This Is What the World's Spies Used Instead of MSN Messenger (vice.com)

An anonymous reader writes: What do spies use to chat online? A terribly ugly Windows programme. At least, that's what the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (made up of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) was using back in 2003, according to a newly released Snowden document. "The Five-Eyes SIGINT [signals intelligence] Directors will soon be using a new tool to enhance their collaboration on subjects ranging from current intelligence objectives to future collection planning," reads an issue of SID Today, the NSA's internal newsletter, dating from September 2003. InfoWorkSpace (IWS), as the tool is called, allowed text chat, audio conferencing, shared screen views, and virtual whiteboards, the newsletter explains. It adds that, at the time, some 4,000 NSA and Five Eyes employees were already using IWS to work on a number of topics, such as international terrorism, real-time collection coordination, and Operation Enduring Freedom, the term given to operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. The newsletter announcement refers to SIGINT Directors gaining access to the tool. Another Snowden document published by The Intercept notes that senior officials held their first virtual meeting with IWS around December 2003, but that "GCHQ was unable to attend due to a computer failure."

Comments

Ugly?

[Comboman]

A terribly ugly Windows programme.

What's your problem? It looks like every other program written in 2003.

Re:Ugly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. Is this one of those "if you tell a lie big enough, people will believe you" things?

Re:Yet another example of treason

[CajunArson]

While not popular since anything pro-Snowden is considered religiously approved on here you have a point.

There's exactly nothing that violates the U.S. Constitution or any other legal or ethical standard* in an intelligence agency using a communications tool that protects the privacy of its users from other intelligence agencies, and leaking out the details is certainly illegal espionage at a minimum and treason at worst.

* I mean real ethical standards, not the made-up delusions of Slashtards who think that literally any attempt by the U.S. to do anything to stop any terrorist or foreign government from doing anything is the greatest crime of all time [incidentally, that standard does not apply to any country other than the U.S.].