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NSA Cracked Into Encrypted UN Video Conferences
McGruber writes "According to documents seen by Germany's Der Spiegel, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) successfully cracked the encryption code protecting the United Nations' internal videoconferencing system. NSA first breached the UN system in the summer of 2012 and, within three weeks of initially gaining access to the UN system, the NSA had increased the number of such decrypted communications from 12 to 458. On one occasion, according to the report, while the American NSA were attempting to break into UN communications, they discovered the Chinese were attempting to crack the encryption code as well."
If the NSA can do it, so can other people. So should the NSA reveal what they can do so the UN can switch to more secure communications. Or should the NSA have continued to monitor with the knowledge that the Chinese, Russians and probably a few others were also listening in?
If I was the state department I would be furious about this.
Short of a direct attack on a diplomat I don't think there is a worse breach of international custom and law.
Snooping on citizens is bad enough, but this is playing with fire.
So where did Der Spiegel get these documents? On Friday, Edward Snowden accused the US government of intentionally leaking documents to The Independent that were potentially damaging, in an effort to discredit the responsible reporting being done by The Guardian and the Washington Post. He said he had never worked with nor even spoken to anyone at The Independent. Is the same thing happening here?
Breakfast served all day!
RT is infamous for being virulently anti-American; it's a Russian news organization with an agenda that is fairly obvious at times. Now, that said, Der Spiegel is a totally valid news organization...so can someone provide something directly from that, instead of interpretation by people with their own agenda regarding this?
Ah, never mind: here you go: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/25/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE97O08120130825
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Was the encryption cracked, or was it just bypassed?
Very worrisome if it's the former.
I can't tell if they just disabled encryption on one of the end points.
Oh give it up. How about early European settlers wiping out 12 million indigenous Americans by smallpox and influenza within a decade of landing on shore? Yes, we should remember the Holocaust during WWII. And Rwanda. And Nanking. And godknowswhatelse. Nobody's ancestors have much of a moral high ground.
Move along.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A branch of government that actively angers allies and and enemies alike. What a wonderful idea!
Exactly. So it's OK the USA does it but not the Chinese?
Actually, I suspect at least half the break-ins blamed on the Chinese are actually the NSA doing it, then planting a trail designed to point to the Chinese. Not that I doubt the Chinese are doing hacking, just that because the do attempt to penetrate important sites, the NSA can use that as cover.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Are you telling me the NSA actually spends time and money on doing the job it's supposed to, not just spying on US citizens? I am absolutely shocked.
There are treaties governing the presence of the UN on US soil. If these have been breached by the NSA action, the US has broken treaty obligations. Now, as the Native American Tribes of the US will testify, this usually doesn't make a lot of difference, but there's a chance that such a breach is actionable in US courts, which could get VERY messy.
And when the King wanted to stop and treat the natives with equality, the American colonists revolted as they wanted the land. With many of the founding fathers being land speculators they were well motivated to convince the common person that the revolution was over taxes (taxes that were used to defend the colonists against the natives who did not like being pushed out of their land) and when they realized they were a minority they went on a terror campaign against there neighbours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
(I'm not commenting on the actions of the US with this, as a side note.)
A crime is a crime is a crime! Or are you saying there are good crimes and bad crimes?
Yes and no. As a staring point: the vast majority of people recognize that there are different degrees of crime, usually based on the amount of harm done -- for example, it's worse for soldiers to kill & rape civilians than it is to take some of their belongings. Both actions are bad and qualify as crimes most of the time, but they're not "a crime is a crime" by any measure.
People that have reached the later stages of moral/ethical development also recognize that sometimes a "crime" means violating a law that would insist upon the person doing or allowing something harmful. In these cases, the "crimes" are a matter of violating laws that either demand we do something objectively bad (like turning in a sick little old lady for eating marijuana brownies to treat nausea), or refrain from doing something that will prevent a truly bad outcome (the Heinz dilemma, of whether a man should steal outrageously overpriced drugs to save his sick wife's life, is a classic example).
In addition to that, sometimes laws defining crimes are arbitrary and shift to suit the ruling force in that place at that moment. Some places make it a horrible crime to not be heterosexual, others outlaw whistleblowers identifying corruption in government, or for an adult of sound mind to be in a consensual relationship with someone of a different skin color... If "a crime is a crime is a crime" were true, then being gay, murdering people, and stealing kids' lunch money would all be equivalent, which obviously isn't very logical!
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