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Report: Russia and China Crack Encrypted Snowden Files
New submitter garyisabusyguy writes with word that, according to London's Sunday Times, "Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services," and suggests this non-paywalled Reuters version, too. "MI6 has decided that it is too dangerous to operate in Russia or China," writes the submitter. "This removes intelligence capabilities that have existed throughout the Cold War, and which may have helped to prevent a 'hot' nuclear war. Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?"
I will withhold my judgement on this until they release verifiable proof. It seems like their even disclosing the fact they know if the Russians and Chinese had access would be considered a state secret.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
First (as stated in the summary): "Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?"
Second (not asked, but as important as the first): Was it worth it? Did the revelations made the world a better after the revelations?
IMO yes, it was worth it. Having secret programs authorised by secret laws and secret alliances to reduce or remove the privacy of the population as a whole for some geopolitical goal is not something that should happen in democratic countries.
The better question is why we're letting these agencies get away with scapegoating Snowden, just because they try to blame everything on him? It's not like they're free of any cu;pability for their actions just because some guy blew the whistle on them.
Without confirmation, this is just as likely to be a false flag attempt to charge Snowden with something serious as it is to be an actual news story.
The first question that comes to my mind is, "Has anything actually been cracked?" Maybe this is all just some kind of release to make Snowden looked bad. All I know is that spying is all about lying. All I know is that I'm an American who feels compelled to be an Anonymous Coward when talking about things like this... in America, and wondering if that makes any real difference. All I know is that they, ultimately, will die just as I will die. All I know is all they know, when you reduce it down. The spy is in me, and try as I might... I cannot decipher my own secret.
As politicos (and Google execs) repeat far too frequently, I'm sure there's nothing that sensitive there, is there? Were MI6 and CIA, etc., heaven forbid doing something bad? Golly, I hope not. We don't need encryption if we all obey the law, right?
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/0...
Blaming the whistleblower for revealing shady operations as an excuse for why those shady operations are no longer effective seems like an arsonist running a second by second commentary on the flaming building they set alight, all while asking for more matches and gasoline. I want to believe people are better than this, but this sort of "news" has been seen too often of late, I think.
AFAIK, the encrypted versions weren't widely distributed; chances are that the documents weren't force-decrypted by RU/CN. I mean, if a cracker gets access to one of the few computers who holds the encrypted documents, he for sure can wait just a bit until the encryption key is entered into a keylogger. Snowden using weak keys? seems unlikely.
Here's the outcome of Mr Snowden's "whistleblowing":
- American IT companies are losing billions because foreign customers are scared
- Intelligence networks are fucked
- Nothing whatsoever has changed in the way government agencies spy on US citizens
The guy should send his resume to Al Qaeda.
You missed a few:
- a semblance of transparency for US citizens in what their government is doing
- cessation of some of the programmes
- the overthrow of several dictatorships in the middle east
but hey, you keep worrying about the profits of some rich folk who hate you, that's really important
Oh yeah, and your last point was wrong
Even if there are never any charges, the bad (Snowden) PR of the news story itself is enough motivation for them to manufacture an issue (if they think they can get away with it). No one ever actually charged Assange with rape, did they?
What if the claim that the files have been decrypted is false? Just the claim disrupts intelligence operations. Perhaps they have some information that was obtained by other means and has been used to "prove" that the files have been cracked, when, in reality, they have not?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Too bad strong encryption wasn't available to him -- was whatever "weak encryption" he used known to the NSA as being vulnerable?
The only people I am afraid of are the western bankers who faced with a declining empire because of their lawlessness, refuse to except their loss of power and wealth and decide if they can't continue to have all of this wealth and power and all od the lawlessnes and mischief you read about in the free news on the internet.
They will destroy it.
Those are the people you should be afraid of.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
And Snowden is responsible for all this, right? If you are going to blame someone, how about you blame the right group of people, like the US administration? Snowden just pointed out to the 1984 like environment we all live in. This was already known to some extent but not proven and all he did was provide the proof. If you are doing "nothing wrong" (as Google execs like to repeat at every opportunity), how about you leave the bathroom door wide open while you are going about your business? Better yet, how about a live cam feed from your bedroom so we can watch you all the time ;)?
Look, they've had a couple years to figure out that if Russia and China have a shit pile of encrypted files, that they are going be busy trying to crack them. So if they haven't substituted out their people (operatives in spooky talk) in the last 2 years, the people running the circus are a bunch of fucking clowns. If they didn't have alternate plans with different networks, they are incompetent. Those files only show what those agencies were doing historically at this point. Because if they are still current, the U.S. is really in trouble. The next thing you know they'll be run by creationists who don't believe in science and evolution. Or they know how to capitalize on a really arcane book of myths to keep the people occupied.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
GCHQ and the UK have been crying wolf about encryption for years. Now after all their bleating about how they can't crack encryption, they're claiming the Russians and Chinese have done it, but they couldn't?
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Perhaps if intelligence services weren't gathering so much domestic intelligence on the taxpayers who fund them and, if citizens could rely on public oversights with enough teeth to ensure that the intelligence powers were being used ethically then there wouldn't be a motivation for leaks.
However there isn't and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
> Nothing whatsoever has changed in the way government agencies spy on US citizens
So Al Queda wants business as usual? That doesn't make sense.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
- American IT companies are losing billions because foreign customers are scared
Those poor companies! They will make a few billions less after getting truckloads of money from the government to introduce backdoors in their supposed secure products. Maybe next time those companies choose to protect the privacy of their customers...
- Intelligence networks are fucked
They will be rebuilt, however, spying on citizens may be reduces somewhat.
- Nothing whatsoever has changed in the way government agencies spy on US citizens
Except that the people now now about this and can take more precautions against being spied on.
After Snowden, what could previously be attributed to ignorance can now be attributed to stupidity as surveillance is now confirmed real, and not just a conspiracy theory for paranoid lunatics anymore. Which could've been a stop-and-think-for-a-minute moment for humanity, but I see no riots in the street nor any change in people's "convenient" privacy-leaking ways. Maybe if something like Snowden revelations had happened ten years earlier, it would've made a bigger impact. Maybe.
Assuming this Sunday Times story is accurate, what idiot spymaster kept the real identities of active agents on a 'computer' that apparently any random IT techie had access to. I wonder if the media is trying to distract attention from that massive OPM hack.
Second OPM Hack Revealed: Even Worse Than The First
If you have any document, it either gets into hands that shouldn't have it, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you need no encryption. If it does, you must assume that it is passed on to your worst and most capable enemy.
So weak encryption that your most capable enemy can crack is just pointless. It doesn't help if you don't lose the document, and it doesn't help if you lose it. Using encryption is inconvenient, but using strong encryption is not one bit more inconvenient than using weak encryption.
If they have top secret documents that have been cracked by the Chinese or Russian government due to weak encryption you only have yourself to blame.
I'd be almost funny if Putin waterboarded him to get the keys.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
What I find difficult to believe:
1. Russia or China would make it known they cracked anything.
2. Western intelligence would make it known they know what Russia and China were able to do.
3. Articles which read like propaganda, provide no details and cite no specific sources.
Because the media is fully controlled by our governments since its necessary to control us. Blogs and online news screwed that up temporarily, but that's mostly been fixed by having them taken over by bigger companies. As for the Guardian et al, the relevant people have been punished, and what's getting published now is being vetted first.
But hey, thanks for telling us the NSA is spying on some bad Americans. And, by the way everybody spies on everybody. Russians on us. We on the Russians. China on us.
"bad Americans". Like all the ones that use electronic communications, you mean those bad Americans?
Does the fact that China and Russia do something unjust make it OK for America to do that thing to its own citizens?
What if it was ruled illegal in federal court. Would that affect your viewpoint?
I'm not sure you've really thought this through...
That's what they would like you to believe. Snowden makes a very convenient scapegoat for all manner of government fumbles.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Those poor companies! They will make a few billions less after getting truckloads of money from the government to introduce backdoors in their supposed secure products. Maybe next time those companies choose to protect the privacy of their customers...
Do you have any citations of them being paid large sums of money, much less 'billions' for those backdoors?
Hell, one story was that the CIA was intercepting shipments of equipment like cisco routers, opening them, and replacing their OS with a hacked version. Without Cisco's knowledge.
I don't read AC A human right
IMO yes, it was worth it. Having secret programs authorised by secret laws and secret alliances to reduce or remove the privacy of the population as a whole for some geopolitical goal is not something that should happen in democratic countries.
Actually there is a much more important 3rd question. Was it necessary to do a mass dump of NSA files that went far beyond mass domestic surveillance in order to bring that mass surveillance to the attention of the people?
The answer is a definitive NO. Snowden overshared. He may have inadvertently harmed legitimate intelligence programs and agents. He should have pruned his dump and kept it on topic.
So, Russia and China just happened to crack these files at the very same time?
Further, the files Snowden took from the NSA (U.S.) exposed MI6 (UK) agents in Russia?!?
I wonder what terribly embarrassing thing was about to be published in the UK that MI6 doesn't want people paying attention to?
"Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?"
Why is all the blame heaped on Snowden? What about "the actions of the NSA"? Running a massive illegal spying operation on the American people, lying about it in sworn congressional testimony, and having no effective confidential channel for whistleblowers, they deserve far more blame for this than Snowden does.
Why the blame? Apparently incompetence. Why was he putting an archive out there that included legitimate operations and agents, why not confine his archive to docs exposing the domestic mass surveillance programs? He overshared.
As I recall during the whole Snowden-chase saga, Greenwald stated that Snowden no longer actually had the files with him once they parted ways in Hong Kong. They were never in Russia. And the Chinese probably didn't even know about them before Greenwald parted ways with Snowden. They have concocted planted stories before to try to make Snowden into someone who damaged the U.S. and the U.K. interests. I'll wait to see Greenwald's response before making much of this.
... if you had any respect for the US constitution or due process. But you don't. So fuck you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well, if the government did it without the permission or knowledge of said companies, then, I guess, the companies made a bad decision when choosing a country for their factories. Similar to how Chinese companies may be suspect because Chinese government probably does the same thing the CIA does. At least now everybody knows about this so the companies can make a decision to avoid the US (and China). And seal their equipment so it shows evidence if it was "enhanced".
https://xkcd.com/538/
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
I wonder how pissed off all the various countries of the world will be when they find out the details of what has been going on?
Can you imagine how pissed off some people like the French would be if it turned out the US meddled in a French election? Or stole technological secrets from one of their national darlings and handed it to US companies?
It is one thing to find out that there is a program called Operation French Fry that was to monitor French politics. But if it turns out that they did specific things on specific dates to specific people; then the gloves will come off.
I was 100% sure this would happen. Yes there are a number of ways it could have happened, but in the end they knew who had the keys. You point a gun at the person and say "tell me the password," encryption "cracked." Or you show that person a picture of their niece, father, first love whatever and then a few pictures of people you've torture to death. Encryption "cracked". Or you put a keylogger chip in a keyboard on a computer known to have the codes. Encryption "cracked". Or ... who cares. The information was high value, they knew where it was. They knew who had the keys. None of it and no one was protected by serious security.
And maybe the password was breakable. Even if he used 256 bit encryption, if he used a phrase that was too small, then, dummy. Whatever the outcome was assured from the beginning, because Russian intelligence and Chinese intelligence are the sort of people who will spend a million dollars to poison someone with polonium just to make a point.
spies. So if they're still in trouble despite having years to prepare for this, whose fault is that?
I see a lot of that foreign spying as just as wrong as the domestic spying. Nations such as Germany are hosting our troops within their own borders, and we repay them with what? Spying on their internal as well as foreign affairs? We are really shitty guests when you get down to it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's this generation's Rocky and Bullwinkle. Seriously this is Bullwinkle ;)
Time to scale back the pointless spying. Also we spied on Merkel! Did we also spy on Angelina Jolie's shower? Because that would be even more convenient, also useless.
I see where you are coming from and, I think, I see where you are going. I understand, I think, and do not intend to be malicious so bear with me if you will.
Citation needed on the truckloads of money part. They were likely paid and it was likely a paltry sum compared to your envisioned truckloads.
"...may be[sic] reduces..." It may increase as well. Using weasel words is not an effective statement. You are correct in that maybe the spying reduces. That is a potential outcome. It seems unlikely to me but we can hope. I appreciate your optimism but I think your hoped-for outcome may take a while longer yet. I think that Snowden got the ball rolling but it is up to us to keep up the momentum until we get what we want or a reasonable compromise.
I know of nobody who has changed their practices - those who are using encryption were using it before (as an example). Literally, I know of angry folks but not one of them has changed their practices to better secure their privacy. Realistically, how can they? There is nothing they can not scrape and gather data from - unless you go through some very extreme measures. So, can they? Yes but to what effect? How many people do you know, and be honest with yourself and us, who have actually made changes to their habits due to this and have stuck with those changes ever since they made them?
As I have stated, I think Snowden is a patriot of the highest degree. I do not think his release of information is enough to affect much change - I think we need to keep being vocal and keep insisting on a more open and law abiding government. Think of it like this, there were many heroes in WWII but not a single one of them actually won the war. We need to keep the motivation high and continue to apply pressure or they will continue the behavior.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This seems well-timed, just two days after David Anderson QC's report calling the UK surveillance powers "undemocratic", "fragmented" and "obscure". Got to keep the populace onside while working towards the next set of even-more intrusive laws, all in their own interest of course!
All your ghosts are just false positives.
Edward Snowden is NOT a hero; he is a severely flawed character who did something good (unmasking a mountain of government lies and deceit towards its own people) while doing something very bad (exposing the intelligence activities of only the more-free and more-decent western nations to their less-free and less-decent enemies). Guys like Snowden and Assange are great at pretending to be all about freedom while amazingly only ever hurting the "good guys" who are more free than the "bad guys" whose interests they NEVER seek to harm.
You want a hero? Try all those opponents of Putin who risk their very lives (and many of whom have been killed) for challenging his evil narrative. Nobody has murdered Assange or Snowden. Had either of these guys been more honorable, they would have found themselves testifying before congress on Capitol Hill after which the public might well have demanded their protection as whistle blowers. They did not have such motives, but merely pretended to be on the side of the angels while actually behaving very badly.
The only reason I can see to have mercy on Snowden is that he found himself, under the Obama administration, in a bad spot. During the Obama years, the administration has zealously prosecuted whistle blowers and the Democrats on Capitol Hill have mindlessly done Obama's bidding to shield him from any and all congressional hearings (a far-less honorable act than the GOP during the Nixon years). They have even turned on journalists they used to like. Snowden, knowing Obama would prosecute him and that no Democrat in Washington (including the press, mostly die-hard Democrats) could be trusted to protect him had one option left: trust the GOP. Being a young leftist, however, he was probably completely programmed by MSNBC, HuffPo, Kos, and the rest to never listen to or cooperate with a Republican. This much makes sense. Turning to Putin however zeros this all out.
I do not think you are as close to funny as you seem to think you are. I am also not sure how that would make you almost funny. Is that anything like almost pregnant?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What are the chances of RUSSIA AND CHINA breaking the encryption at the SAME time and Mi5 handily knowing about it?
Now what are the chance of them doing that when Snowden NEVER TOOK THE FILES TO RUSSIA in the first place?
On the other hand, what the chances of this being a 'blame Snowden' lie from the people who just lost a lot of files?
Just another fucking lie from these spooks.
If the thing is a lie, it could come from any of the agencies that issue lies.
How did they crack files he never took to Russia, because he feared they could beat him to get him to reveal the password? Flaw #1.
Snowden files only cover Britain now? Even the claim doesn't make sense. If they had cracked Snowden files why wouldn't the US, and other 5 eyes agencies be removing their people? Flaw #2.
Even a cursory glance says this is a lie.
Whoever paid you to shill for them should demand their money back.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
Is that anything like almost pregnant?
Now now. I don't think even Putin would resort to that.
and which may have helped to prevent a 'hot' nuclear war.
Preventing escalation in hostility by acting in a hostile manner. Right. See? Spies are GOOD. When we spy on a country it means we're trying to be friends. Also black is white, 2+2 = 5, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sooo NSA stored all bulk surveillance together with sensitive CIA operations? Why did NSA store info on CIA operations? And one whistle blower got his hands on it all and whistled? You think _that_ was the problem? Hahahahah
The less restricted access to information is, the quicker it will get leaked. But regardless sooner or later it will get leaked. Be it through whistle blowers, spies, corruption or stupidity. Else the restriction on access is so great that the information becomes useless. Since it cannot be evaluated or used at all.
Just kidding. It was 12345
Imagine the look on the faces of the victorious Chinese decryption team on opening up Snowden's files and find nothing but this link http://bit.ly/IqT6zt
It's this generation's Rocky and Bullwinkle. Seriously this is Bullwinkle ;)
Time to scale back the pointless spying. Also we spied on Merkel! Did we also spy on Angelina Jolie's shower? Because that would be even more convenient, also useless.
Yes but if you are the kind of weirdo who likes to spy on women in their showers it has to be said that spying on Angelina Jolie in the shower would seem to be lightyears more enjoyable than spying on Angela Merkel in the shower. One has to wonder what kind of twisted uber-weirdos work at the NSA. I'm convinced that if I was ever so unfortunate as to see Angela Merkel in the shower I would go blind but then again I've not reached NSA levels of weirdness and perversity. Getting to that level must require years upon years of diligent work.
Exactly. The cheapest way for Russia/China to put western intelligence agencies on the defensive is to fake it. Use some other intel to take a stab at the contents, spread a rumour that you cracked it, and watch western intelligence personnel leave as a precaution. Then just check names off your list of suspected agents as they leave, AND send them home at their own expense.
The timing of this is rather suspicious though. Snowden has been in Russia since June 2013, and I doubt Russia would have pissed around for two years trying to decrypt those files if they really wanted them. Just install a keylogger and wait. Western intelligence agencies would have removed their personnel long ago. As others have mentioned, this announcement comes hot on the heels of the hacked government personnel records, including people with clearances. This could be butt covering, as in "Those suspicious people are not agents, pay no attention to them, we already removed all our personnel because of Snowden".
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
etc
if they hadn't tried to burn the whistleblower? The US government could have let him return to the US safely, instead of making him stay in a country where you have spies running around. Instead we get double standards: Life of the little guy is ruined, the top brass can continue (including lying to congress/senate) or get a mild slap on the wrist (David "Betrayus" Petraeus)
It is is interesting to know if the story is true in the first place: Both China an Russia crack the code, at about the same time. And we know that for both countries. Wow, I'm impressed that this spying business works so well.
Bert
I agree.
But I have to say that "can be broken with enough... time" is entirely the point of encryption. The time required is often recommended to be longer than the heat-death of the universe at a given rate for the expected adversary (i.e. lone hacker, or nation state).
There's a reason the spying agencies hate encryption and try to subvert it by other methods (software flaws, stealing keys, downgrading encryption levels, etc.) instead.
1. Pretend that you have decrypted the files.
2. Observe suspected agents to see who is fleeing.
3. Profit.
I agree.
OTP encryption cannot be broken given enough time. The only solution is to get the pad. Without the pad, all paintexts are equally likely and there's no theoretical way to distinguish between them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Look at the opening excerpts from the linked Sunday Times piece.
If this is true, it isn't just Britain pulling agents and assets but the all the NATO and Asian allies and partners.
It could just as easily be true that Russia and/or China have penetrated or compromised some other intel sources but arranged to detain the Western agents in such a way as to make the West conclude that the Snowden archive was the only possible source. In this way, the Brits and Yanks would be forced to pull agents at once, revealing the foreign locations and foreign citizens that the Western agents were targeting in Russia and China.
The article summary doesn't mention that the Times is insisting that American agents are also compromised.
Sounds like more self-serving hysteria.
I would expect that if anything happens to compromise Western espionage operations, now and in years to come, "Edward Snowden" will be the fall guy for everything. Very convenient for MI6 to use Snowden as their whipping boy.
Given how the West's operations were compromised for all holders of security clearances last week, I'd say it is more likely that our own government's constant and deliberate "carelessness" in cybersecurity procedures and data security are to blame and they just want to use Snowden as the scapegoat.
For Americans, this is a news story best commented on as an Anonymous Coward.
It could actually be true no doubt but it seems to me that this is just another salvo in the character assassination of Edward Snowden.
Even if it were true all it does is show the absolute incompetence of our intelligence agencies and the malfeasance of our political representatives; this is the worst thing about the unfettered collection of personal data by government and business alike, namely the lack of protection from the misuse and exposure of the information collected. Our collective governments and parliaments worldwide have been asleep at the wheel for the last 30 years, that is those that aren't actively involved in the process.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Nope
Korma: Good
Talk about yourselves. The world isn't UK, you know. If anything, Snowden's revelations have shown that it's the UK who performed hostile acts of espionage against their European allies, together and on behalf of their trans-atlantic big buddies, not Soviet Russia.
You mean like the data the Chinese are supposed to have stolen in the last two US federal government break-ins?
Or maybe Snowden gave the Russians the password and they shared it with the Chinese.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If Russia had the encrypted files, and Snowden was in Russia and could be tortured for the password, why would they only NOW remove their spies? After the files were claimed to be decrypted by some magic means?
None of this makes sense.
It smells of domestic propaganda when the US has upcoming elections.
"This removes intelligence capabilities that have existed throughout the Cold War, and which may have helped to prevent a 'hot' nuclear war. Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?"
Its a twisted mind that thinks to be safe a country need to invade the minds of other nations rather than earning their respect and admiration.
Trust is the most valuable attribute, spying destroys trust.
Dont blame the messenger.
TIMING
The revelations about the impact of Snowden on intelligence operations comes days after Britain's terrorism law watchdog said the rules governing the security services' abilities to spy on the public needed to be overhauled.
Conservative lawmaker and former minister Andrew Mitchell said the timing of the report was "no accident".
"There is a big debate going on," he told BBC radio. "We are going to have legislation bought back to parliament (...) about the way in which individual liberty and privacy is invaded in the interest of collective national security.
"That's a debate we certainly need to have."
Cameron has promised a swathe of new security measures, including more powers to monitor Briton's communications and online activity in what critics have dubbed a "snoopers' charter".
Britain's terrorism laws reviewer David Anderson said on Thursday the current system was "undemocratic, unnecessary and - in the long run - intolerable".
He called for new safeguards, including judges not ministers approving warrants for intrusive surveillance, and said there needed to be a compelling case for any extensions of powers.
So what you really have is fear monger lying for more police state jackboot power grabby bullshit. I don't think it was an accident that Orwell was English.
the overthrow of several dictatorships in the middle east
Not really, just added more fuel to the fire. It was actually the worst drought in 10kyr history of the fertile crescent that triggered the "Arab Spring", akin to the dust bowl years in the US but in the food bowl of N.Africa and the M.E. It also coincided with sever drought in Australia and Russia, grain prices skyrocketed out of the reach of normal Arabs.
:)
Two million Syrians (10% of the population) abandoned their farms and moved into the cities, and there were regular food riots in Cairo and other major cities before anyone had heard of Snowden! The Arabs didn't all suddenly log on to FB and work out they were being oppressed, they became hungry, and when people become hungry they get desperate and unpredictable. The spark that ignited the powder keg was the guy who set himself on fire in the town square, go google WHY he set himself on fire and then ponder why that resonated so strongly across an Arab world where even the "middle class urbanites" were struggling to feed their families.
The other two points are spot on.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's almost certainly the case. The story reeks of propaganda. For instance, the claim that the UK has some kind of large Russian spy network is rather contradicted by the fact that they only recently started recruiting Russian speakers. Pretty hard to get intel from a country where you don't have any staff that speak the language.
The notion that a "cache of documents" was cracked also sounds like nonsense. None of the Snowden documents have dealt with human intelligence ("HUMINT" as they call it). We're being asked to believe that there's hugely detailed info about British spies in what Snowden leaked, yet, no mention of documents from MI6 has been made up until now? Not even alluded to?
And the Russians and Chinese, working independently, both managed to crack this cache ... at the same time?
And none of the spies that were found after this calamitous event were arrested or deported? Not a single one? Even though when Russian spies were found in the USA they were turned into a media circus and then put in front of a judge?
No way. None of the things we're being asked to believe make even a shred of sense. There's a far, far more plausible explanation that does fit the facts: British intelligence was far, far more reliant on SIGINT for insight into Russia and China than they wanted their bosses to believe. MI6, in particular, is stretched to the limit. We know that they routinely cancel surveillance of people they believe might be dangerous jihadis because they don't have the resources to continue. Lacking Russian language speakers, lacking any real motivation to spy on Russia until very recently, you can see how they might have become super reliant on the very fragile techniques used by GCHQ. Now I absolutely do believe that foreign governments became harder to spy on as a result of Snowden, but this terrible disaster that has afflicted UK intelligence is much more likely to be the result of foreign embassies upgrading their VPNs to non-weak Diffie-Hellman, than the result of moving agents who may or may not even exist.
... you're assuming Snowden had access to more than "need to know," and that he was far down the chain of command and somewhat removed from the atmosphere of responsibility and duty.
That doesn't sound plausible.
Oh, wait.
Manning, Pfc.
Walks in with a Lady Gaga disk and walks out with the goods.
nm
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... there was no OPM breach.
The US feds came up with a nice piece of fiction and now the British bastards are doing a spin-off.
It was China. No, Russia. No, it was OPM. No, Snowden.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Theory: A OTP has a finite length in bits, a finite number of bits means a finite number of possible combinations, anything with a finite number of combinations is crackable by brute force in finite time (assuming time is infinite).
Practice: Make the number of combinations large enough so that the time to crack it makes cracking it impractical, eg: 100 trillion years.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So... Russia and China have been working together to crack an encrypted file? Or... they've worked on it independently and almost at the same time cracked the code? Or... Chinese mole helps Russian team crack the code? And somehow the US has not managed to crack the Snowden file?
Sounds fishy.
This news concerns me. It reminds me of the time that we spotted WMDs from satellite and surveillance, and invaded Iraq. Thank God we found those weapons once we got there. Oh, right....
My UID is prime!
Secret agents in Russia didn't prevent a nuclear war. That's ridiculous! The decision to attack or not attack was a political decision, made by politicians in the public performance of their roles. What, we think a spy dropped something in a politician's drink to make them feel more friendly to their enemies on the day they were set to deliver the "blow them up" command? Sheesh.
Stanislav Petrov prevented a nuclear war once. And he was not a secret agent.
https://firstlook.org/theinter...
Ian Ameline
He was using 'export quality' encryption, which like export beer, no one in their right mind would use. Then again, being outside of the USA, he was complying to export regulation ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"hosting our troops"... "guests"... That's funny. Europe and Japan are occupied territories. That is the only reason they are still at peace! And just barely. We must admit that the US is the region's peacekeeper. That's a fact jack! It is the only reason Europeans can sleep with both eyes closed. They now live more securely than Henry VIII or Louis XVI ever did, only because of the United States. This is why they can live with relatively tiny military budgets. The US carries the load.
It was all snowden's work along!
He stole the data for the sole purpose of giving to Russia and China!
He's an evil communist traitor that needs to be put on an electric chair!
The recent breach by China are just purely coincidental!
Also there's no way that Russia would the resource and know how to obtain such data, and they had to rely on a lone consultant instead of their mighty KGB/FSB !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Snowden files were leaked ages ago, you're telling me now that governments around the world hasn't done anything to protect their agents and put preventive measures in place until now? Besides, Snowden was true to the people, not the government, it was in the people's best interest that he get exiled for. All these smear campaign to undermine what he has done will reflect in history how evil the government can become to maintain control of their own people.
Were they in a folder called "Secret file folder" on a machine named "Top secret. Do not look"?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Maybe, with a bit of coercion. I doubt he would have had access to those servers though. And it would be really impressive if nobody remembered to change the server passwords in that time :-)
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
In 2013, Reuters reported that documents released by Edward Snowden indicated that the NSA had paid RSA Security $10 million to make Dual_EC_DRBG the default in their encryption software, and raised further concerns that the algorithm might contain a backdoor for the NSA.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If this is true, I hope the Russians and/or Chinese publish the information so other countrieswill know who the traitors who sell data to the US. The US has already shown us how to treat "enemy combattants" so thei're up for a rough time.
Glenn Greenwald has written a clear statement here arguing that the assertions of the Telegraph article are deeply flawed, and based entirely on anonymous statements from government officials. It is worth a read. Here is one paragraph from it:
The Sunday Times today merely recycled the same evidence-free smears that have been used by government officials for years – not only against Snowden, but all whistleblowers – and added a dose of sensationalism and then baked it with demonstrable lies. That’s just how western journalism works, and it’s the opposite of surprising. But what is surprising, and grotesque, is how many people (including other journalists) continue to be so plagued by some combination of stupidity and gullibility, so that no matter how many times this trick is revealed, they keep falling for it. If some anonymous government officials said it, and journalists repeat it while hiding who they are, I guess it must be true.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It's good PR. And a bad example to turn him over, if they do that noone will trust them again.
Never let a hostile agent know his operations were successful.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
...by Glenn Greenwald, with copious facts, in The Intercept: https://firstlook.org/theinter...
All major countries spy on all other major countries, friend or foe. They would be negligent of their duties to their own citizens to do otherwise.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Snowden is a heroic figure. Yes, he may have endangered US and allied operatives doing the good work but how safe were these people in the first place? Trust us say the safe people in the glass towers. Protocols need to change.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Mmmm - yeah. But then, not all nations spend a fraction of their GDP on spying. And, you know, that whole Five Eyes thing basically pits "us" against the world. You may be right - but I see the whole damned thing as immoral and unethical, not to mention that it's a violation of all sorts of treaties, understandings, and agreements.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Snowden was a traitor that blackmailed America with the threat of releasing the codes if he died or was jailed.
Now, Russia and CHina have the data that they want (which was EVERYTHING that snowden had).
Snowden is sitting in Russia, while we are putting extreme economic pressure on Russia. No doubt at some point, Russia will pull out of Ukraine and will want the sanctions gone. My guess is that America will INSIST on having snowden turned over for prosecution in return.
Snowden will then join manning in prison. For the rest of his fucking miserable life.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
they will turn over snowden when economic sancations are too much for Russia. And Russia is having a difficult time right now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The "agents" positions could not have been that dangerous if they left them in place knowing Snowden's stolen data was out in the wild.
Sorry not going to believe they just shrugged and "went with it" after the leak.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Murdoch article is pure propaganda.
We now have one of the purest examples of this dynamic. Last night, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times published their lead front-page Sunday article, headlined “British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.”
Just as the conventional media narrative was shifting to pro-Snowden sentiment in the wake of a key court ruling and a new surveillance law, the article (behind a paywall: full text here) claims in the first paragraph that these two adversaries “have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.”
https://firstlook.org/theinter...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
-Hitchens.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You have to wonder, then, what will happen in the United States a few years down the line when the many social programs implode. Digging out of it seems impossible given that unfunded liabilities are, as of this writing, over $818000 per taxpayer (see bottom line) and that is an optimistic number (pessimistic numbers more than double that). Food-wise, with cuts to Social Security, I expect we'll have senior riots - old and slow and easy to machine gun down, but who knows what kinds of people the failure of the health programs will bring. Since I will be approaching being a senior around that time, I've been hedging against expecting anything from the government and likely will move out of the country before then (my wife wants to retire to Ecuador, I'd prefer Europe, as my German is far better than my Spanish).
Manning was an idiot. Yet a greater idiot gave him access to files when he wanted to leave service.
Snowden was a patriot. He tried to appeal to his chain of command.
If I were in the position I doubt I would have the balls to do what either Snowden or Manning did. I would take my oath more seriously.
And that is the irony. I have would have more integrity yet what do you do when your bosses that took the same oath as you to protect and defend the constitution shit all over it...
P.S. For how long did the NSA know what was in the Snowden files and what info he had access to? Are you really going to leave your agents in the field like that?
"We're not going to spy on Russia or China ANY MORE! It's JUST NOT SAFE! SO you don't have to worry, Russia and China, because we're not spying on you!"
Yeah right.
Well, it probably is.
> Nothing whatsoever has changed in the way government agencies spy on US citizens
So Al Queda wants business as usual? That doesn't make sense.
Last time Al Qaeda disrupted the American economy, there was a big intelligence and military response. So what Snowden achieved is impressive; he basically destroyed IBM's business abroad (and many others) without a single soldier being deployed as a result. They could learn from him.
lucm, indeed.
Money isn't real; food is real.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
As I read it, basically they have started to manufacture a case to start a 'hot' nuclear war.
Why was he putting an archive out there that included legitimate operations and agents, why not confine his archive to docs exposing the domestic mass surveillance programs?
He offered to allow the NSA to vet the information before it was released. The NSA refused.
Could this be the reason why US changed its tone about Ukraine's government?
- He didn't bring the documents into Russia. He left them with reporters
The only sources of that statement are individuals that were involved with the incident.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If Russia and China had actually cracked the encryption around Snowden's files, would the Brits be publicising it to the world? I don't think so. The Brits would not want to let the Russians/Chinese to know they (the Brits) know. And once Snowden's exploits were known to the Brits (several years ago), why would the Brits not have taken precautionary measures to prevent problems like this from occuring, unless the Brits are just exceedingly stupid (which I doubt). How can we verify the truth, or lack thereof, of this report? I doubt we can, short of having our own agents inside MI6. Why would the Russians/Chinese give the first hint of a sniff of a clue that they have decrypted these files? I don't think they would, as it would be beyond stupid to do so. Let the Brits keep their agents in place and feed them bad info. This whole thing smells quite fishy to me.
Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie
From the link;
The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.
1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.
2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.
3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.
4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. Remember that GCHQ already has an archive of 800,000 perfectly innocent British people engaged in sex chats online.
5) The paper publishing the story is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It is sourced to the people who brought you the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, every single “fact” in which proved to be a fabrication. Why would you believe the liars now?
There you have five reasons the story is a lie.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
A relatively small number of foreign companies have brought the giants of American industry to their knees over the past few decades – companies such as Toyota. The Japanese automaker gained more share than any other company which operates in the American car market in the last twenty years. GM lost the most. But, GM had to contend with many rivals from Europe and Japan, each of which aimed products at niches in the US market. Toyota does not deserve the credit alone for GM’s downfall. . Compare price here is the best websitewww.pricekhan.com . The tales of most of the US companies that suffered large sales losses to foreign competitors involve poor management, or the inability to innovate quickly or buy valuable assets as they became available. It is not that simple. Almost every case discussed here is in an industry which is still changing. GM may have lost ground to Toyota. Now, each loses ground to South Korean firms Kia and Hyundai. China-based Acer was able to take sales from Dell because of the success of the netbook. Acer was early. U.S.-based Dell was late. By the time each was building netbook sales, Apple introduced a tablet PC–the iPad. The race course has been redrawn twice in less than four years. These are eight stories of American companies which lost substantial market share to foreign rivals. There are cases where most of the sales loss came within the US itself. Other cases are ones where an American company with a large worldwide presence lost an important portion of its market share to a company based outside the US. The geographic expanse of the failure is often nowhere near as important as the effect of the financial loss. A company that has a 50% drop in sales will probably go out of business or be permanently crippled whether all of that loss came in Asia, Europe, or the US. The lesson to be learned here is that the next big thing keeps coming year after year after year. That’s even true for the US company that just came out with it. Compare price here is the best website www.pricekhan.com
Well, if the US and UK are all BFFs and sharing secret agent phone numbers, then obviously so are the Russians and Chinese.
I'm still having a big problem with the first part of this story. That the US would have the list of UK spies in the first place. I expect them to co-operate, but to just share the entire list, not just on a case-by-case need-to-know type thing seems really unlikely. Does the UK have a list of all US assets? Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?
FTFA:
Last night, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times published their lead front-page Sunday article, headlined âoeBritish Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.â
This is the power relationship in this case:
Murdoch's papers are fundamentally criminal enterprises who have been caught tapping the phones of government officials and celebrities alike, among other crimes.
They also deny that man-made climate change is a threat to human civilization, a fact about them which bascially makes them mass murderers in a lot of people's eyes, including a lot of people in government.
So their entire existence is hanging by a thread of goodwill and if that thread ever gets cut, they're going to prosecuted out of existence and Murdoch is going to jail like the criminal he is.
Such an compromised entity is called "useful" in government circles.
"Please dont' prosecute us, we'll do anything you say any time say.. anything..anything!"
Thus this news story.
No one should take from this that I am specifically pro-Snowden.
What I am is anti-what-he-revealed. It's just too much unchecked power waiting to be abused. It's a structural flaw in how governments operate that one day is going to cause catastrophic damage to democracy.
I would not have done what Snowden did just because think of the damage to national security and where's the evidence this power is currently being abused to stifle democratic liberties?
Where are the bodies and innocent ruined lives?
Where's the influenced or rigged elections?
Where 's the blackmail of Senators and Congresspeople?
All of these crimes are the stuff a panopticon faciliates, but we find no evidence for them, at least yet.
The worst we know about was what Anonymous revealed- a despicable but private effort on the part of govt. contractors to smear and destroy Glenn Greenwald's career and ability to make a living.
But that was private actors, the Chamber of Commerce going to Stratfor looking to destroy him, not the government.
OTOH revealing what he revealed absolutely helps Very Bad People do Very Bad Things. So that is absolutely a cost to society that can't be just brushed aside.
Point is, this panopticon 1984 shit should never have been put into place without serious limitations and safeguards, ones which were not left in the hands of a small group of political lackeys like the FISA court.
Abusive panopticons are what develop in the dark when no one is looking. No one is above the temptation to create unlimited power and take it unto themselves "for the greater good". If it's not being abused, it will be.
We would never know about it- Wyden wasn't able or willing to get the word out- except for Snowden. So we all owe Snowden a debt of gratitude, even if his process was imperfect. He could not sort everything he took for relevance \ danger to national security \ criminality. It was a logisitcal limitation. So he left it to reproters to sort it out.
It's complicated and I dont feel a need to make is less complicated than it is.
He clearly revealed things that are illegal and dangerous to the point of killing the democracy- dangerous to the point of *clearly being a threat to national security*.
At the same time he clearly damaged national secuity.
Legitimate appeals to national security cannot be allowed to evolve into a democracy suicide-pact.
You can't be allowed to baby-step the democracy off a cliff. You built a dangerous system you can't legitimately claim you can control, that is ripe and aching for Stasi / Nazi / Soviet style abuse, which could be used to kill the democracy. Your otherwise legitimate claims to national security are severely undermined .
What Snowden means is the NSA et al were power hungry madmen building a democracy killing WMD and someone who was not brainwashed into the cult found out about it and blew the whistle, and damaged our national security in the process.
The scary thing is this- we
If the Opposition had in fact gotten access to this stuff, wouldn't they keep that fact top secret? How did the US/UK find out about it?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Just read the Intercept or any other responsible journal. This is Government alarmist B$ and the Sunday Times quiesced with it. Note that a 'Downing St. spokesperson' said they have no evidence of anyone being harmed - contradicting their own agent provocateurs...
For those who haven't seen it yet. https://firstlook.org/theinter...
So let's examine what Special Ed has done that's "wrong"?: 1) Theft 2) False credentials 3) Tampering with national security 4) Placing all Americans at risk 5) International flight 6) Traveling on a voided passport 7) Bartering with items/information he doesn't legally own nor has personally created 8) Terroristic threats 9) Unethical treatment toward his employer 10) Misrepresentation 11) Perjury/breach of oath 12) Dereliction of duty 13) Failure to follow orders. 14) Impersonation of known government officials/identity theft. He's also flirting with, in fact, trying to set up the two main offenses: A) Assisting foreign powers B) Aiding the enemy. Sure, the Constitution guarantees the freedom to share more information in the public, and the right to free speech is great... but NOT when it will cause a danger to National Security. The info Snowjob likely possesses is probably EXACTLY the kind of stuff al Qaeda wants leaked out so they can learn better of how to successfully find ways to kill Americans at will. Not to mention, maybe names and locations of counter-terrorism spies that the U.S. has out in the field infiltrating the ranks of those would-be murderers. People want to complain about the NSA and alleged "spying", but then they'll also complain about not feeling the government is doing enough to protect them from al Qaeda! The NSA is not "hiding" anything, but they'll be truly ineffective if EVERYONE knows what they're working on. They're not interested is photos of your baby or mom's recipes. Has NOBODY stopped for a moment and asked "why" the NSA has been doing what they're doing? Did people think the authorities use magic to uncover terrorist plots? Which would you prefer, "spying" on you or terrorism on you? Snowflake did what he did for the fame (for the escape from obscurity that everyone wants... although most average people simply use Facebook).
They were stolen? I thought he made copies, and left the originals intact.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this before now. Golly!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Let's start with this. Soon after Daniel Ellsberg was revealed as the source behind the Pentagon Papers, White House officials started spreading rumors that Ellsberg was actually a Soviet spy and that he'd passed on important secrets to the Russians: None of it was true, but it was part of a concerted effort by administration officials to smear Ellsberg as a "Soviet spy" and a "traitor" when all he really did was blow the whistle on things by sharing documents with reporters.
Now we get to today:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
So we've already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times' big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had "cracked" the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had "blood on his hands" even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove "agents" from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they're not called "agents" and there's no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request. Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn't know what's actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him -- more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer.
Say it again, we live in a "Free" country. The man who penned the article has admitted to being a government "shill". The OP is nothing more than government disinformation. There is a consistant *Motis Operedni* spanning several decades to lead us to believe they do this regularly.
Horsefuckery. Spying on government actions is not the same thing at all as spying on entire civilian populations. And to pretend that everything is equal here is as stupid as saying the Vatican is a military power on par with the entire U.S. military, as they both have guards with guns.
Because even if some other countries politicians are as keen on spying on every communication from every person on the planet as the NSA, they are as much in a physical or financial position to challenge the U.S. as the Vatican has in defeating the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.