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Snowden: NSA Spying On EU Diplomats and Administrators
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report dated 2010 recently provided by [former NSA contractor Edward] Snowden to the German news magazine 'Der Spiegel', the NSA has systematically been spying on institutions of the EU in Washington DC, New York, and Brussels. Methods of spying include bugging, phone taps, and network intrusions and surveillance according to the documents."
All part of a grand tradition.
The US doesn't do international law.
Also yesterday there was this ex-NSA guy accusing seven EU countries of having secret deals with the US to share communications data. (confirming long held suspicions and subject of one interview last week with a member of the Dutch secret service which was hastily denied by the responsible minister)
Now the Guardian piece on it has been taken down pending investigation.
At least the big boys are having to work hard intimidating spreading misinformation and sowing doubt.
The leaks seem to be coming out in a clever order, starting with the most credible. An obvious benefit of this is that each lends credence to the next. Perhaps less obviously, each time the government passes up an opportunity to come clean, it makes the lies more obvious. We might have already known (or guessed) all this stuff, but now we have government officials on record lying about the extent of surveillance, over and over, just before backtracking to defend it.
Except for the fact that, *by treaty* The US, UK, NZ Canada and Australia are allegedly sharing all intelligence each of their respective agencies gather. Originally; the intent was to let each nation focus its spending and efforts on just one region that it already had a substantial interest in while still benefitting from a dliligent approach in all the other regions. Explicit in this was a reciprocity. The American NSA, with all its well known and not so well known programs, harvests vast amounts of data on say, UK citizens, perfectly within it's purview of external intelligence, meanwhile MI6 shares all the data it has collected on US citizens.
A lot of people; including myself, have been very vocal about their concerns at the scope of data being collected by the various three letter agencies of the US government. Many people in power get reassured by statements along the lines of "we never keep any data on our own citizens unless there is a link to a person of interest". What gets overlooked is that the US doesn't *have* to keep data on all it's citizens, all they have to do is pass along all the raw data they collect, in keeping with the treaty, and then just ask the partner nations for the digested and analyzed results. (and they of course do the same in return)
It is the top secret version of the "business in the Cloud" problem. The organization WILL collect everything it possibly can, data mine and analyze as they see fit, they will just keep the actual data stores in servers located and operated offshore by "affiliates". Some court rules the organization cannot collect or keep such data? No problem, our affiliate will do that for us offshore and dodge those pesky laws.
The difference here is, the organizations are not in it for profit (though funding is always a motive) they are in it because they genuinely believe it is their duty to do so. Think of it this way; you are a bodyguard, your livelihood depends on the client staying healthy, you love the client and want them to stay healthy as well. Yet the client has made a bunch of rules tohis/her own taste. The upshot is that you can only stand on the left side and can only be within arms reach durign daylight. If you take your job seriously, you would be very motivated to team up with another clients bodyguard so as to cover those gaps in the protection you provide. Your client never said anything about having the _other_ bodyguard in the bedroom at night after all, just you.
All intelligence agencies have that problem. Being a good weasel makes you good at your job of collecting intel, but the better weasel you are, the easier and more likely it is that you end up no longer truely serving the people you are trying to protect.
If there is one thing history AND/OR current events can teach us, it's that it is a HELL of a lot easier and safer to do ones job well rather than ones duty well.
I don't see any issue with governments spying on each other. You kind of expect they would do that.
I see far more of a problem with spying on arbitrary citizens with pretty much no oversight (although it amazes me that this comes as a surprise to anyone at all).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
States or "state-likes" like the EU spy on each other, ok.
I find it much more worrying that normal EU citizens are being spied on by UK services. My government (German) tells me they didn't know about it, and of course I am inclined to believe they are not telling me the truth (new default reaction to free world government officials saying something). The reaction our minister of justice got when she dared to demand some clarification from the Brits, a polite "go f**k yourself", is still interesting. Oh, and literally while I write this comment, this just in: (article in german) the NSA also massivcely spies on the german public.
If you want to understand why the article was pulled, I suggest googling the source it quotes.
Wayne Madsen has a long history of being, shall we say, "slightly creative". He's a fully signed up 9/11 conspiracy theorist, birther and ardent believer that Obama is gay. Oh, he also believes that the 2009 swine flu outbreak was a US bioweapons test.
Now, that's not to say that everything he says is automatically wrong. But if you want to look at some of the things he has claimed as absolute truth in the past, then if he were to be right here, it would be on the "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" basis.
For the Guardian to run a major story based on him as its only source is an absolutely shocking lapse in journalistic standards.