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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."
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
He wouldn't have done any real dirt via email.
Rest assured, there are no orders going out to the drug gangs on this email. He sent those via lieutenants.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Yo quiero taco bell", written to his chief of staff.
US government attorneys argue that the Supreme Court does not have the jurisdiction to take the case, filed in July by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
First time I've seen the government argue that the Court doesn't have jurisdiction.
All the other cases that have been quashed were either from claiming the plaintiff had no standing to sue, or that it involved State Secrets.
It's especially ballsy to try and argue that the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction.
A US Supreme Court decision to take the case would be "a drastic and extraordinary remedy that is reserved for really extraordinary causes," argued Donald Verrilli, an administration lawyer, in a statement released late Tuesday.
"drastic and extraordinary remedy"
No shit. It certainly seems like we need one of those.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If we can't play nice with our neighbors how can we be expected to play nice with anyone?
It's clear that no one can trust the NSA. Period.
Right,
And to first moron claiming, that's what spy agencies does and every nation does this, should know that's exactly how thieves justify what they do -- everyone does it, thus me too.
Think, really think first, then reply if you feel like it.
I can say nobody is surprised this happened. President Calderón would have been silly not to assume something like this.
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...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I thought Snowden was just crusading for the Constitutional rights of Americans? But his actions keep disclosing intelligence gathering of foreign sources, and the actions of America's foreign allies, which their governments consider highly damaging. At the same time he claims to know all about China's and Russia's intelligence, but where are the disclosures there? Surely if he is an expert on it, as he claims, it must be based on documentation? Where is that documentation? Where are the reports on China and Russia? It's almost as if more than is claimed is going on. I wonder if we'll hear from his spokesman in Russia?
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
Was just what they renamed 'America Bell' when they expanded the chain from Mexico to the US :)
It was originally meant to be a tongue in cheek jab at American liberty, but like so many other things was lost in the march of corporatisation.
"How's that 'most transparent administration' in history thing workin' out fer ya?"
US government attorneys argue that the Supreme Court does not have the jurisdiction to take the case, filed in July by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
i would love to see their response when mexico demands extradition. yes, mexico can extradite people from the US.
i'm pretty sure espionage is a capital crime.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Spying on foreign governments is pretty much the job description of the NSA. Spying on domestic communications is something they get away with, spying on foreign communications is what they were created to do.
I imagine the Mexican government will be publicly shocked to learn these details, but their counterintelligence teams have likely privately detected and thwarted other US hacking attempts.
to believe that this sort of thing will forever remain a secret ? Sooner or later this sort of thing will become public knowledge; I suppose that the best that they can hope for is that, by then, no one will care.
Regardless of the legality or morality of this, or that ''it is just the NSA's job'', they should have forseen that it WILL become known, at that it is likely to cause a public storm or damage USA reputation or international relationships. Instead they seem to act surprised and then try to blame the messenger (Mr Sowden). I ask again: Are they that naive or arrogant or stupid to believe that this sort of thing could forever remain a secret ?
Nor enquire about their country's spy agencies' practice of doing the same.
Actually they are supposed to be spying on *enemy governments*.
Problem is we dont have any more of those left, but bureaucracy doesnt know how to shut down when it is not needed. Instead they keep trying to make new enemies. And unfortunately succeeding...
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why is this news? Every country does this. If your country's intelligence service doesn't try things like this, then you should be seriously worried and perhaps fire them all.
Snowden has done more damage than good. F him!
"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.
Need to set up some honeypots to feed NSA the info they want to believe in.
No moron it's called putting the situation in it's appropriate context. The NSA or the government for that matter does not operate in a vacuum. 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. Just like if every country destroyed their nuclear arsenals the US could get rid of theirs.
You know, like McKinnon was being done over like a kipper for and Aaron Schwartz was hounded for.
It's illegal in Mexico AND the USA.
Extra-illegal in the USA, indeed.
Both hounded for doing that.
The former receiving a demand to extradite to face charges despite there being no proof of the damages asserted oddly enough to a level that meets the requirements for extradition.
In this case, if Mexico ask for someone to face charges, I doubt that there will be any push from the Merkin government to combat international cyberterroristm.
'cos it's not cyberterrorism if the USA does it.
it's only a Third-World beaner email account
...I've always considered that:
a) anything I post on the web is essentially permanent.
b) emails are *basically* like writing a message on a postcard; 'private' ostensibly, but really readable by anyone that wants to.
Clearly, nobody explained "B" to the Mexican president.
-Styopa
The US administration also believes the EIPC suit cannot move forward because it argues the [supreme] court lacks authority under the 2001 Patriot Act to weigh in on the legality of NSA activities.
So how does that work? I thought the Supreme court was the highest authority on the law in the US?
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I thought that was pretty much the reason for the NSA's existance. So I guess we should go back to the time when it was considered ungentlmanly to spy on our neighbors. While we are at it it is kind of mean to keep our neighbors our of our country, Let's make the borders more pourous than they arlready are. While we are at it why do we have all these weapons. We need to get rid of them. Come to think of it it is kind of rude to keep saying the area between the countries of Canada and Mexico belongs to the United States. After all it belonged to France, Russia, Britain, and Mexico beforehand (not the indians becuase they do not really have a big financial interest in the U.S. legislature. I guess they are kind of like white people in that respect) So let's close down the United States. Pourous borders worked great for the first nations, and I am sure it will work great for the USA too. The USA belongs to Mexico now. The United States has no balls, and will go along withwhatever politically correct magnanimous view of society that the media wants to give us.
Viva Mexico. Every single country on the planet is allowed to look after it's interests, and defend it's borders except the United States because the United States is run by evil white people (ignore the fact that there are relatively few white poeple left in large swaths of the country, and being white is a pretty derrogatory insult to most people in the USA)
The Supreme Court of the United States, the highest federal court in the country, doesn't have the jurisdiction to challenge the NSA? What kind of bullshit is that?
I have found something really good, checkout www.galaxkey.com
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......
Mexicans don't understand the the world beyond US, they are too close and too economically dependent to see there is something else.
Let me tell you something... I have been in Canada. I'm Mexican. In both paces US news are covered to an extent far beyond that any other country covers US and/or a neighbour nation. Both countries even follow US sports leagues as if they were local. How do you explain that?
France initial response to the NSA allegations was to take down Evo Morales plane.
From my point of view, US can't be trusted. It has too much information, the policies are little enforced and these leaks seem to happen very frequently. So what happens when this sort of information is silently leaked to corporations or to the enemy? Or how is it regulated to which friends the US can exchanges this information?
And then when they are caught, they decide to act like nothing happened, and expect everybody else to pretend this is the way things should be on the world. And when Dilma doesn't like Obama reading her email, and even proposes to do something to avoid it, you say she can't look beyond Latin America?
I expect this sort of event to make Latin America rethink in which terms they want to cooperate with US. If it's convenient to have US bases in our soil or to which extent we want to be US allies.
Am I the only one who almost mis-read the subject line as this? OMG, the Feds need to know the secret recipe for guacamole! Is there no end to the perfidy of the NSA?
That my mom and dad don't encrypt their email, fine. But when you are a president of a country and using your email for presidential things, why don't you use encryption?
What has NSA _not_ done?
Anything thinkable and unthinkable they have done, continue doing, will do and have or will get the capability to do.
http://www.thensavideo.com/.
If you think it's unusual for a small country to follow it's large neighbors closely you clearly haven't spent much time in Europe. Scandinavia and the Finns pay an inordinate amount of attention to Germany and Russia. Portugal pays a lot of attention to Spain, and Portugal isn't that much smaller then Spain. The Irish are renowned for their ability to denigrate anything English, while being more English then the goddamned English.
You're missing key points of the French timeline. While Snowden was still in HK they played the part of the wronged party. Then, on July 4th, Le Monde pointed out they were as bad as the US. The Morales incident didn't happen until the 5th.
As for Rousseff, I'm not knocking for encrypting her email. I'm knocking her for acting surprised that she needed to. Brazil is not some little country everyone ignores anymore. It's a real country, which actually tries to have influence in the world, which means that the people it's trying to influence have a damn good reason to spy on it.
As for spying on governments, it doesn't matter whether you think the US should have this info. It doesn't matter whether you think the Russian/Chinese/French/etc. should have this info. We will all hack your computers to get it. Your responses should be a) implement good security at all times, not just because somebody's having a spy-scandal, b) have spys/hacks of your own so you have some idea of what's compromised, and c) have a couple convincing-sounding offended speeches ready for when somebody gets caught spying on your ass because the hoi polloi don't understand spying is the default. You can bring morality into this conversation if you want, all you'll do is convince everyone that you are a) lying to cover up your extensive spy networks, or b) are an idiot. There is no c) nice Mexican boy goes to UN and abolishes spying.
As for the other NSA stuff, keep in mind that the entire point of the NSA is to spy on non-Americans. That is why it exists. I'd agree it would be very nice if they were more discriminating in their targets, but their job is not to be fair to Brazilians. That's what Brazilians have a government for. The NSA's job is to protect Americans. You can disagree with that purpose all you want, until your current country becomes a state nobody who can stop it will care.
As for bases in Latin countries, there are two. GitMo and a recent one in Brazil. If the Brazilians throw us out that won't be a tragedy for us, because we still have the Brits and the Brits own Ascension and the Falklands. If it's a choice between giving up SigInt on people who want to kill us and moving troops to the Falklands we will make that choice seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Technically this would anger one of our two allies in Latin America (Argentina would be pissed, Columbia wouldn't), but we only allied with Argentina to ensure they wouldn't attack the Falklands again, and they'd be suicidal to attack a US Base, so that wouldn't matter either.
That's actually the problem with electing anti-American Presidents who ally with the Cubans and Venezuelans. Since we'll never get cooperation from them anyway, there's no reason not to be mean to their people.
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 !
Because you can't target certain people, religions, or cultures. And how do you know who is a citizen or not by their phone number? And you don't know who someone has called who called someone else when you do capture one of them trying to do something.
The whole concept is to prevent an organized attack on multiple targets. What if there was a large group of 200 terrorists that were going to attack shopping malls across the country in random locations and a few days or weeks apart. Maybe even years apart. It would bring down the economy and shut down a lot of malls.
This is what the NSA response should have been:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo
Surely this (and all the other NSA spying) must have broken international law? Its there anything happening at that level (or is it occuring and our media isnt keeping us informed)?
The call metadata is already being captured and saved by your phone vendor. Your favorite search engines and websites already have access to your web history. And the government really does not need any of these sources of information to find me. They already have my Tax records, job history, property ownership since deeds are registered, and even my drivers license. And they have had this data since way before the Internet even existed. And I seriously doubt the government has the time and labor resources needed to do anything other than store the information. Even with sophisticated key word filters will return millions of records to be further examined. Any data captured would not be of any use in stopping someone intent on causing mischief. Any data captured in foreign countries by the intelligence services is fair game. This is where Snowden went from whistleblower to someone who deserves to be charged under the Espionage Act. He has went so far as thinking he knows what information is harmful and which is not all by him self. That level of arrogance is astounding. He might have been able to strike a deal with the US government if he only released information dealing with internal actions of the government. He had a lot of leverage with all the foreign data he stole. He could have negotiated a deal that included no jail time by offering to return all the foreign related data. That is certainly off the table now. He better hope the US doesn't gain custody of anyone wanted by the Russian government because the US and Russia have a long history of exchanging people wanted by either nation.
Meeheko PISSED!
I heard this directly from a significant security researcher & company founder: it's not illegal for Russians to hack non-Russian banks.
The cowboys at NSA should be reined in as they are single handedly doing more damage to USA defence and future stability than ALL the talibans combined as it is clear as hell that the have no clue to the CONSEQUENCES of provoking more and more anti US sentiment EVERY WHERE.
Mexico is several times the size of the U.S. both in area and population. It has a vast nuclear arsenal, which it has used in the past and threatened to use again. Its "drug war" has turned our border cities into war zones. Its spying programs monitor every form of communication anywhere in the world. It has military bases in hundreds of other countries and is engaged in ongoing military operations in at least a dozen of them (that we know of). Truly Mexico is a menace not only to us but to the entire world, and we are completely justified in spying on them . . . . oh, wait . . .
Nonaggression works!
Indeed. The Spainiards and Portguese are silly if the expect to use Anglosaxon electronics/software in a secure manner. Get off your ass hombre, and build your indigenous computer and software. Don't use any anglo stuff, not even gcc, as the C language itself is a big-time security issue in all real programs out there.
I don't know where do you get your info but you're wrong about Portugal. I'm Portuguese and I can tell you we give so much attention to Spain as we do to England, U.S. or Belgium (for the EU politics).
The US Gov't would like to think this, but in truth it will cause damage, just not immediately.
As more and more U.S. invasiveness in media and communications is seen, countries and non-domestic corps are slowly moving away from related U.S. products. Over time, this will cost money to the U.S. economy.
I'm not arguing you're all wanabe Spaniards, crying yourselves to sleep because Juan Carlos I only speaks Spanish on your radios. I'm arguing that you pay way more attention to Spain then similarly-sized countries because it's within a two-hour drive of the entirety of continental Portugal. A lot Portuguese people probably work on the other side of the border. A lot of Spanish people probably work in Portugal. If you're Portuguese and Lisbon is too damn small you're a lot more likely to choose Madrid then Detroit or Toronto even tho they are all the same size. Given that both countries are trying to deal with a collapse in their finance markets AND austerity at the same time you guys would be foolish not to pay very close attention to what the Spanish are doing, because if one of your countries can magic it's way out of this the other one can too.
Objectively speaking Spain is roughly as important as Canada or Poland. The UK is twice it's population, much richer, has a much more potent military, has a veto on the Security Council, etc. That's not a knock on any of there countries, it's simply a fact that the UK is a lot more important then Spain. But according to you Portuguese people pay the same amount of attention to both.
Once again, you should get your facts straight, things are not true just because you write them out.
Despite the attempt to provoque the Portuguese people - which made me laugh and completely unveiled your character or lack of it - I'll tell you, as a courtesy, that there are more Portuguese in Paris than in Madrid and London.
What's you fantastic theory now? France is bigger than UK? French people eat baguettes? Please stop poisoning other people minds, at least have the decency to add "I assume that..." or "I think that", not take any information for a fact just because your illuminated mind thought of them.
If you think that was an attempt at provocation then you might want to learn that lesson on speaking without information yourself. If I wanted to provoke you'd I'd probably be referring to Portuguese as a dialect of Spanish you silly person you.
And, for the record, France is slightly bigger then the UK. It's also closer.
Which means that you're still proving my case: nations that are near each-other physically have closer relationships then their respective sizes would imply.
Oh, now it's the fact of being closer? With that kind of logic Madrid should have more Portuguese and it don't. There goes some crap logic of yours, as usual.
As for the Portuguese language, I'll give you another free information so you can learn a little more before infesting other people minds with wrong information: Portuguese language is not a Spanish dialect nor derive from it. Both languages come from the same source "Latin". Not like English that many words and literature influence come from old French, who'd say that!
I'm someone who likes to talk, discuss things, learn and teach something. Since I can not do neither of these with you, this will be my last response. Brat.
It would be really nice if you'd actually read what I said. I didn't say Portuguese was a dialect of Spanish. I said that if I wanted to provoke you off I'd say it was. Like every other argument I've made on this thread, you promptly proved that one right.
It seems like you don't want to debate, you want to be provoked, and if that's the case just say so. I have some really good insults left over from when I was 8. Nine-year-olds are too mature to tell yo-mamma jokes.
Let's repeat the statement that started this for the record:
"If you think it's unusual for a small country to follow it's large neighbors closely you clearly haven't spent much time in Europe. Scandinavia and the Finns pay an inordinate amount of attention to Germany and Russia. Portugal pays a lot of attention to Spain, and Portugal isn't that much smaller then Spain..."
Read that closely. It says that due to Portugal's proximity to Spain Portugal will have stronger ties to Spain then it would otherwise. Are you seriously arguing that if Portugal was located in the South Pacific it would have as tight a relationship with Spain as it does?