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NSA Monitored Calls of 35 World Leaders
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Guardian reports that the NSA monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another U.S. government department. According to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA encourages senior officials in its 'customer' departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their 'Rolodexes' so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. The NSA memo dated October 2006 that was obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders – and even asks for the assistance of other U.S. officials to do so. However, the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced 'little reportable intelligence.' At the daily briefing on Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney again refused to answer repeated questions about whether the U.S. had spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls in the past."
>> NSA monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders
And nothing of value was gained.
NSA ?
There are already on the line.
A classic mistake, you're only supposed to snoop on the powerless who can't do anything about it. Sadly I don't think anything will change.
Sure they make a little public stink about it and feign outrage to get re-elected (yes that means you, Merkel), but where are whole of goverment cross-department investigations into the telecoms and rush of new laws to raise the criminal penalties for any telecoms personnel to knowingly allow foreign intelligence monitoring of national networks? Oh thats right - it has not happened (well maybe Brazil has some balls). Compared all the knee jerk reaction anti-terrorism laws that got rushed through, it is obvious that most of our countries leaders/politicians do not work for their actual country or are too afraid to do so. Voters to blame, as usual...
So this does mean that President Obama's calls were not intercepted, isnt' it ?
Makes you wonder which country is the real threat in this world.
Summation 2
Guess what, the U.S. has spy agencies and their job is to spy. It just confirms they're doing an effective job, which is rare in government.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This would be an act of war if it were done to the US by any other country. Why should we not treat it as one?
That is their job after all. If this surprises you, you're a moron.
They aren't supposed to spy on their OWN citizens, but the very definition of their job is to spy on important people in other countries.
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And I'm not surprised that's not stopping the breathless dishonest coverage of the issue to make it look like it's continuing.
The NSA is suppose to spy on other countries.
Sure it's embarrassing when that fact gets printed in the newspaper, but who else are they supposed to spy on?
And of course the "World Leaders" feign outrage while their spy organizations are trying to do the exact same thing to us.
Maybe they're more upset because their spies aren't as successful as the NSA.
The real news is still that the NSA is spying on Americans and lying about it, which they are Constitutionally prohibited from doing.
This is the NSA fufilling its role.. full stop. If you're not a US citizen and you're doing something of interests to our intelligence services you should be targeted.
If you're a citizen of an Echelon country, you have no room to talk because your nation is a partner. (To be honest, I thought Echelon was Anglosphere only, but there's the Netherlands in the fray.. wow. )
And do not for a second act as though other nations don't do this. You can start with Frenchelon. And to those who bleat about economic and industrial espionage, the French have been known for this since the seventies.
These people aren't actually doing anything. They don't call the shots.
The shots are called by these subversive government agencies, corporate insiders, freemasons, and bilderbergers.
The world is run by the underground power dealers. These "leaders" are just put there to create the illusion of democracy and the illusion that people can actually change things.
The life you are living - every minute detail of it - is chosen for you by your underground masters. Enlighten yourselves please and realize there is no spoon.
Monitoring the communications of Foreign governments. That's what the NSA is for. Sure those govenments won't like it, but hey, they have security agencies too. As far as Snowden leaking this information. I think he has gone too far.
Now monitoring US citizens, no, they are not supposed to do that. That is not what they are for. Let the foreign Government's agencies do that:)
And British MP Liam Fox thinks the Guardian should be investigated? Fuck, Britfags. Why do you put up with these arseholes? Vote them out of existence and that David Cameron arsehole too. http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/10/16/british-prime-minister-endorses-parliamentary-investigation-into-guardian-for-publishing-snowdens-leaks/
"how dare you have sex before wedlock!?"
[goes home and has a long S&M session with a hooker to relieve stress]
Everybody knows the U.S. intelligence community is paranoid as hell, and always listening. If not the NSA, then maybe the CIA, FBI, or any of the dozens of other intelligence agencies in the U.S.
None of these world leaders are shocked or surprised.
Here in the US countries like France are heavily restricted from operating and managing US entities that have ties to US security and law enforcement operations. (Bio-metrics, AFIS, Facial Recognition, Crypto, Official Identity and Credential Solutions, etc.) Because they are foreign? No. Because they have been caught spying on the US.
The only different here is the US isn't flopping over and whining like a European Soccer player about a little spying.
Where are their spies? Its as if they just let their top political leaders stumble around the world stage as bait for the NSA. Congrats on the election win, here our tested 'safe' phone, fax machine. Use it a lot.
A vast pile of documents are then sent.
In some safe house an inner group of political leaders meet as another group of political suits 'act' on the world stage with their leaky phones.
Giving the NSA and US just what it wants/expects to hear?
All the same countries faced the same intercept threats from communists, fascism, their own press and political rivals yet show zero skill when using the US global telco networks?
Are all the signals intelligence staff of 35 nations really more loyal to the USA than their own leadership?
Or are we seeing 35 nations playing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Quicksilver_(WWII) with a US gov so entranced with its own intercept skills? With little to no human spies left for "reality" what is the US really gathering other than what 35 govs select to talk about on phones they know are junk.....
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Why are people acting surprised or offended by this? This is what alphabet soup agencies do! Don't tell me that other governments agencies aren't doing the same thing. Intelligence agencies spy on everyone friend or foe. It's their job. The only real reason for shock about this is that they got *caught*.
so what if they spied on foreign countries, isn't that what their supposed to do? what their not supposed to do is spy on me, for any reason, what-so-ever.
i feel like i am in Brazil, or THX-1138, or somewhere in-between...
people shouldnt care that a spy agency spy's on foreign people. how many people that work for our govt are working for the Germans, or the Chinese? that should be the concern.
Amerika has become one of the most belligerent and aggressive countries on the planet these days.
Your security and trade interests are not more important than those of the rest of the world.
We're tired of your shit and your assertions of "we're Amerika, we can do anything we want".
I sincerely hope the rest of the world leaders start sanctioning you, because if any country was shown to be doing this to the US there would be warships deployed and loud wailing about how your sovereignty was violated.
You guys need to fix your culture of entitlement and the continued belief in your own supremacy. The rest of the world might be willing to work with you, but not be dictated to.
I used to respect and admire the US, but now they've become everything they've ever claimed to be against -- a paranoid surveillance state, beholden to corporations, and with an over-inflated sense of entitlement and a smug sense of superiority.
You never know when a world leader goes Al Qaeda suicide bomber all of a sudden, unless you listen it her calls. I'm sure Angela Merkel wears a Burqa secretly when alone at home.
nm, just seems an appropriate tag for a Bush Era memo.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Countries spy on each other all the time. Even allies. It has ever been thus, for centuries even. Heck, when I had a summer job at the DoD, we were sternly warned that spies can come from any country, and were provided a list of the current "hot spots." More than a couple close allies were up there in the rankings.
From my perspective, Edward Snowden would have been a whistle-blowing hero if he restricted his disclosures to borderline-illegal domestic spying. But apparently he's done a document dump of every electronic intelligence program he could get his hands on... that ain't whistleblowing, that's espionage. If the US ever gets his mitts on him, he'll almost surely never leave prison, and rightly so. Why did he EVER take a job with the NSA if he thought all forms of electronic intelligence were bad and worthy of spilling the details about to the whole world?
Was interesting to hear discussion about NSA and Snowden on Shield last night. Since it's all so out in the public now, you can bet that next year's inspector gadget gizmos coming to you from NSA will be not as easy to detect than this year's versions... Go go gadget phone tap.
Germany (Siemens) sold nuclear technology to Iran. Who next, North Korea?
> "eavesdropping on the numbers had produced 'little reportable intelligence."
Of terrorism, of course not. But what's to stop US factions from reporting conversations to favored parties in those countries, of their opposition's activities?
What's to stop them from doing the same thing in this country? "You're supppsed to get a warrant" is like telling a kid "you're supposed to ask me before sneaking a cookie. I'm going to the store now bye."
With little to no technological barriers and hundreds of agents with fingertip access, it is almost certainly happening here already -- not just spying on girlfriends. Yet these same people tell you not to worry -- while with the other side of their mouth say you need donation restrictions to stop just the appearance of corruption, mch less actual corruption.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm just joking. They bring in way too much money.
Can you please spy on my government and tell me what the hell they're up to these days? I have no clue, and they're certainly not telling.
Thanks,
An American
... because they could.
As opposed to all other intelligence/counter-intelligence agencies in the world, who do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason.
I think the reason they got "little reportable intelligence" is because when you are in a position like that (president of a country, foreign dignitary, etc) , you at the very least _assume_ your allies will try to listen to your conversations.
At this level "reportable intelligence" conversations are not carried over public/listed phone lines, but on non-public lines, where you can set up privacy and security checks, encryption and authentication protocols and so on (i.e. send a USB stick by a courrier you trust or something).
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
The U.S. spies on other countries? SHOCKING!!!
Spy agencies do illegal things in other countries, it's their job. BUT: If the NSA (or any other US, GB or French spy agency) taps Merkel's phone they're not violation of German laws.
they only need to look at the response to being caught spying on their allies: "Good. It's the NSA's job. Why is anyone surprised? You do it too."
Fuck you.
http://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squarcini-dcri-hollande-ayrault-merkel-usa-obama
And the french DSGE has been doing Economic INtelligence (Industrial secrets) for decades. For example in 1991 they were caught bugging all the seats in Air France jets.
Mon Du, Gambling at Ricks!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Out would you like to be the poor leader who gets left out. What a pussy of a country.
so how do they want to defend that it is to foil terrorists attack??
Famous last words:"but...."
... should you eat shit as well ?
This is all just a bunch of political bullshit people. There are a wide variety of world leaders being monitored by a wide variety of governments
I am getting VERY FUCKING TIRED of listening to this asinine excuse !
Just because the whole world is eating shit, would you eat shit too ?
The world's government may be tapping each others, but they are NOT caught in the action.
America, on the other hand, did.
Why can't Obama just admit what happened, and then proceed with action to remedy the problem, instead of issuing a CATEGORY DENIAL to everything ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The REAL douchebag is Obama, definitely not Snowden.
We ought to be grateful to Edward Snowden in allowing us, the Americans, a chance to redeem ourselves.
The NSA, the PRISM PROGRAM, the TAPPING of foreign leaders, are way out of bound.
If not for Edward Snowden, more despicable schemes might commence, with even worse consequences to the Americans and the rest of the world.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You're right. Spying is what a spy agency is for.
The bad spycraft parts are:
A) becoming so morally bankrupt that one of your guys defects rather than continue being part of your team, and
B) allowing said defector to abscond with the books.
When you are fighting for the good guys you can do stuff like this. When you are fighting against freedom and self-determination all over the planet, spying on your own people in order to betray them to foreign economic and political interests, and promoting and condoning torture -face it, you're going to have defectors, and nobody's going to forgive you for the things they reveal.
From http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/10/us-denies-tapping-merkel-mobile-phone-20131023185133142198.html ---
US President Barack Obama had assured German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the US is not monitoring her communications, according to the White House spokesman.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24647268
The White House said President Obama had told Chancellor Merkel the US was not snooping on her communications.
"The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday.
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/merkel-phone-tapped_n_4150812.html
For its part, the White House denied that the U.S. is listening in on Merkel's phone calls now.
"The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "The United States greatly values our close cooperation with Germany on a broad range of shared security challenges."
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yes, you're free to object on moral grounds. I said that. I'm quite sure of it.
America's first sport: shooting the messenger. With so much people asking for this I suppose that in american courts should be normal that witnesses are all sent to jail while criminals are getting paid and sent back to home.
Do you understand what broken trust is? ... means?
Do you understand that you will be the outcast bully because all you do is fling shit at your former friends and allies.
Do you understand that nobody wants to play with you any more because you turned into a arrogant paranoid dick?
Do you understand what do undo others
You lost all your morals and with it any claims to be of any value to the world.
Stop excusing your paranoid behavior and rediscover your former values. It will be long way of humility to rebuild any of the completely burned bridges.
Whom am I kidding? You never had any humility.
You just like a scared dog in a corner.
The sad part is you all brought it unto yourself.
Do you think Mitt Romney or John McCain would have stopped these programs? If so you I would say you are confused. Otherwise, what is your point?
Of course the NSA spied on foreign nations - it's a spy agency after all.
Allies have always spied on one another. In the past British intelligence has provided information to the FBI that it had gathered while spying on Americans.
The outrage was that the NSA was spying internally on Americans, since that should require a warrant.
Allies have always spied on one another. It's the way foreign intelligence works.
spying on your own people in order to betray them to foreign economic and political interests
I'm wondering which interests you have in mind.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
I'm more concerned, though, about who the NSA is really working for these days, and I'm frankly alarmed about who apparently clueless contract administrators like Alexander and Clapper are allowing to actually run the programs and who THEY are sharing data with. Military signals intelligence is one thing, but when a country's military is spying on its own citizens en masse, and sharing the data with everyone from law enforcement to political parties' campaign apparatuses to muck-raking journalists formerly employed by known CIA-controlled/manipulated news orgs to your friendly local mafia^H^H^H^H^H media advertising group, well, then something is definitely very, very wrong. Especially when you see the Feds doing things like this.
Mr. Unimportant from the land of Do Not Disturb. ... and that guy is hurt and offended.
***
Kidding aside, I can't imagine anyone in these governments being actually surprised -- what I figure is that the corporations NOT on the "Multinational Stranglehold of Governments" team is the group that is saying; "Hey, maybe we lost those trade negotiations while someone was spying on Al Qaeda, they were really doing corporate espionage."
And then the SHOCK once the American public realizes; wow, our military and intelligence companies don't work for our interests but for global oligarchies called Multinational Corporations. Wake up and smell the imported coffee people!
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So they listen in on phone conversations of world leaders and find little intelligence there ;-)
Should we be shocked? I don't find that odd at all.
But what I don't get is why, if he has her private number, he didn't just do heavy breathing on the phone instead of the shoulder rub thing. Better to be creepy in private if you are President.
All the fervor over our spying on other nations is pure showmanship on the world leader’s part. There is absolutely nothing new about us spying on allies as well as enemies. Every leader shouting his outrage is a hypocrite since somewhere in our borders is someone that serves the same function reporting to him.
Every nation on this planet keeps tabs on every other nation to the extent of their abilities and every leader is fully aware of that fact. It is simply good manners in diplomatic circles to ignore that fact. This nonsense of blaming Obama or Bush for this is stupid in the extreme. If you want to place blame for spying on allies you might as well assign blame to Washington's administration because that is how far back it goes for our nation.
One of the most common mottoes in the intelligence community is "In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor." One of the most common cards played in diplomacy is the sharing of collected intelligence with allies. It is a game played on a global scale with our various intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies as our front line players. We send intelligence officers into other nations and at the same time try to detect and neutralize the officers sent into ours. And often many of the officers we catch do not report to China or Pakistan or Iraq. They belong to England, France, Germany, or Japan, you know these guys, our allies.
The sad part is that you believe that. Intelligence gathering is a normal function of every government on this planet and that includes allies as well as enemies. It is simply not considered good manners in diplomatic circles to mention that fact.
In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor is not just a humorous motto it is that fact of life for just about every nation you can name.
Really? So if your company SysAdmin is secretly spying on your email, it's the CEO's fault? Even though the SysAdmin is the one with the technical knowledge to both implement and hide the spying?
Not saying that Obama is innocent, but not knowing doesn't make him incompetent. It might just mean that the NSA are good at covering up.
If you want to fault him for something, fault him stepping on those who blow the whistle on these sort of activities, instead of commending them like he should.
Do you think Mitt Romney or John McCain would have stopped these programs?
You are asking something that NOBODY COULD ANSWER FOR CERTAIN, because IT NEVER HAPPEN.
What ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE is that Obama DID NOT stop the program despite given SIX MOTHERFUCKING LONG PRECIOUS YEARS of time to do so.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Whilst completely true and comparably despicable, they were not promising the most transparent administration ever in their electioneering.
So your argument is that two wrongs (even if one of them is hypothetical) do indeed make a right?
Yeah, just wait until the republicans get into office.
The point being ... THE REPUBLICANS HAD NOT BEEN IN THE WHITE HOUSE FOR THE PAST SIX MOTHERFUCKING LONG YEARS !!!
Would you guys please grow the FUCK up ??
It is as if Robber A had robbed the neighborhood 7-11 and killed the clerk.
Instead of punishing Robber A for his crime, you guys are saying "Yeah, wait till Robber B arrives" ...
Exactly how insane can you guys be ?
Why are you guys STILL trying so hard to defend the TOTALLY UNDEFENDABLE ???
Party politics can only go so far ...
What is truth, is truth.
Obama has fucked up.
No matter how you guys want to deny the whole thing, Obama still fucked up !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Many crimes and immoral acts happen every day; just because it's not a new freaky kind of crime doesn't mean we don't need to hear about it. I would like to know if the daily murders are migrating towards my neighborhood. Plus, while murder is OLD the victims and situation changes which each one - therefore it IS news.
Real reporters and editors make the decisions and have the resources to filter the data down to what people need to know - dumping data on them to filter is exactly what you should do. A free press has more RIGHT to cause collateral damage than the military does. Think about it. Don't let government scare you with scare tactics into gutting the press with government "security" censorship. Some people may die and that is the price for freedom! The gov would love to blame TRUTH as much as they can so you hate it as much as they do; simultaneously, they justify all their collateral damage as the price for freedom... WAKE UP
Countries spy but who, when, how, frequency, and acceptability differs. In a functional democracy, the public has a NEED TO KNOW because they are the oversight (whether or not they are inept is another matter.) For practical reasons, some of the information has to be temporarily hidden EXCEPT from the people's representatives who must always be kept in the loop. Problem is, they seem to quickly convert nearly every rep... perhaps it's because they tap all their phones? cough...J. Edgar Hoover.. cough cough
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If this news reporting is truly a guardian, it lacks the most elementary wisdom reporting what an enemy of the free world and #1 traitor in US history purports to release in an attempt to destroy millions of lives, and in choosing to join in with leaking to the entire world tactics that may, in fact, be used to keep the world free of the worst kind of debauchery, control and destruction, it has made itself an enemy of the US and its allies..
Snowden had a motive which wasn't filtered out in the hiring process because privatization has taken over and THAT is why this was so easily done. In the older days, somebody would have to work at the job for years to gain trust, be desensitized, get promoted and gradually be exposed to objectionable things instead of being horrified and overwhelmed with how bad things are. Moving government jobs to contractors is almost always foolish and expensive in the long term.
Going to military and security contractors is unbelievably idiotic... plus they then go to work for smaller players who could never afford to pay the TRUE COST for the tech, experience, and funding their mega-huge primary customer does at tax payer expense.
Corrupt and extremely idealistic politicians did this; the paranoid had little sway.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
how does this matter. Only one of the three names mentioned here ran specifically against the policy of the Bush administration. Part of the reason he got elected was to have the country stop acting like an ass. The other two did not get elected, partly because the country knew they wanted to continue many policies that were unpopular.
Interesting to keep in mind, that when this was initiated (2006), Angela Merkel had just pushed for the successful change in Germany's laws pertaining to private equity/leveraged buyouts (which had lowered Denmark's national tax revenues by an estimated 10% due to the LBO of Denmark's major telecom firm, TDC), and later, around 2008 or thereabouts, would push for the ending of naked swaps, the economic weapon of mass destruction which the US Treasury department is permanently enamored with. The timeline is important and cogent to this discussion because, as always, one should follow the money.
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Well, the American people can't have it both ways; either they're a democracy, which means what the government is doing *is* their fault, since they voted them in, and the peoples' will is being served; or they're NOT a democracy, and their government is not serving their interests.
Many American do appear, from the outside, to be in a permanent state of denial; either of their lack of real functioning democracy, or of their responsibility for their government's doings.
In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor is not just a humorous motto it is that fact of life for just about every nation you can name.
I was going to make a joke about Somalia here, but then I found out that Somalia has made significant progress in rebuilding it's government in the last year, so Somalia Intelligence does exist....
The Iraq war was not caused by intelligence failures. They had no evidence whatsoever that Iraq was involved with AQ. Cheney did not accept this answer, and had a squad of three nitwits go through the rejected intel pile untill they found Screwballs' testimony. "Screwball", according to the CIA's report, was a schizophrenic liar, a real piece of work, and not to be taken seriously. His 'intel' was shitcanned by the professionals.
Good enough! Cheney took the crap that his people dragged in, told Powell to shoot it at the UN, and the war's your uncle. The great bit is that since the crap story was "from the CIA", and the CIA *cannot hold press conferences* to denounce the lying sack, they knew they were going to take the hit. And did. We only know because some CIA officers walked off the job and told us about it, in real time. And were ignored, of course. War war war Iraq war terrorists Iraq war.
Cheney. Ashcroft. Wolfowitz. Rice. The four shits of the apocalypse. They did it on purpose. Three were writers of the Project for the New American Century paper, which insisted that the US take the Iranian and Iraqi oil fields for itself, to deny China and Asia access to the two giant sweet crude sources in the world, for the sole purpose of blocking their economic power.
The CIA was a victim of Cheney and his little squad of economic warriors. We failed them by not prosecuting the murderers. And it was mass murder, for Realpolitik and for cash. And don't forget, this bordered on treason, because Osama got clean away for ten years while Cheney and company were looting Iraq clean.
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Is it any wonder that the US's reputation and credibility is at an all time low? Listen to yourselves, we don't care if Obama knew or not. This is the US spying on your friends and allies, not terrorists but European politicians and ordinary folk. As a Brit I think that the special relationship is dead, it's just our lapdog government that doesn't see it.
Our system has fucked up every other country that has tried it since our founding.
If the Iraq War taught the world nothing else, it should lie in the example set by Tony Blair and George W. Bush: Just being a "world leader" won't stop an individual from lying...and human lives are among the stakes.
Now if you're really upset, then simply demand that the NSA share all of the conversations of the "world's leaders" with the world's peoples.
Then a possible negative is made into an absolute positive.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The only friends we really care about are knee-deep in the FiveEyes stuff with us.
If you weren't in that program you can guess where you fall on the "Friends" list.