United States of Spying

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Sorry...I did see your post and didn't want to point out the things you'd got wrong because most of what you said was right.

[Coligny]

Sorry...I did see your post and didn't want to point out the things you'd got wrong because most of what you said was right.

Please do...

[Russell]

That was actually the CIA's first operation of this kind...

Bullshit.

But, but, but, the Iranians say so...

Edit: even Wikipedia says so. Then it must be true...

The CIA overthrew a foreign government for the first time during the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, at the request of Winston Churchill.

To the members with the short replies, you can only convince me by showing which other foreign government was overthrown by the CIA before 1953.

[Mike Oxlong]

Give up, Japan. The US has a way cooler figurehead than you...

[Russell]

Brazil’s president says any US spying on Petrobras has economic motives, not terrorism

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff again demanded answers from the U.S. government Monday after a new report about National Security Agency spying on Brazil.

The report broadcast by the Globo TV network Sunday night, based on leaked documents from Edward Snowden, said the NSA targeted Brazil’s state-run oil firm Petrobras. That came a week after a report on Globo indicated that the communications of Rousseff herself were intercepted by the NSA.

The new Globo report also said Google and the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, an organization better known as SWIFT that oversees international bank transfers thought to be secure transactions, were targeted by the NSA.

The report gave no indication about what information the NSA may have obtained from the companies. All three companies are included in an NSA training manual for new agents on how to target the private computer networks of big companies, the report said.

“If the facts in the report are confirmed, then it’s evident that the motive for the ... espionage is not security or to fight terrorism, but economic and strategic interests,” Rousseff said in an emailed statement.

Rousseff met with U.S. President Barack Obama last week in Russia during a Group of 20 meeting. She said Obama promised to provide explanations about the NSA program by this Wednesday.

“The Brazilian government is determined to obtain clarifications from the U.S. government about any possible violations committed,” her statement said.

Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo traveled to the U.S. from Europe on Monday and he is expected to meet Wednesday or Thursday with Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, to hear explanations of the NSA program, the foreign ministry said.

Petrobras said in an emailed statement that it was aware of Globo’s report and that it takes the most up-to-date precautions available to protect its computer network.

Earlier reports based on Snowden’s documents revealed the existence of the NSA’s PRISM program, which gives the agency comprehensive access to customer data from companies like Google and Facebook.

Separate reports last week in the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica, also based on Snowden’s leak, said the NSA and its British counterpart had developed “new access opportunities” into Google’s computers by 2012, but the documents didn’t indicate how extensive the project was or what kind of data it could access.

James Clapper, director of U.S. national intelligence, said in a statement that “it is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing.”

The NSA collects the information to provide “the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy,” the statement said. “It also could provide insight into other countries’ economic policy or behavior which could affect global markets.”

Because they did such a good job in 2008. What a complete BS argument.

It said the intelligence community’s “efforts to understand economic systems and policies and monitor anomalous economic activities is critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security.”

Clapper added that the NSA has had “success in disrupting terror networks by following their money as it moves around the globe.”

“What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” he said.

Glenn Greenwald, a U.S. journalist living Rio de Janeiro who received thousands of documents from Snowden and was the first to break stories about the NSA’s extensive program to collect Internet and phone data, worked with Globo on its latest report.

It came a week after Greenwald and the network said NSA documents showed that U.S. spy agencies had monitored Rousseff as well as Mexico’s new president prior to his election. That report brought demands for an explanation and investigations from the governments of Brazil and Mexico, and left Obama scrambling to soothe the anger in two important countries in the Western Hemisphere.

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration had quietly persuaded a surveillance court in 2011 to lift a ban on the NSA searching deliberately for Americans’ communications in its huge databases of intercepted phone calls and emails.

The same day, the German news weekly Der Spiegel reported that the NSA is able to crack protective measures on iPhones, BlackBerry and Android devices to gain access to users’ data on all major smartphones.

This story gets more and more serious. For sure these revelations damage the international standing of the US. But it is not Snowden to blame for that. He is just the messenger.

[Coligny]

Brazil’s president says any US spying on Petrobras has economic motives, not terrorism

As much as I like to put my panties in a twist over this clusterfuck, keeping an eye on neighboring 3 rd world shitholes is the very job definition of an intelligence agency...

[Russell]

Brazil’s president says any US spying on Petrobras has economic motives, not terrorism

As much as I like to put my panties in a twist over this clusterfuck, keeping an eye on neighboring 3 rd world shitholes is the very job definition of an intelligence agency...

In order to prevent them from developing into first world countries?

Because that is what the current and past interference of the US in South and Central America has all been about.

[Coligny]

That's not the point.

Intel collect, politicians decide. Don't blame the tool on how it is used as long as it is done legally.

[Russell]

That's not the point.

Intel collect, politicians decide. Don't blame the tool on how it is used as long as it is done legally.

Hmm, you mean Intel collects compromising info on politicians, and then makes them decide in appropriate ways?

[Coligny]

You are going one step to far. Into the world of delusional paranoia.

Intel agencies can be beheaded overnight by politicians. Scandals take times. And don't even always work. I've seen more often IS cleaning or covering the mess than the opposite, especially with Mitterrand.
They are more often staffed by -sometimes misguided- patriots than James Bond villains.

[Russell]

You are going one step to far. Into the world of delusional paranoia.

Intel agencies can be beheaded overnight by politicians. Scandals take times. And don't even always work. I've seen more often IS cleaning or covering the mess than the opposite, especially with Mitterrand.
They are more often staffed by -sometimes misguided- patriots than James Bond villains.

Still living in fairy tale world, Coligny?

[Coligny]

"What" is not "why"
Collection is not action.

Plus, look at the DSK case, it's much more efficient and easier to entrap someone than to spy on purpose hoping to get into some dirty laundry.

[Coligny]

Seriously, fuck you guys...

France calls in U.S. ambassador over NSA spying allegations on French citizens

http://www.rtoz.org/2013/10/21/france-c ... -citizens/

[Greji]

Why'd he call him? Need some pointers maybe?

[Coligny]

Why'd he call him? Need some pointers maybe?

They want a bootleg copy of the tapes...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Seriously, fuck you guys...

France calls in U.S. ambassador over NSA spying allegations on French citizens

http://www.rtoz.org/2013/10/21/france-c ... -citizens/

I thought it was their job to collect intel. After all, "collection is not action."

[Coligny]

Yes, it's their jobs.

Like the job of other race drivers is to win.

In both case...

I prefer [being] (/edit) better than the other players...

You understand or you want me to write a bit slower ?

[Samurai_Jerk]

I prefer better than the other players...

You understand or you want me to write a bit slower ?

[Coligny]

Yup definatuly a case of keyboard overspeed...
i blame the IPad as usual...

[Russell]

NSA asked Japan to tap regionwide fiber-optic cables in 2011

The U.S. National Security Agency sought the Japanese government’s cooperation in 2011 over wiretapping fiber-optic cables carrying phone and Internet data across the Asia-Pacific region, but the request was rejected, sources said Saturday.

The agency’s overture was apparently aimed at gathering information on China given that Japan is at the heart of optical cables that connect various parts of the region. But Tokyo turned down the proposal, citing legal restrictions and a shortage of personnel, the sources said.

The NSA asked Tokyo if it could intercept personal information from communication data passing through Japan via cables connecting it, China and other regional areas, including Internet activity and phone calls, they said.

Faced with China’s growing presence in the cyberworld and the need to bolster information about international terrorists, the United States may have been looking into whether Japan, its top regional ally, could offer help similar to that provided by Britain, according to the sources.

Based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, British newspaper The Guardian reported that the agency had been sharing data intercepted by Britain’s spy agency, GCHQ, through transatlantic cables since 2011.

But Tokyo decided it could not do so because under current legislation, it cannot intercept such communications even if the aim is to prevent a terrorist act. Japan also has a substantially smaller number of intelligence personnel, compared with the NSA’s estimated 30,000 employees, the sources said.

A separate source familiar with intelligence activities of major nations said the volume of data that would need to be intercepted from fiber-optic cables would require a massive number of workers and the assistance of the private sector.

[Coligny]

Japan... Saving the free world through incompetence...

Not even surprising... All their spooks are busy hunting pirated SuperMario kart cartdridge...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Cabinet to OK state secrets bill

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet is set to approve a controversial bill Friday to protect state secrets that stops short of fully guaranteeing the public’s right to know and freedom of the press.

Critics fear the bill, which would next go to the Diet, gives the government too much power to control access to information.

The bill imposes heavier punishments on leakers of classified information in an attempt to tighten security and thereby satisfy the U.S. and its allies concerned about what they see as destabilizing factors in Asia.

“It is inevitable to protect state secrets when Japan exchanges information or policy-related notes with intelligence agencies in other countries,” Abe said Monday at a Diet session.

The tighter restrictions are “absolutely necessary,” according to Abe, for a Japanese version of the U.S. National Security Council — which the Diet is slated to begin deliberating on Friday — to function properly.

Compared with the U.S. and many other countries, Japan’s punitive measures against public servants who leak classified information are relatively lenient. While public servants in the U.S. face up to 10 years in prison for leaking defense-related information, their Japanese counterparts can spend only half that time behind bars at most. Anything not related to national security is good for only up to a year in prison.

The new bill reclassifies defense, diplomacy, counterintelligence and counterterrorism information as “state secrets,” and raises the penalty for leaking them to up to 10 years in prison.

With a comfortable majority in both chambers of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling bloc had little trouble overcoming opposition to the drafting of the bill.

[matsuki]

So...Jiro's secrets to good sushi will remain safe?

[CrankyBastard]

Google has expressed outrage following a report that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has hacked its data links.
An executive at Google said it was not aware of the alleged activity, adding there was an "urgent need for reform".
The NSA's director said it had not had access to the companies' computers.
Gen Keith Alexander told Bloomberg TV: "We are not authorised to go into a US company's servers and take data."
But correspondents say this is not a direct denial of the latest claims.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24751821



Both a web and a net are devices designed to capture unsuspecting prey!

[yanpa]

Google has expressed outrage following a report that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has hacked its data links.
An executive at Google said it was not aware of the alleged activity, adding there was an "urgent need for reform".
The NSA's director said it had not had access to the companies' computers.
Gen Keith Alexander told Bloomberg TV: "We are not authorised to go into a US company's servers and take data."
But correspondents say this is not a direct denial of the latest claims.

Well yeah, they didn't claim they were not "authorized" to tap the data links.

Did France get its statue back yet BTW?

[wagyl]

The latest episode of QI (no relation to NZ theatre arts and law graduates) refers to the intelligence [sic] sharing activities between US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ as "Don't tell the French."

I think the rule we citizens should follow, posting here and anywhere else on the net, is "don't say anything that will make your Mother blush." That gives some of us, perhaps Coligny included, more freedom than others, but is probably a good standard.

In other news, the weeaboo whistleblower reportedly has a job on a website helpdesk in Russia.

[Russell]

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Snowden deserves jail for being a weaboo.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Snowden deserves jail for being a weaboo.

He deserves to be hanged for that.

[matsuki]

Still surprised this dude hasn't been shot in the head yet.