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Spy Expert Says Australia Operating As "Listening Post" For US Agencies
First time accepted submitter ozduo writes in with news about Australia's alleged involvement with the ongoing NSA spying program. "Intelligence expert Professor Des Ball says the Australian Signals Directorate — formerly known as the Defense Signals Directorate — is sharing information with the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA is the agency at the heart of whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks, and has recently been accused of tapping into millions of phone calls of ordinary citizens in France, Germany and Spain. Mr Ball says Australia has been monitoring the Asia Pacific region for the US using local listening posts. 'You can't get into the information circuits and play information warfare successfully unless you're into the communications of the higher commands in [the] various countries in our neighborhood,' he told Lateline. Mr Ball says Australia has four key facilities that are part of the XKeyscore program, the NSA's controversial computer system that searches and analyses vast amounts of internet data. They include the jointly-run Pine Gap base near Alice Springs, a satellite station outside Geraldton in Western Australia, a facility at Shoal Bay, near Darwin, and a new center in Canberra."
My, how much progress we've made in fifteen years...
We've made considerable progress in 15 years. 15 years ago, nobody thought the internet was much more than an academic curiousity. All the big players today didn't exist 15 years ago -- Google, Facebook, eBay, Amazon... didn't exist. 404 Business Not Found. But 15 years ago, and people seem to forget, the telecommunications networks that the internet was built on, and later developed a symbiosis with, was being tapped, surveilled, and that data shared with these same governments; As they had done since a few years after WWII, when the world leaders held summits and asked: How can we prevent the next Nazi Germany? And the answer was the same one that won the Allied Powers WWII: Computers. Cryptography. Information Awareness. Back then, information awareness came down to radios, radars, and phone lines, but the doctrine hasn't changed in 50 years: Knowledge of the enemies communications and positions is what wins wars. It's how Germany kicked the everloving shit out of Europe -- blitzkrieg. Be fast. Go unseen. Rain death from above. And be gone before the enemy can mount a response.
And people act like this is some kind of new thing... like the mentality and the methodologies being used by the NSA and its foreign counterparts are this big revelatory thing. But it's not. Not when you understand that we have our eyes and ears everywhere -- you can't move an army anywhere on Earth without us (and by that, I mean America and her allies) knowing about it, and being able to respond with lightning speed. This is common knowledge today. From satellites to realtime worldwide communication... intelligence assets can now be placed, developed, analyzed, and acted upon through the chain of command in less time than it takes you to brush your teeth in the morning.
Which means there's only one place left a threat can hide: By being small and decentralized... by flying under the radar.
And lookie lookie -- what's the NSA been up to these past few years? They aren't just tracking standing armies now. They aren't even just tracking companies, factories, and infrastructure that those armies would need for logistics. They've gone right now to street level. They're going house by house, cable by cable, looking for anyone and anything that could still fly under the radar.
Good? Bad? Depends on who you ask. But the one thing I've gotten real damn tired of hearing on Slashdot and hundreds of other websites is the tired mantra of "Oh noes! The NSA is spying on us!" ... without bothering to answer the question of why much beyond "Because they're just evil, you know." People have developed the NSA's true motives in their minds about as well as Hollywood develops Star Trek villains! "I'm gonna be bad because... I feel like being bad."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"Don't think it can't happen in Australia, It does."
What a lot of Australians don't even realise is that anything can happen, our political system guarantees almost no rights to citizens, with only one real recourse; you can vote for another politician at the next election. Problem is, when the two-party system moves in step, there's pretty much nothing that can be done, and the general apathy of the public ensures that nothing will be done.
It is my understanding, that in the USA, the spying conducted by the NSA is probably illegal. The problem in Australia is, as far as I'm aware, there's no problem with the parliament passing a law permitting or compelling third parties to spy or provide data, so whatever had been happening, is perfectly legal here, and the public at large doesn't care.
You can read the classic sock puppets out on any NSA story on slashdot. I think they still try and post about "fear" and 'not' looking at global finance for insider trading in some desperate struggle for legitimacy.
With every Snowden news report they look more and more lost. The world now understands the reach and fascination the NSA has with all calls, faxes, emails, chats, logs, junk encryption. Now they also understand how their own govs staff and contractors subvert their own govs over generations.
What was sold as looking outward at the Soviet Union only was also always inward too. Everybody understands now and many crypto developers will be much smarter. US tech brands will be enjoyed but never trusted again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The most embarrassing thing about this (for me anyway) is that New Zealand is also complicit in this arrangement. As I understand it our Waihopai facility near Blenheim (attacked by activists in 2008, they were acquitted in 2010) is an important part of the surveillance programme. I expect to see a similar article about us in due course.
I jeered at the trio when I saw the original news item. At the time I called them Luddites, trespassers and vandals, unaware of the larger issue they were taking on. For shame! When the NSA scandal broke I suddenly understood what they were about and realised they were actually everyday garden-variety heroes standing up for something they believed in.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?