends, get real. True, in a handful of areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing.

Why, then, have we spied on you? The answer is quite apparent from the Campbell report -- in the discussion of the only two cases in which European companies have allegedly been targets of American secret intelligence collection. Of Thomson-CSF, the report says: "The company was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection panel." Of Airbus, it says that we found that "Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official." These facts are inevitably left out of European press reports.

That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot. So complicit are your governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-deductible.

When we have caught you at it, you might be interested, we haven't said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and the other country's bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal. . .

Why do you bribe? It's not because your companies are inherently more corrupt. Nor is it because you are inherently less talented at technology. It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing economic circumstances. You'd rather not go through the hassle of moving toward less dirigisme. It's so much easier to keep paying bribes.

The Central Intelligence Agency collects other economic intelligence, but the vast majority of it is not stolen secrets. The Aspin-Brown Commission four years ago found that about 95% of U.S. economic intelligence comes from open sources. --- more

Apparently there is more than one form of corrupt practice.