Prime is the warning to all intelligence services. Don't trust other services and run your spies locally.
1) Look after your staff, pay them well.
2) Good conditions for your smart staff.
3) Make sure you run your spies with your best local staff (KGB First Directorate in UK vs distant Third Directorate ).
Prime worked up from the London Processing Group (~MI6) finally getting a good overview of UK translation methods.
He then moved onto compartmentalised Soviet work, with better document access and the very free use of a photocopier.
Translation work was then followed by supervising translation and then onto further real analysis work.
Vetting failed due to bad questions to a referees. His work finally saw him cleared to work on material via US satellites e.g. tracking Soviet missile tests.
The US was also all over global VHF, UHF and microwave telephone traffic. The raw data dump the US got was so vast it had to be shared with the UK just to keep up.
The other aspect was US tracking of Soviet strategic submarines i.e. SOSUS, aircraft and finally project Sambo. Soviet low-frequency radio transmissions where not that secure. NSA listening stations globally got the positions via a network of ~29 listening stations.
A lot of questions about other staff, the blackmail of staff under him or finding unhappy staff (low pay).
Very strange staff issues also presented at the end of this event.
Re avoid detection
I think the GCHQ must have been used for face tracking, ip tracking, file tracking, decryption, MAC tracking, back when all of that was very bespoke in software and hardware needs, staff skill sets and global networking requirements.
The cases could never be bought to court as it would allow methods to enter the legal/police/press (even sealed courts) when first introduced.
Terms like Government Telecommunications Advisory Centre and Government Technical Assistance Centre later tried to hide a longer history of crime tracking.
The time frame: ~~1980~ (public by mid 1990's) then again later over years depending on what was requested of the GCHQ and expensive US tech in UK hands at that point in time.
The problem for the UK is all the above tracking methods did enter the wider legal/police/press community and where rapidly passed onto criminals/other countries/spies/press.
All this tech has been tried before in the UK for top national law enfacement, telco tracking methods have been totally leaked/sold over many years.
By 2013 most networking tracking tech would have been easily understood from past press hints, telco/crypto history books or a study of legal reports.
i.e. this story about tracking tech as 'news' has been in the UK press for years and has been well known.
"effect of catastrophic failure of US power infrastructure from a well placed NEMP was 70%"
An atomic weapon would do that been an "atomic" weapon. The EMP part is just a nice extra in the design... something the US mil knows of. Kind of hard to repair a grid that has to be decontaminated and clean expensive unique 'generational' spare parts rushed in...
The US grid was build around the need for military and later nuclear production sites and energy sale interconnects added later.
A big diverse network with many layers of equipment, maintenance standards, repair crews, some areas near black out and brown out stresses at many times.
A conventional EMP would be like a bit city in summer or winter storms having an issue - known and well modelled for every year by very skilled staff over the US and Canada.
Too many people gambling, big winter storm or long term summer heat wave does not impact the wider US grid in big bad ways all the time.
No more fancy Windows based digital map or point and tap network support? If junk consumer grade "equipment" has really made it much deeper into Western militaries - then LOL and congrats on the political skills of the contractors, their cash flow and marketing teams:)
As for EMP if it worked it would be for sale, been tested in any of the small conflicts and found to be useful and be in mass production.
Serbia, Iraq shows that the lights off out and stay off for a while. What can utility crews do? Race back to the supply depo and pick up a limited amount of just in time expensive stock and patch up a section of grid connected what?
As for EMP in the real world - creating a useful field is the unique physics per device size or weight gets strange with expected range focused on military equipment thats shielded...
There is no 'win' with easy with EMP unless you go nuclear to form the EMP. The huge conventional forces needed to create the 'needed' EMP will have more range than the produced EMP.
You would need a huge conventional device if you wanted to create the press vision of destructive field at any useful strength over distance.
Real military devices are hardened and ready by design for nuclear related EMP. The Swiss bunkers show planning for such events in the real world at a civilian bunker setting over many, many years.
The other option is a low yield nuclear device with the desired characteristics - again something military devices are hardened and ready by design.
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb to go after an electrical supply grid.
So the military was always ready.
Thanks to Snowden the world now understands what telcos, OS and hardware makers like to do.
Enjoy your computer games, surfing for sport, celeb news, tech news and music.
They sold you junk encryption so enjoy their junk OS and enjoy feeding back to that powerful tracking everyday.
Any real creativity can be done on other OS, well understood hardware and with quality emerging crypto.
Consume tracked digital culture in a random yet bland way:)
The other interesting aspect is now watching the flood of skilled sock puppets to reinvent their US bosses and US brands pasts.
They did not know in any way, the court "accounts impacts" tally, are so legal and very public too. The companies understand privacy.
The US gov somehow got deep into their infrastructure or just outside it but where never helped by the brands staff.
Mostly for a security setting to only run trusted apps, easy updating globally, reviews. You might spend $5 or $200 over time after finding 'free' useful and well coded.
You can still get/run software from anywhere on the net: open source, shareware, rental, retail.
I am going with classic compartmentalisation, then PR has the same numbers any other staff and it all seemed just fine.
The other historic option was http://open.salon.com/blog/stuartbramhall/2013/10/08/the_phone_company_that_said_no_to_nsa
Thanks to Snowden the world now has a much more complete understanding of role of US encryption and the global role big US brands played:)
How to put it in an easy to understand historic context. Its like Engima getting an extra rotor. Everybody now knows its all went back to plain text. The encryption was junk.
Thanks to compartmentalisation the numbers seen might be correct for "the" legal documents in/out. The paperwork and numbers need to be "perfect".
That would ensure all staff would feel comfortable long term and never whisper to the press/other govs about some small detail in the paperwork over the years that they picked up on.
Ideological or legal or political crisis of conscience wrt to the US Constitution would have in the past left staff open to the other govs, national press or going to political leaders, writing books....
If the internal data is perfect, everybody is calm, relaxed and just following orders.
After Snowden the world thankfully has moved on to fix encryption and long term looking into more local brands.
It depends how you count. One NSL/~court document/letter could cover an entire group, brand, faith or generation of people. Other countries might have a count on the landline, cell, net log, postage, car tracking, friends, friends of friends vs roving surveillance or just metadata.
Simple counting tricks would keep the number range down needed to present to any rubber stamp oversight committee.
e.g. Australia may count what the US does not feel it has to http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/03/what-the-afp-asks-for-when-it-wants-to-wiretap-you/
http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/
Thats a year of gaming on top settings or emerging 4k resolutions to consider. We have the generation of games, ssd, Windows 8.1, cpu, bandwidth, ram, lcd at ~usable levels.
The "GPU" as a card or more cards is the interesting part to get right with drivers and ongoing issues.
Drop the resolution, quality and todays mid range cards are good, but where is the fun in that:)
How the brands write their code, deal with the heat and work over 2 or more cards is always fun to read about.
The other issue is oil, gas, mining and fishing rights. Indonesia has been understanding to Australian needs in the region over the years on some in return for aid and very unique mil training.
Indonesia "lumped" it under its colonial masters, Japan, the KGB and CIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965-1966 and Australia. The idea that Indonesia really has to take advice is over.
The view that "confidential intelligence information" is cute but the reality is many contractors, mercenaries, companies and senior staff have the same crypto keys to US/UK and Australian to what you somehow view as been gov only "confidential".
When they exit the gov or are fired the methods stay with them. Whispers to the press, faith groups, other countries, the highest bidder are common.
The rush for linguists, experts, black sites, the constant ideology of privatisation, basic cash flows in the past 10 years, boondoggles, drone needs and covert operations ensured that what some wish to see as "confidential intelligence information" is now just for sale.
Thanks to whistleblowers like Snowden and others at least the wider public can find some academic experts and local brands to try and work around the once 'confidential intelligence' joke.
Yes taco cowboy expect to see a lot more posted by the usual 'names'.
The sock puppets have a very clear mission on web 2.0 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
A lot of good news stories, moral equivalence to help understand US domestic spying and international efforts with a more positive spin.
Thanks to the good work by Snowden the world now understand the US brands, US junk encryption, junk telco/crypto gov standards, keeping of generations of telco logs and creative re working of the US court systems.
As for Australia it always knew its role as a client state. In 1945 the first and final debate was had over the role of Australian spying post WW2. Would Australia work on its own efforts as to never be betrayed/reliant on/late/lost/fooled/disadvantaged by "friendly" countries needs again.
The other option was Australia alone would be full of Soviet agents and never have the scale to look deep into regions (Asia, South America).
The view was to sign up early with the US/UK and get everything 'new' and 'costly' as shared bases.
Short term Australia got everything it could have ever wanted in terms of pure data flow.
Now Australia faces the reality of the networks, software, encryption and hardware imported. Its all expensive back doored junk with the US, UK, contractors and staff having the all the telco keys by default.
The other aspect for Australia is its military networking is not totally hardened on secure lines - they share with the civilian domestic networks hoping unique domestic codes will be 'good'.
Now Australia has to patch up its own 'network' - junk by US/UK design and half its own cleared staff beholden to the other countries who sold the junk crypto as been safe.
Retroactive immunity was chilling, welcome to the legal domestic court friendly digital locked box.
Everything you ever did on the 'net' or with a 'phone' could soon be presentable in a state or federal court setting, sealed and in private.
Then the final legal change - your security cleared lawyer can't challenge any of the evidence - ever:)
The same could be said for the once trusted brands, privacy lawyers, top academics, cleared developers and counter surveillance teams globally.
Unless they all had a feeling something was wrong and just used US digital networking for local disinformation.
What will matter is how all the nations react:
So many of their gov networking staff, top private sector telco leaders and spies been so helpful to the NSA and GCHQ.
Different countries top political staff have been made fools of with junk encryption open to the US/UK and any interested US/UK/local contractors.
Generations of political leaders will now be very careful about trusting any of their own 'tech' or 'security' staff ever again.
This could see a change of power from/to military or domestic spy agencies as political access and funding shifts after closed hearings.
This is not one person e.g. a secretary or advisor copying documents in bulk - entire teams of top cleared staff seem to have betrayed their nations telco systems for years to the US/UK, trusted friends of the US/UK and assorted contractors....
At best he would have got a closed hearing with a tame security cleared lawyer. His CIA past and ability to get a contracting job at the NSA would have become the leaked 'story'.
That aspect would have been cleared up and then lost in the 24h news cycle.
The public would still give weight to sock puppets telling us encryption is safe, lawyers will save us, politicians will save us, the marketplace will save us, data is too big to keep and work on, its illegal... never been any domestic spying, never spy with and on allies...
Snowden did the right thing allowing developers, lawyers, politicians, the press and historians to finally and fully understand an illegal chapter in US domestic surveillance.
Law reform can be started, US hardware and software brands reconsidered, local staff will get jobs over 'big' brands. Junk encryption 'pushed' by US gov agencies and tame academics is now exposed as been useless.
Thanks to Snowden more people in the US have a better understanding of the law, privacy and globally software can be coded to better standards.
Slashdot Mirror
After Snowden it all just LOL.
Yes the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun case shows what the optics of an open trial can do.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/09/06/brit_net_agency_to_track/ ... two weeks' :)
http://cryptome.org/jya/uk-crackers.htm
Back in 1999 with hints back to 1996 and 'cracking a code in
Prime is the warning to all intelligence services. Don't trust other services and run your spies locally.
1) Look after your staff, pay them well.
2) Good conditions for your smart staff.
3) Make sure you run your spies with your best local staff (KGB First Directorate in UK vs distant Third Directorate ).
Prime worked up from the London Processing Group (~MI6) finally getting a good overview of UK translation methods.
He then moved onto compartmentalised Soviet work, with better document access and the very free use of a photocopier.
Translation work was then followed by supervising translation and then onto further real analysis work.
Vetting failed due to bad questions to a referees. His work finally saw him cleared to work on material via US satellites e.g. tracking Soviet missile tests.
The US was also all over global VHF, UHF and microwave telephone traffic. The raw data dump the US got was so vast it had to be shared with the UK just to keep up.
The other aspect was US tracking of Soviet strategic submarines i.e. SOSUS, aircraft and finally project Sambo. Soviet low-frequency radio transmissions where not that secure. NSA listening stations globally got the positions via a network of ~29 listening stations.
A lot of questions about other staff, the blackmail of staff under him or finding unhappy staff (low pay).
Very strange staff issues also presented at the end of this event.
Re avoid detection
I think the GCHQ must have been used for face tracking, ip tracking, file tracking, decryption, MAC tracking, back when all of that was very bespoke in software and hardware needs, staff skill sets and global networking requirements.
The cases could never be bought to court as it would allow methods to enter the legal/police/press (even sealed courts) when first introduced.
Terms like Government Telecommunications Advisory Centre and Government Technical Assistance Centre later tried to hide a longer history of crime tracking.
The time frame: ~~1980~ (public by mid 1990's) then again later over years depending on what was requested of the GCHQ and expensive US tech in UK hands at that point in time.
The problem for the UK is all the above tracking methods did enter the wider legal/police/press community and where rapidly passed onto criminals/other countries/spies/press.
All this tech has been tried before in the UK for top national law enfacement, telco tracking methods have been totally leaked/sold over many years.
By 2013 most networking tracking tech would have been easily understood from past press hints, telco/crypto history books or a study of legal reports.
i.e. this story about tracking tech as 'news' has been in the UK press for years and has been well known.
Most of the speaking points over Snowden come form lists like http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
Now they just for for most basic headline.
Neutron tech is old and all the usual countries have the skill set.
Some even dream of using them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/26/lord-gilbert-neutron-bomb_n_2190607.html
"effect of catastrophic failure of US power infrastructure from a well placed NEMP was 70%"
An atomic weapon would do that been an "atomic" weapon. The EMP part is just a nice extra in the design... something the US mil knows of. Kind of hard to repair a grid that has to be decontaminated and clean expensive unique 'generational' spare parts rushed in...
The US grid was build around the need for military and later nuclear production sites and energy sale interconnects added later.
A big diverse network with many layers of equipment, maintenance standards, repair crews, some areas near black out and brown out stresses at many times.
A conventional EMP would be like a bit city in summer or winter storms having an issue - known and well modelled for every year by very skilled staff over the US and Canada.
Too many people gambling, big winter storm or long term summer heat wave does not impact the wider US grid in big bad ways all the time.
No more fancy Windows based digital map or point and tap network support? If junk consumer grade "equipment" has really made it much deeper into Western militaries - then LOL and congrats on the political skills of the contractors, their cash flow and marketing teams :)
As for EMP if it worked it would be for sale, been tested in any of the small conflicts and found to be useful and be in mass production.
Serbia, Iraq shows that the lights off out and stay off for a while. What can utility crews do? Race back to the supply depo and pick up a limited amount of just in time expensive stock and patch up a section of grid connected what?
As for EMP in the real world - creating a useful field is the unique physics per device size or weight gets strange with expected range focused on military equipment thats shielded...
There is no 'win' with easy with EMP unless you go nuclear to form the EMP. The huge conventional forces needed to create the 'needed' EMP will have more range than the produced EMP.
You would need a huge conventional device if you wanted to create the press vision of destructive field at any useful strength over distance.
Real military devices are hardened and ready by design for nuclear related EMP. The Swiss bunkers show planning for such events in the real world at a civilian bunker setting over many, many years.
The other option is a low yield nuclear device with the desired characteristics - again something military devices are hardened and ready by design.
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb to go after an electrical supply grid.
So the military was always ready.
Thanks to Snowden the world now understands what telcos, OS and hardware makers like to do. :)
Enjoy your computer games, surfing for sport, celeb news, tech news and music.
They sold you junk encryption so enjoy their junk OS and enjoy feeding back to that powerful tracking everyday.
Any real creativity can be done on other OS, well understood hardware and with quality emerging crypto.
Consume tracked digital culture in a random yet bland way
The other interesting aspect is now watching the flood of skilled sock puppets to reinvent their US bosses and US brands pasts.
They did not know in any way, the court "accounts impacts" tally, are so legal and very public too. The companies understand privacy.
The US gov somehow got deep into their infrastructure or just outside it but where never helped by the brands staff.
Mostly for a security setting to only run trusted apps, easy updating globally, reviews. You might spend $5 or $200 over time after finding 'free' useful and well coded.
You can still get/run software from anywhere on the net: open source, shareware, rental, retail.
I am going with classic compartmentalisation, then PR has the same numbers any other staff and it all seemed just fine. :)
The other historic option was http://open.salon.com/blog/stuartbramhall/2013/10/08/the_phone_company_that_said_no_to_nsa
Thanks to Snowden the world now has a much more complete understanding of role of US encryption and the global role big US brands played
How to put it in an easy to understand historic context. Its like Engima getting an extra rotor. Everybody now knows its all went back to plain text. The encryption was junk.
Thanks to compartmentalisation the numbers seen might be correct for "the" legal documents in/out. The paperwork and numbers need to be "perfect".
That would ensure all staff would feel comfortable long term and never whisper to the press/other govs about some small detail in the paperwork over the years that they picked up on.
Ideological or legal or political crisis of conscience wrt to the US Constitution would have in the past left staff open to the other govs, national press or going to political leaders, writing books....
If the internal data is perfect, everybody is calm, relaxed and just following orders.
After Snowden the world thankfully has moved on to fix encryption and long term looking into more local brands.
It depends how you count. One NSL/~court document/letter could cover an entire group, brand, faith or generation of people. Other countries might have a count on the landline, cell, net log, postage, car tracking, friends, friends of friends vs roving surveillance or just metadata.
Simple counting tricks would keep the number range down needed to present to any rubber stamp oversight committee.
e.g. Australia may count what the US does not feel it has to http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/03/what-the-afp-asks-for-when-it-wants-to-wiretap-you/
The :) face shows the way http://www.zdnet.com/meet-muscular-nsa-accused-of-tapping-links-between-yahoo-google-datacenters-7000022624/
Add in terms like identifiable form, store and it all gets very creative.
http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/ :)
Thats a year of gaming on top settings or emerging 4k resolutions to consider. We have the generation of games, ssd, Windows 8.1, cpu, bandwidth, ram, lcd at ~usable levels.
The "GPU" as a card or more cards is the interesting part to get right with drivers and ongoing issues.
Drop the resolution, quality and todays mid range cards are good, but where is the fun in that
How the brands write their code, deal with the heat and work over 2 or more cards is always fun to read about.
The other issue is oil, gas, mining and fishing rights. Indonesia has been understanding to Australian needs in the region over the years on some in return for aid and very unique mil training.
Indonesia "lumped" it under its colonial masters, Japan, the KGB and CIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965-1966 and Australia. The idea that Indonesia really has to take advice is over.
The view that "confidential intelligence information" is cute but the reality is many contractors, mercenaries, companies and senior staff have the same crypto keys to US/UK and Australian to what you somehow view as been gov only "confidential".
When they exit the gov or are fired the methods stay with them. Whispers to the press, faith groups, other countries, the highest bidder are common.
The rush for linguists, experts, black sites, the constant ideology of privatisation, basic cash flows in the past 10 years, boondoggles, drone needs and covert operations ensured that what some wish to see as "confidential intelligence information" is now just for sale.
Thanks to whistleblowers like Snowden and others at least the wider public can find some academic experts and local brands to try and work around the once 'confidential intelligence' joke.
Yes taco cowboy expect to see a lot more posted by the usual 'names'.
The sock puppets have a very clear mission on web 2.0 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
A lot of good news stories, moral equivalence to help understand US domestic spying and international efforts with a more positive spin.
Thanks to the good work by Snowden the world now understand the US brands, US junk encryption, junk telco/crypto gov standards, keeping of generations of telco logs and creative re working of the US court systems.
As for Australia it always knew its role as a client state. In 1945 the first and final debate was had over the role of Australian spying post WW2. Would Australia work on its own efforts as to never be betrayed/reliant on/late/lost/fooled/disadvantaged by "friendly" countries needs again.
The other option was Australia alone would be full of Soviet agents and never have the scale to look deep into regions (Asia, South America).
The view was to sign up early with the US/UK and get everything 'new' and 'costly' as shared bases.
Short term Australia got everything it could have ever wanted in terms of pure data flow.
Now Australia faces the reality of the networks, software, encryption and hardware imported. Its all expensive back doored junk with the US, UK, contractors and staff having the all the telco keys by default.
The other aspect for Australia is its military networking is not totally hardened on secure lines - they share with the civilian domestic networks hoping unique domestic codes will be 'good'.
Now Australia has to patch up its own 'network' - junk by US/UK design and half its own cleared staff beholden to the other countries who sold the junk crypto as been safe.
Retroactive immunity was chilling, welcome to the legal domestic court friendly digital locked box. :)
Everything you ever did on the 'net' or with a 'phone' could soon be presentable in a state or federal court setting, sealed and in private.
Then the final legal change - your security cleared lawyer can't challenge any of the evidence - ever
The same could be said for the once trusted brands, privacy lawyers, top academics, cleared developers and counter surveillance teams globally.
Unless they all had a feeling something was wrong and just used US digital networking for local disinformation.
What will matter is how all the nations react:
So many of their gov networking staff, top private sector telco leaders and spies been so helpful to the NSA and GCHQ.
Different countries top political staff have been made fools of with junk encryption open to the US/UK and any interested US/UK/local contractors.
Generations of political leaders will now be very careful about trusting any of their own 'tech' or 'security' staff ever again.
This could see a change of power from/to military or domestic spy agencies as political access and funding shifts after closed hearings.
This is not one person e.g. a secretary or advisor copying documents in bulk - entire teams of top cleared staff seem to have betrayed their nations telco systems for years to the US/UK, trusted friends of the US/UK and assorted contractors....
At best he would have got a closed hearing with a tame security cleared lawyer. His CIA past and ability to get a contracting job at the NSA would have become the leaked 'story'.
That aspect would have been cleared up and then lost in the 24h news cycle. The public would still give weight to sock puppets telling us encryption is safe, lawyers will save us, politicians will save us, the marketplace will save us, data is too big to keep and work on, its illegal... never been any domestic spying, never spy with and on allies...
Snowden did the right thing allowing developers, lawyers, politicians, the press and historians to finally and fully understand an illegal chapter in US domestic surveillance.
Law reform can be started, US hardware and software brands reconsidered, local staff will get jobs over 'big' brands. Junk encryption 'pushed' by US gov agencies and tame academics is now exposed as been useless.
Thanks to Snowden more people in the US have a better understanding of the law, privacy and globally software can be coded to better standards.