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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.
Could we just get the list of who the NSA isn't spying on? It seems to be much shorter.
Only on
Our government is a bit like a sociopath. We are nobody's friend. Everyone is merely a potential enemy. We spy on everyone. No exceptions. I'm sure we even spy on the UK and Canada as utterly pointless as that may be. If we ever ended up at war with either Canada or the UK then we'd almost certainly be better off losing anyway.
Of course, from Washington's POV the problem is not so much that we spy even on our friends, but that someone blabbed about it. They won't think about changing their behavior toward our allies. About acting honorably at least toward our allies. Rather they will think more about how badly they can punish the leaker. I can only imagine how badly they are itching to get Snowden's ass to gitmo and torture him to death in very creative ways.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Actually, countries likely have a mutual spying agreement. USA spies on $COUNTRY, $COUNTRY spies on USA, and they share information. Both never technically spy on their own citizens and therefore obey their own constraints, yet they effectively have full unchecked information invasion on their own people.
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.
http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ
Deleted Article by The Guardian
Original Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/29/european-private-data-america
Now redirecting to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2013/jun/30/taken-down
===
Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America
Germany 'among countries offering intelligence' according to new claims by former US defence analyst
At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data,
according to a former contractor to America's National Security Agency, who said the public should not be "kept in the dark".
Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the
agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.
Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand
over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.
Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US
is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.
In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog, Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues,
said he had decided to speak out after becoming concerned about the "half story" told by EU politicians regarding the extent of the NSA's
activities in Europe.
He said that under the agreements, which were drawn up after the second world war, the "NSA gets the lion's share" of the sigint
"take". In return, the third parties to the NSA agreements received "highly sanitised intelligence".
Madsen said he was alarmed at the "sanctimonious outcry" of political leaders who were "feigning shock" about the spying operations
while staying silent about their own arrangements with the US, and was particularly concerned that senior German politicians had accused the UK of spying
when their country had a similar third-party deal with the NSA.
Although the level of co-operation provided by other European countries to the NSA is not on the same scale as that provided by the UK, the allegations are
potentially embarrassing.
"I can't understand how Angela Merkel can keep a straight face, demanding assurances from [Barack] Obama and the UK while Germany has entered into
those exact relationships," Madsen said.
The Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Ludford, a senior member of the European parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, said
Madsen's allegations confirmed that the entire system for monitoring data intercept
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
Well... It's not that Guantanamo is against international law, it's the things that happen there that are against international law.
- Detaining people under the age of 18.
- Torture.
- Not following Article 5 of the Geneva convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatant_Status_Review_Tribunal
- Keeping people detained indefinitely without a trial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights requires "rights to due process and a fair trial"
For some more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#International_law