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NSA Hacked Email Account of Mexican President
rtoz writes "The National Security Agency (NSA ) of United States hacked into the Mexican president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico. This operation, dubbed 'Flatliquid,' is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Meanwhile U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is urging the Supreme Court not to take up the first case it has received on controversial National Security Agency cybersnooping."
If it involves the US Government breaking the constitutional rights of every US citizen, then attempting to silence anyone who questions them, it might be one of those circumstances.
The NSA not only has the capability to violate client attorney privilege at every point in the course, and to threaten judges, lawyers and everyone up and down the line, they have demonstrated the will to ignore the courts already by ignoring the FISA courts rulings.
Not only should the supreme court rule on this before any lower court can, it should invalidate the entire domestic spying apparatus.
And that's likely just what will happen given the circumstances. Judges do not like their power being questioned.
That's not the same as claiming that "he claims to know all about China's and Russia's intelligence". He was saying that they didn't get the documents from him since he didn't have them after turning them over.
You need to read that again, and then I think you have a choice to make.
I don't need to read anything again. What you claimed he said is not what he said. You're just spreading more baseless FUD like in the last article.
I can say nobody is surprised this happened. President Calderón would have been silly not to assume something like this.
Mexicans understand the world beyond Latin America a lot better then the rest of Latin America does. The US spies on everybody, everybody spies on the US, when anybody gets caught there's a lot of pretentious bitching because a the electorate doesn't understand this, but nobody takes it very seriously. Thus France's initial response to the NSA allegations was an extremely self-righteous defense of the Right to Privacy, and it was immediately followed by everyone who has ever met France going "WTF? You're a million times worse the NSA could ever hope to be." There's actually probably more spying between friends then enemies. Latvia got burned really badly back when Hitler (the supposed anti-Communist Crusader) sold them out to Stalin, so they'd be fools if they don't have plenty of ways to verify their current anti-Russian protector (aka: Barrack Hussein Obama) isn't doing it to them.
OTOH everyone else in Latin Amer4ica is acting like the entire world lied to them by stealing their email. Which is technically true, but it's also technically true that part of being a grown-up real nation is knowing that they will always steal your secrets.
"The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico."
Hardly. When you have huge difference of powers the weaker nation, Mexico in this case, can only act as offended but forget the issue very soon and go on.
The National Security Agency (NSA ) of United States hacked into the Mexican president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking
OK, seriously? From his public email? Even Obama has a "public email" you can send shit to. Little old ladies and bent out of shape whack jobs pounding away at their keyboard send stuff to El Presidente's "public email".
Next...
Of course the Russian Foreign Service Security guy who hacks Obama's public email would write that he "gained deep insight" into Obama's secret thoughts this way. Otherwise he'd be deemed useless and have his budget cut.
From a non-American point-of-view you could probably gain a lot of little insights from the Obama admin's responses to their public email. You would know what Obama's dealing with at a grassroots level, for example. A very common way for countries to not make a concession is for them to politely say that if they do that their publics will freak out. Reading Obama's email would let Putin know when Obama was lying about that shit. You would not know much more about Obama's actual positions then he tells you himself because he's got to know it's trivial for a foreign agent to register john.smith@yahoo.com and shoot Obama an email, but you'd get real insights into the political constraints Obama had to deal with.
We've crossed a threshold in human history. We are going from an existence where it was simply not financially or physically feasible to monitor every person 24/7. In less than two decades, the practical limits on surveillance have basically died. This is a massive and fundamental change in the structure of society and how we deal with this now, is going to shape the future of world society and culture.
Really, it's already past time to start addressing these issues, and more complacency is just going to ensure the most sociopathic systems possible will be cemented into our future. The 4th Amendment needs its own unyielding ideologically pure NRA type organization because if there are no limits on government power, eventually it will start brutalizing people.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
To the best of my knowledge the Supreme Court doesn't have original jurisdiction for the case. That is, it can't act as a trial court, it has to be an appeals court. That means that this case has to start the way almost every other case does which is in a lower level federal court. The Supreme Court doesn't have unlimited jurisdiction.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
As long as there are other countries practicing espionage against US interests it would be foolish in the extreme to de-fang their own intelligence services.
So how does that explain why the US needs to collect call information for most, if not all, American citizens? If the NSA wants to target foreign militaries for spying, fine. Enemy foreign governments, sure. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Domestic civilian spying, on the other hand, is inexcusable, even by your logic.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
There's another reason, which I'm surprised nobody on /. has stated, due to the types of people who should frequent a joint like this.
In the IT industry, analytical personality types are over-represented. This personality type values integrity and competence. It also abhors hypocrisy.
Everybody knows taht China and Russia are dirtbags when it comes to human rights. That's not news to anybody who has been awake for more than 5 minutes of the past 2 decades.
The US government repeatedly condemns both Russia and China for various human rights abuses, including spying on their own people.
The fact that the US government has been doing the exact same thing in secret, is both completely lacking in integrity, and about as hypocritical as you can get.
I'm sure there was at least a little bit of "I'll get this hypocritical bastards!" in Snowden's mind when he released this information, and I wouldn't blame him. But that's why releasing information on China's abuses is irrelevant at this point.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Who will be next ?
America is fast losing friends if this trend is continuing.
Not that long ago, Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Iranians, North Koreans were painted as EVIL because America said so ~ and the world (mainly Europeans, plus many third world countries) generally subscribe to that view because the United States of America supposed to be trustworthy
Is America anymore trustworthy than the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Iranians, or North Koreans ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I guess that's why he's keen on embarrassing the US rather than say Russia or China.
Well, since he worked for the USA and didn't work for Russa or China, I'd imagine the number of insider documents he has about the intelligence services of Russia and China is zero.
"But why doesn't Jeff Bezos talk about Google's operations, hmm? Why is it always Amazon that he wants us to think about? What is it that he has to hide? He's obviously a Google double agent, isn't he?"
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC