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WikiLeaks: NSA Eavesdropped On the Last Three French Presidents

Posted by Soulskill on from the enjoy-this-can-of-worms dept.

Earthquake Retrofit writes: The NY Times is reporting that WikiLeaks has released "material which appeared to capture officials in Paris talking candidly about Greece's economy, relations with Germany — and, ironically, American espionage." The information was leaked "a day before the French Parliament is expected to definitively pass a controversial security bill legalizing broad surveillance, particularly of terrorism suspects."

25 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Just doing their job. by EzInKy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The job of the NSA is to spy and if they don't spy on everything spyable they aren't doing their job. Can't even figure out why this would worthy of a ./ headline.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    1. Re:Just doing their job. by Nyder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The job of the NSA is to spy and if they don't spy on everything spyable they aren't doing their job. Can't even figure out why this would worthy of a ./ headline.

      Maybe it is. But I'm pretty sure if the USA found out that the French had our Presidents office/phone bugged, we'd (the USA) would have a shit about it.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    2. Re:Just doing their job. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Something being someone's job doesn't make it legal or acceptable.

    3. Re:Just doing their job. by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The job of the NSA is to spy and if they don't spy on everything spyable they aren't doing their job. Can't even figure out why this would worthy of a ./ headline.

      I don't disagree with you, both about the NSA and "/.", even while i am a Greek (from the summary: "capture officials in Paris talking candidly about Greece's economy"). We Greeks spy on the French, they spy on us, we both spy on USA, USA spy on both of us...

      Few years ago we had a Greek spy captured by our friends the USA while spying them, we Greeks waited for a while until we captured a fine spy gentleman from USA spying us Greeks, and as friends and allies we solved this "little issue" like gentlemen do: we exchanged our spies and continued our fine relation (and spying on each-other)... no wikileaks shit, no drama... you send your diplomats to drink some Ouzo in Athens, we send ours for some bourbon, the thing was solved with mutual understanding that "shit happens"!

      What exactly most Slashdoters expect from NSA, to sing songs about world peace? They are spies, they spy!

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    4. Re:Just doing their job. by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just want to mod you down for being a deadbeat Greek.

      I respect that Sir (especially since you do NOT post as an "anonymous coward")! Unfortunately i think that, even if you had mod points, you can't mod me down since you already made a comment on this story... sorry about that.

      Your country owes money, your country needs to pay money.

      I agree.

      Your poor and destitute can go suck ass as us freemarketer's are concerned.

      Greece is still among the most rich countries of the world (keep in mind that it is our state which is in trouble, no so much the citizens).

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    5. Re:Just doing their job. by amiga3D · · Score: 2

      Yes. But the people to get mad with wouldn't be the French but the people responsible for making sure the office isn't bugged. You can bet the French and everyone else with the capability will try to bug the oval office. I'd be shocked if they weren't. Hell....it may be bugged. That's what spies do.

    6. Re:Just doing their job. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's wrong with being a socialist?

    7. Re:Just doing their job. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Something being someone's job doesn't make it legal or acceptable.

      It is legal for the NSA to spy on foreigners. That is the only reason that they exist. Spying between nations is a good thing, because it means everyone knows more about each others intentions and motivations. Exactly a century ago, Europeans were slaughtering each other by the millions, in a world war that they bumbled into by misjudging each other, and because they were unaware of secret alliances that caused the military escalation to spin out of control. Some good spying could have prevented that.

    8. Re:Just doing their job. by someone1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That wouldn't stop the spying, only legalize it.

      --
      Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
    9. Re:Just doing their job. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      A social democracy need not be established by force. For example the Nordic Model refers to the economic and social models of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands and Sweden), which involves the combination of a free market economy with a welfare state.

      Another example would be Australia in years past, though its moving away from this in recent years.

    10. Re:Just doing their job. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Times have changed. The EU was set up to prevent another war, and it worked. By being friends who trust each other and can work together. and who treat each other with the respect not to spy on each other's leaders, we have made wars unthinkable.

      The EU averts war through cooperation and trust. The US averts it through violence and economic might. The thing is, the EU is bigger than the US now, and China will be eventually too. The US should be looking to improve its relations with other nations, especially Europe where it has a lot of history.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re:Just doing their job. by N1AK · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Spying between nations is a good thing, because it means everyone knows more about each others intentions and motivations.

      Bollocks. There's been plenty of spying since pretty much the moment secrets have existed; it hasn't stopped war, and the idea that if that spying had simply been 'better' everything would be different is completely lacking a compelling case.

      If we didn't have any spying then we'd have had no one claiming they had found evidence Saddam had WMD to justify the Iraq war; so explain exactly how the billions of dollars spent on spying helped us there.

      Even if you could find theoretical examples to try and demonstrate spying stopping wars it'd be worth nothing. The existence of spying will always be accompanied by counter-measures and misinformation which inherently limits the quality of spying.

    12. Re:Just doing their job. by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 2

      ... because 25% of the Greek population and their cousins is employed by the state, twiddling their thumbs or something,

      Based on OECD, Employment in general government as a percentage of the labour force (some selective countries):

      • Greece 8%,
      • Germany 11%,
      • USA 14%,
      • UK 18%,
      • France 22%.

      source

      Receiving big, nice paychecks, often 13-15 paychecks a year and many being able to retire in their 50's.

      It used to be one extra monthly paycheck per year for everybody, until few years ago (now it is stoped), and the "retire in their 50's" was not so common as believed (and when true it was more like: "retire in their very late 50's").

      Obviously, this is not a sustainable model. But try to take some of that away, reduce the grants, incomes and pensions to levels that the Greek economy can actually sustain, and all of Greek media starts being indignant about it, blaming Germany and Europe for all this shit.

      I agree.

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    13. Re:Just doing their job. by ultranova · · Score: 2

      Any alliance is secondary to your own country's interests. Of course you spy on your allies, you are just expected to be a bit subtle about it.

      Right. So is the information NSA has gained worth more than the cost?

      The problem with realpolitiks is that, with some rare near-legendary examples like Bismarck, people simply aren't smart enough to cut through their cultural conditioning to figure out what the actual results will be. So they simply drag their country from disaster to disaster; or, if they're less lucky, get some initial successes which makes them throw caution to the wind and make the final mistake all the more epic - and proving that even Bismarck wasn't smart enough to see how certain cultural traits of the new German Empire could turn out to be weaknessess in the right conditions.

      No, you don't "of course" spy on your allies, you carefully weight the value of gaining information versus them getting pissed and your reputation taking a hit. But the NSA can't do that, because spying on teveryone at all times is their essence; even if someone there made a cost-benefit analysis about a specific case, the conclusion would be all but dictated by their employer.

      So, what this all is coming down to: ethics matter, whether or not you think they should.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  2. FOI Request ... by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... for candid pics of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:FOI Request ... by SlovakWakko · · Score: 3, Informative

      Google search will achieve effectively the same results and will be much faster.

  3. Likely going on both sides by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    If we snooped them, they probably snooped us. Somewhere there may be a recording of the moment the ill-fated invasion of Iraq was decided:

    Dick: Now that the Taliban are gone, lets smash Saddam!

    Colin: What if something goes wrong? Iraq is far more populated than Afghanistan.

    W: Don't worry, Colie, we whacked the Taliban real good.

    Colin: Actually, we don't know where the Taliban went. Intel didn't find enough bodies to account for most. They may be hiding in caves and hills.

    Dick: You worry too much. They are gone for now; let the next prez worry about them coming back out.

    Colin: I don't want to foul my legacy with a war gone wrong.

    W: Don't worry, Colie, Dickie is an expert on blaming it on the Dems in the off case shit comes back later. Look, I almost choked on a pretzel the other day; life is short; go for the ball now!

    Dick: Amen! My mechanical heart could clack up any day, and you eat a lot of fries yourself, Tubbie.

    Colin: Alright, I did have a bad feeling about this, but maybe it's just those damned fries, eh?

    Dick, W, & Colin: "Onward Christian Soldiers!..."

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  4. Of course ... by garry_g · · Score: 2

    ... the French will strongly protest against their politicians being spied on, and after that, they will pass the bill for spying on the citizens ...

    Similar thing just happened in Germany: CDU/CSU/SPD will be passing data retention laws for phone and internet metadata (up to 10 weeks retention period), while they previously reduced the retention of parliament's Internet access meta data to 7 days following child porn accusations against former parliament member Edathy ... Animal Farm references, anybody?

    1. Re:Of course ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      You want animal farm references on a story about the NSA. Try this link http://www.nationalsheep.org.uk/

  5. Fear of the past by Max_W · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read that US is afraid that the Nazism (or National Socialism) will again return to the Western Europe and the Communism (or the USSR) to the Eastern Europe, and that is why it has to watch the European leaders carefully.

    On the other hand, if we must follow this absurd logic, we could be afraid that the USA will bring back the Slavery into the world. Were not ancient democratic Greece and democratic Rome based on slavery after all? Were not Slavery rampant in the USA still in 19th century?

    In my opinion, it is not possible to enter into the same river twice. And it would be much better to worry about the real problems, - the global pollution, mass unemployment, the life extinction on the planet, etc. But not the ridiculous ghosts of the past.

    1. Re:Fear of the past by Earthquake+Retrofit · · Score: 4, Funny

      And it would be much better to worry about the real problems, - the global pollution, mass unemployment, the life extinction on the planet, etc. But not the ridiculous ghosts of the past.

      I beg to differ. We must prevent the French from transferring top secret guillotine technology to ISIS.

      --
      Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
  6. No controversy here by nicolaiplum · · Score: 2

    The NSA is supposed to spy on officials.

    It is not supposed to spy wholesale on ordinary citizens, especially those in the USA.

    It should not be controversial that they spied on French officials.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
    1. Re:No controversy here by Zedrick · · Score: 2

      > The NSA is supposed to spy on officials.

      I don't get that argument. STASI was supposed to spy on East German citizens. Does that make it right? If it's the NSA's job to spy on allies, why not change their damn job description or shut them down?

  7. Super Important by JimSadler · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wiki Leaks is so important in correcting social and political issues that it may well be something the history books must feature as a very prominent turning point in history. The more that people around the world are able to see and understand the better our laws and social policies will become. In a way it is simply nothing more than social and political government in the sunshine and we all should demand the kind of access that wiki has created for us. Every utterance of public officials should be public 24/7/365. Corruption could cease to exist.

  8. Standard by Alomex · · Score: 2

    In 1989 there were some rather delicate debt renegotiation talks in Washington between the Mexican government, USA and the IMF.

    Every night, the Mexican chief negotiator would fly back to Mexico to debrief the president, since no other means of communication were assumed to be NSA proof.