Revealed: How the UK Spied On Its G20 Allies At London Summits 262
Writing "Wow, this is going to really set the cat amongst the pigeons once this gets around," an anonymous reader links to a story at The Guardian about some good old fashioned friendly interception, and the slide-show version of what went on at recent G20 summits in London:
"Foreign politicians' calls and emails intercepted by UK intelligence; Delegates tricked into using fake internet cafes; GCHQ analysts sent logs of phone calls round the clock; Documents are latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden."
A great service (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Snowden may eventually be captured by the U.S. government and be hanged by his balls, he may be a Chinese spy as has been alleged by some in the government, but if his revelations are true he is doing you and I ordinary people a great service by airing all this, at a minimum, naughty, and, at most, highly illegal shit. If this stuff is true, I want to see some high government officials hanging by their balls (or tits for those of the female species) for their actions.
Re:A great service (Score:5, Insightful)
Give hum a fucking medal, forget prosecution.
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how would you know if any of it is true?
Do you seriously think that a facility of this [wikipedia.org] size is only used to collect and process "metadata", or only "foreign" communications?
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A guy from the Wayback Machine had these estimates: $27m/year in equipment, $2m/yr in electricity (CA price), 5000sqft of space to store all phone communications for a year.
http://blog.archive.org/2013/06/15/cost-to-store-all-us-phonecalls-made-in-a-year-in-cloud-storage-so-it-could-be-datamined/ [archive.org]
That facility should be good for 20 years worth of calls.
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This has nothing to do with paranoia. This has everything to do with the simple fact that the technology exists, the government believes it can do it legally (and even if they believe it's illegal they'll say they "believe" it's legal in order to prevent going to prison), and that there is a perceived need to do it. They are doing this, and probably more as well.
There are two great forces at work here. There is the U.S. Constitution that states that we have various civil liberties and that these libertie
File this under (Score:3)
DUH!
Is anyone really surprised by this?
Re:File this under (Score:5, Interesting)
DUH!
Is anyone really surprised by this?
I bet the foreign G20 heads using those netcafes and their Blackberrys were, yes. And they may be a little unhappy that this spying was done for apparently commercial gain and express this at the upcoming G8.
It's been widely suspected since the 1990s that the NSA and friends use their spying to enhance commercial contracts, but they've always denied this strongly. But now there's proof. That could also set a few chairs alight.
Also, perhaps, Blackberry is unhappy that their phone being hacked (or backdoored) has become known, with their reputation for security. World's most boring but secure smartphone, so uncrackable it's used by Obama himself, hated by the Saudis because they can't bug it, etc. This is not something they really want to become known, I think.
It used to be we'd read about the Russians pulling stunts like this in their embassy and we'd be all, 'oh, those wacky Soviets, we know they bug everything, they're so barbarous and uncivilised. In a proper country we're much more law-abiding.'
But, no.
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I missed the part where this was done for commercial gain. Please find the excerpt. I looked for it, but didn't see it. Perhaps I missed something?
Re:File this under (Score:5, Informative)
I missed the part where this was done for commercial gain. Please find the excerpt. I looked for it, but didn't see it. Perhaps I missed something?
You're right, the exact word used in the article is a "political objective" related to "finance" and not "commerce". My mistake.
The officials summarised Brown's aims for the meeting of G20 heads of state due to begin on 2 April, which was attempting to deal with the economic aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis. The briefing paper added: "The GCHQ intent is to ensure that intelligence relevant to HMG's desired outcomes for its presidency of the G20 reaches customers at the right time and in a form which allows them to make full use of it."
The document explicitly records a political objective – "to establish Turkey's position on agreements from the April London summit" and their "willingness (or not) to co-operate with the rest of the G20 nations".
There is of course absolutely no connection between engineering desired financial outcomes and commercial gain. All financial insitutions, and especially those related to the British Government, operate from a completely non-self-interested desire to make others nations rich.
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OK I am not being combative nor was I in my first post. I meant just what I said- I dint' see it.
The excerpt you quote is ambiguous to me. I am not sure what is meant by that. I don't see any indication of commercial gain through spying, I only see information being collected (through spying) and made available. I am not sure what information and I am not sure how it's of commercial use. They're concerned with "outcomes for it's presidency of the g20" . That itself is ambiguous (to me).
They want to see i
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My suspicion on the BlackBerry claim is that what was intercepted was regular SMS messages, and not the secure BB PIN messaging.
The latter is what is super secure, because it traverses via the data link to the BES and is essentially opaque to telcos.
While BBs have the PIN messaging capabilities that are super-secure, most people I know just use regular SMS because they don't know any better. And you can't use PIN messaging outside your own BES network.
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My suspicion on the BlackBerry claim is that what was intercepted was regular SMS messages, and not the secure BB PIN messaging.
The latter is what is super secure, because it traverses via the data link to the BES and is essentially opaque to telcos.
Completely false. You really don't understand the blackberry platform.
Here's a better explanation: http://www.berryreview.com/2010/08/06/faq-blackberry-messenger-pin-messages-are-not-encrypted [berryreview.com]
PIN messages do NOT go via the BES (blackberry enterprise server). Nei
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While the BES platform is nominally secure, I'm intrigued by one "interesting" fact about the design of the message routing system.
You see, although each organisation can run their own BES server in their own datacenter, all data packets sent from a Blackberry handset to their BES have to be routed through Blackberry's own routing infrastructure. Even if you're inside your own corporate LAN, sending an email to your own corporate Outlook server through your own corporate BES server. Your packets can't just
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perhaps, Blackberry is unhappy that their phone being hacked (or backdoored) has become known, with their reputation for security.
Well, they'd already admitted doing it in other countries; anyone who didn't believe they were doing it in this one was a fool. I was recently asked to provide proof of my assertion that they were doing this in the USA, and I simply neglected to reply because I knew there would be evidence along shortly.
Keep your friends close (Score:2)
Convenient partners (Score:4, Informative)
"Allies" (at least as far as Governments are concerned) are just partners of convenience. They are not friends, and although they might be allies one day they could easily be enemies the next. Now the Brits might have been acting a bit slimy in their methods (I don't like the idea of well-meaning delegates being tricked into using fake Internet cafes), but it's what's done in the Intelligence business and I d
It is not unusual to spy on your allies - indeed it's expected, plus you'd have to be pretty naive to think your own allies aren't doing the same to you. Again, your allies might end up being your enemies one day, so it's important to keep up with what they are doing. Even with the US/UK alliance, a traditionally strong alliance, the US still felt the need to have its own plan in case war with the Brits became necessary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red [wikipedia.org])
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I apologize for the abrupt end to my sentence. Either I forgot to finish what I was typing or the NSA intercepted it and removed impor
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I apologize for the abrupt end to my sentence.
OK, we're placated.
The problem isn't the spying. (Score:2)
Knowledge is power. The problem isn't spying, it's who has access to the information. I say: Spy on everyone, and let everyone have access to the information. It might even help with unjust censorship laws -- Like in the UK where they want to sensor porn by default... If we can look in the public spy data and show that everyone is looking at porn, but don't openly admit it, then we shouldn't enact such retarding laws.
Capturing such data could be huge tools for transparency but since the public isn't
Non-event. (Score:2)
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Yeah, this is old news. Spying on diplomats is a great way to figure out how to bribe them into pushing their host nations in your direction.
War on Terror == War on Everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
The full bore surveillance state that has emerged in the US/Great Britten/etc since the 9/11 attacks has an autonomous agenda. Coping with terrorism is not it's primary goal. It's aim is to permanently protect the current ruling clique from all challenges. It is intrinsically anti-democracy and anti-capitalism. Functioning democracy and capitalism reduce the control and economic position of the power elite, so democracy and capitalism must be being suppressed.
This is the inevitable result of an out of control security system. There are secret organizations governed by secret charters overseen by secret courts with elected officials sworn to secrecy. The people running the organizations lie to everyone all the time. They justify their behavior by claiming that since they are the "good guys", it's OK to do evil things. This is literally the road to hell based on good intentions.
Once an unaccountable organization has the ability to spy on anyone for a good reason, it will spy on everyone for any reason.
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War on terror? Surveillance emerging *Since the 9/11 attacks?*
You have a poor grasp on history, my friend, and one that's been much shaped by political rhetoric from one side or the other (doesn't matter which) about 9/11 being some sort of meaningful turning point for the NSA.
The NSA has been intercepting anything that was technologically feasible since 1945, when it was still the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). Read up on Projects SHAMROCK and MINARET (which have nothing to do with Ireland or MENA,
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For all of you who agree that this reveals that government is untrustworthy, do you START to understand why some people have wanted to LIMIT the power of the federal (and by extension, all) government to the absolute minimum necessary to fulfill its absolute minimum necessary functions?
As shocked as you may have been at the idea your personal info has been Hoovered by the government for decades, does it give you an inkling of how angry and betrayed the founding fathers - loyal British subjects all - must ha
Public Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
The only (partial) fix that I can imagine this morning is a constitutional amendment saying that any law passed by congress has to be public. Secret laws ought to be unconstitutional, and thus inoperative. It would help.
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Sure, and those new laws will be publicly posted in the 3rd Subbasement of the Administration for the Middle of Fuckbutt Nowhere.
The current state of affairs is Orwellian in ways worse than surveillance. Words are simply redefined to make anything legal and everything illegal, depending on who's got the mic. We've traded rule of law for rule of lawyers.
But rest assured, citizen, the republic is alive and well. You live in a country where torture is outlawed, you cannot be denied life or liberty without due
Poor Security and a question of ethics (Score:2)
There are two things in play here.
1 Ethically questionable behavior on the part of the UK government which I suspect has drifted into a groupthink position of thinking that conventions and laws relating to privacy and decency doesn't exist and don't apply to them. Before you get upset contemplate if your government behaves in the same manner.
2 All of these 'exploits' rely on poor security practices on the part of the other delegates. Where is the two factor authentication, where are the secure channels, whe
London is finished as a conference center (Score:3, Interesting)
It's going to be a long time before anyone holds another major international meeting in London. Geneva, maybe.
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Yeah, because of course Britain is the only country that spies on conference delegates.
You really think this doesn't happen in every single country? You really think delegates aren't aware of this?
Hell, I ran for a run of the mill not particularly large engineering firm for some time and we got enough memos round reminding people when they're overseas to be cautious of where they plug there laptops in and so forth for precisely this reason.
This wont change a thing because everyone that mattered for this so
Spying on the UN (Score:2)
This fits with reports that UK/USA have spied on the UN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spying_on_the_United_Nations [wikipedia.org]
* eyeroll * (Score:3)
The cat's out of the bag now. It won't be long before they're all at it.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's part of the problem with massive caches of data -- it's hard to secure. So, setting aside all the potential evils that will absolutely certainly occur because of politicians and career bureaucrats having the data, throw in the random security breach by insiders, contractors, script kiddies, whatever.
It is beyond retarded to trust the government with this data.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
So, setting aside all the potential evils that will absolutely certainly occur because of politicians and career bureaucrats having the data, throw in the random security breach by insiders, contractors, script kiddies, whatever.
When the day comes that this information is obtained and used against the same politicians who voted for it, it will be some delicious comeuppance. And better than they deserve. And a minor observation. From the fine summary:
an anonymous reader links to a story at The Guardian about some good old fashioned friendly interception
It's funny the way they phrase things when governments are involved. If you steal your neighbor's car, they won't call it a "friendly theft" just because you were on good terms prior to the theft.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
>When the day comes that this information is obtained and used against the same politicians who voted for it, it will be some delicious comeuppance.
I really don't think you quite get how that day would work.
"Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college, something that would make you completely unelectable in this country for some reason."
"Ahh. Johnny Ten Inches. Yes, well, I admit to that. How much is it going to cost for this to go away?"
"We have all the money we need, but it would sure be nice if that new NSA data seizure legislation in the pipeline got a yes vote. #211,944 if I recall."
"#211,944? I'm not familiar with it."
"Of course you aren't, senator. We haven't written it yet."
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I really don't think you quite get how that day would work. "Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college...
You apparently have no familiarity with American culture. Homosexuality was once, "The love that dare not speak its name." Now it's, "The love that won't shut up." There have been a number of legislators that have been "out." It doesn't seem to have hurt their careers. They would probably take it as free publicity.
It would almost certainly lead to a real smack down of the NSA were such a thing to happen.
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You apparently have no familiarity with American culture. Homosexuality was once, "The love that dare not speak its name." Now it's, "The love that won't shut up." There have been a number of legislators that have been "out." It doesn't seem to have hurt their careers. They would probably take it as free publicity.
It would almost certainly lead to a real smack down of the NSA were such a thing to happen.
I think that would depend where they are. It might be different in Alabama to California.
There's also a good chance that the good Senator is married with a couple of kids, is a loudly proclaimed devout Christian, and until now has been "passing". Oh, and hypocrisy being what it is, they may also have taken a prominent anti-gay stance to the press.
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Didn't seem to do have much effect on Barney Frank.
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I think you miss his point. Homosexuality is ancillary to the problem it was just an example, it's that something- anything- could be discovered and used against the politician or anyone else for that matter. Replace homosexuality with a stay in a mental hospital, a car accident that killed people, a juvenile crime of some sort (property damage or perhaps assaulting someone in high school), an affair with a biographer or anything that the politician thinks will make him unelectable. That is what the point w
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I have no problem with homosexuals, but I do wish they'd shut up from time to time (well, I'm sure other Slashdotters could say the same about me too :) )
I suspect they might feel the same way about heterosexuals.
Seriously, look at all the heterosexual references in media. I think gays have more cause to complain.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
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"#211,944? I'm not familiar with it."
"Of course you aren't, senator. "You" haven't written it yet."
Fixed for unfortunate truth
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an anonymous reader links to a story at The Guardian about some good old fashioned friendly interception
It's funny the way they phrase things when governments are involved. If you steal your neighbor's car, they won't call it a "friendly theft" just because you were on good terms prior to the theft.
Congratulations, you've found some British humour.
The summary could have been improved by mentioning the G8 summit starts in Northern Ireland today.
Re: Seems fishy (Score:2)
It's funny the way they phrase things when governments are involved. If you steal your neighbor's car, they won't call it a "friendly theft" just because you were on good terms prior to the theft.
Oh yeah? Tell Flanders that.
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Oh yeah? Tell Flanders that.
The entire province? Or just a few people in particular?
The problem is people (Score:5, Insightful)
"A secret once shared is secret no more."
It's marginally possible to maintain infosec when your operatives are groomed, recruited, trained and thoroughly and frequently tested by counterops, psych, and intel pros who outnumber them hundreds to one. Then only occasionally does a spy get in and get promoted to the top. This is only possible when the people who know the precious things are few. The top end is maybe 5,000. Probably far less.
When your secrets are shared across thousands of subcontractors whose recruiting you don't even monitor? No. You may as well post your own shit to pastebin.
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Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's part of the problem with massive caches of data -- it's hard to secure.
There was no intention to secure the data. Each country's intelligence service shares with their counterparts so they have plausible deniability regarding spying on their own citizens.
The Brits can say they got info from the Americans or Australians NZ, etc and vice versa.
These people in their surveillance communities have far more in common with each other, and more loyalty to each other than to the nations that hire them.
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I would put money on it that he was bought out by the Chinese to put a official US/Western face to the findings of the Chinese hacking. It seems mighty convenient that the NSA story came out right before the Chinese-US talks, and is kind of hard for Obama to say anything when the Chinese can say "look, you are spying on your own people too". And now with the G7 meeting coming up, this comes out...
And why would this guy go to Hong Kong of all the places he could go?
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's one of the few places that provide some decent protection against extradition to a "beacon of freedom" that runs secret prisons, tortures its prisoners and imprisons people for years without a trial
Khaled el-Masri (Score:2)
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If Khaled el-Masri was raped, it would be a crime.
You should think about choosing another tag for yourself than, "dumbfuck." It is likely to cause people to hold your views as disreputable.
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Going to the source document [washingtonpost.com], we see what is referred to as rape consisted of:
Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema...
Wikipedia is often best treated as a starting point, not an end point, when looking for information.
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If so, please continue to enlighten us on the Abu-Ghraib matter: the last I know, it was US military that used a quite large variety of torture, rape [wikipedia.org] included.
I've already posted on that in this discussion here [slashdot.org]. As far as continuing to "enlighten you," that might be a full time job whereas I'm only one person and have other priorities. Feel free to widen your reading material, and read more carefully. It might do you some good.
I will point out that the European Court of Human Rights, as far as I see in the actual reference (and maybe I missed it), doesn't refer to his receiving an enema as torture or rape.
Re:Khaled el-Masri (Score:4, Informative)
The FBI would consider it rape
“penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
Source [nydailynews.com]
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
How times change. And to think that the US Government once prosecuted WWII Japanese Officers over the war crime of waterboarding. We executed some of those convicted, and others spent a long time in prison. Cheney and his ilk though(*), they profit from the chest thumping book sales.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/yes-inational-reviewi-we_b_191153.html [huffingtonpost.com]
(*) I include those who excuse such War Crimes, such as Obama, in that "ilk"
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Check UIDs. I'm COLD FJORD(826450). User COID FJORD(2949869) has impersonated me. Don't confuse us if he trolls you.
kinda ironic that the post was marked as 'Troll', huh...
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Maybe.
The great German scientist Max Planck said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
If it is difficult to change minds in science, where the evidence is supposed to be explicitly laid out, and matters viewed objectively, how much more so in other endeavors? It is common for things that I post to be both literally true and marked down as t
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The information often runs contrary to popular opinion, political beliefs, common misbelief, or some other aspect. Sometimes what I post is just inconvenient for a particularly popular rant. No matter.
While it's no doubt convenient to pigeon hole all your would-be detractors as irrational, with your 'only three waterboarded' post you've indicated quite clearly that you're prepared to cherry pick information/articles to fit your narrative, which is that of the US intelligence services and government being reasonable and honourable when it comes to these matters. (torture etc.)
I would merely suggest that taking what they say at face value is naive in the extreme, given all the stuff they've been shown to h
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good try, but they don't admit to them being POW's and there's varying degrees of torture with waterboarding being just one of them. also, try walking over the border to mexico or even canada.
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Facts remain unpalatable as ever.
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No, you don't quite have that right. To the best of my knowledge they are POWs, but their status is "unlawful combatant." They do not fight and act in accordance with the Law of War, hence their status. As a result they forfeit protections and privileges they would otherwise have.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
And people swallow that 'unlawful combatant' nonsense? Didn't they have the right paperwork? Forgot to get their forms signed by the right people? Or just weren't ready to stand out in the open and be simply blown away by a military that is 100% better equipped than all the other militaries in the world, combined?
Phrases like 'unlawful combatant' are the true banality of evil.
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Didn't they have the right paperwork? Forgot to get their forms signed by the right people? Or just weren't ready to stand out in the open and be simply blown away by a military that is 100% better equipped than all the other militaries in the world, combined?
No, one of the primary reasons is because they deliberately target civilians as a primary focus for their attacks. That isn't mistakenly, accidently, or "we meant to shoot somebody else," but rather in a deliberate, calculated manner. They send truck bombs into village market places to kill villagers buying food, for instance. That is unlawful. That sort of thing is part of what caused the SS to be condemned as a whole at Nuremberg. They regularly behead prisoners. That is unlawful. They hang 7 year
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Informative)
That is not the definition of an unlawful combatant, that's the definition of a war criminal. A war criminal is still protected by (and subject to) the Laws of War.
Unlawful combatant means someone who is a civilian who takes part in military combat (with no implications one way or the other about whether they commit any further crimes while doing so). The Geneva Convention is quite clear on what happens to them- if a belligerent captures them, the belligerent can either treat them as a PoW under the regular Laws of War, or they can treat them as a civilian criminal and try them under a "regularly constituted court", subject to the usual international treaties and standards for human rights to justice.
What happens at Guantanamo (detainment without trial, trials by secret military tribunal, water boarding and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment) are illegal (and immoral) however you choose to dice it up.
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They haven't summarily disappeared to "room 101." They are being held in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. They can be held there as ordinary POWs. That isn't a problem any more than holding German POWs for up to 8 years was in WW2. There would have been many more trials conducted by now if various lawyers and progressive groups involved with representing the prisoners had not fought tooth and nail, by hook or by crook, to stop, alter, or invalidate the proceedings.
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No, you misunderstand, probably again. They were genuine US military, but they did not follow basic standards of conduct and for the treatment of prisoners. They disobeyed orders. They breached military law. They went to jail.
Hopefully you now understand.
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The claim is that the US waterboarded three people. Libya is not the US.
...but I imagine you've already chosen who you prefer to believe.
I imagine that works both ways. I would be curious to know your thoughts on the fact that al Qaida training materials have been found in which they teach their members to lie about the conditions of their captivity, to fabricate claims of torture and abuse. Does that ever enter into your thinking? Do you ever view their claims with skepticism, or only those of Western nations?
It is also good to not forget that the Islamist extremist
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I think they were just bad apples. My company put down riots at Camp Bucca twice (the USAF was in charge of the base). They somehow cancelled our mission up north and got us moved to Bucca permanently (blah!). Anyways, i spent several months working detention at a facility larger than Abu Ghraib.
The only people that treated the detainees like subhumans were the typical homophobic/xenophobic bunch. They would have done the same to American detainees, i'm sure. Thankfully, shitty soldiers are the minorit
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Funny)
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That is a very interesting idea. And it would make for a very clever bit of political warfare, leveraging the scandal in the US to attack the British. Not only would it create political problems for GCHQ in the UK, but it could be expected to cause friction between Britain and its allies, as well as cause friction between the US NSA and UK GCHQ. It would also cause further problems against NSA in the US. Friction and suspicion in the Western alliances all around while China continues to expand its fleet
China's PowerPoint spy (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely fishy...these are GCHQ documents...British Government...not NSA...
here's one: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/16/1371408003314/GCHQ-ragout-1-002.jpg [guim.co.uk]
They look like more powerpoint slides...maybe that's his trick, his only real *new* info is some ppt slides from a conference he managed to swipe while setting up a workstation...
Then his narcissism and idiocy take over...
If it isn't China it's the military/industrial complex...
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
And why would this guy go to Hong Kong of all the places he could go?
Six reasons why choosing Hong Kong is a brilliant move by Edward Snowden. [correntewire.com]
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I forgot to add:
Hong Kong currently allows indefinite stay for anyone petitioning for asylum, no questions asked. [globalpost.com]
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Because bad as China may be, they aren't going to buckle to US pressure. Whether they've yet come the point where they feel enough solidarity with the US elites that they would rather see him punished, remains to be seen.
There's also the little matter of Hong Kong's political freedom. Which may be an illusion - but is it worth dispelling that illusion just to get at a commoner embarrassing your rival?
Re: Seems fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
The tech was probably shared with them by the NSA.
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Technology and results of surveillance are two different questions. I wouldn't expect them to be kept in the same place.
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Correct. I was implying that the tech was shared on the condition the data it gathered be shared back. Sorry for being so obtuse.
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Oh no, you are quite right. Thank you.
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You think NSA don't snoop on other intelligence services?
Do you trust politicians too?
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
GCHQ is a British organization. How would Snowden get copies of their plans, if there are in fact legitimate? He seems to be making some mighty big claims for having been employed as an employee of an NSA contractor for three months.
You're really asking this?
It's been well known in public for many years -- certainly since 1996 when it was revealed in Nicky Hager's Secret Power [nickyhager.info] ( the book which made ECHELON a household word, and is available here as a free ebook) that the NSA and its partner agencies in the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ work together as UKUSA or the 'Five Eyes' network, even to the point of agreeing to spy on each others' citizens to get around their respective domestic policy limitations.
Furthermore, it's also well known that a major GCHQ installation, Menwith Hill [wikipedia.org], is actually staffed by NSA officers. Similar American involvement is true for Australia's Pine Gap [wikipedia.org]. To an unknown but probably lesser extent, New Zealand's GCSB listening stations at Tangimoana and Waihopai [wikipedia.org] are also either staffed by, or run in close consultation with, the GCHQ and NSA.
National sovereignty? What's that? For those of us in non-USA English-speaking countries, the situation is strange. We're not American citizens, we have no vote for the US president or Joint Chief of Staffs, yet our leaders take their orders from your leaders. This means that we've all become very interested in American politics, even though we'd rather not. Because you guys in the State may think you're only electing your own local town mayor and dogcatchers, but you're actually choosing who will run the military and spy infrastructures of the whole Western world. And increasingly, the real power players in your system (the NSA, CIA and DoD) don't seem to even care much about the civilian 'oversight'. They just change the logos on the Powerpoints and keep on doing their thing.
For instance, there's a bill in the NZ Parliament at the moment [blogspot.co.nz] to give our GCSB increased powers in order to synchronise them with the NSA. Did the New Zealand people really want this? No. But we're getting it anyway. Because the US military industrial complex calls the shots even in countries they have no official democratic authority over. But those who make and sell the guns, and control the wires, have a habit of getting what they want.
tldr: There is no independent 'GCHQ'. It's a subcontracted division of the NSA.
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You have three choices: (1) either you comply with US political pressure, (2) you become powerful enough yourself, or (3) you ally yourself with other countries opposed to US foreign policy. You seem to want all the benefits of (1) without the obligations and reciprocity that come with it. Sorry, can't have
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This comment ought to be read in the voice of Cartman.
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Not so fishy: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/ [nationalarchives.gov.uk]
Re:Seems fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
tldr: There is no independent 'GCHQ'. It's a subcontracted division of the NSA.
Bollocks is it. GCHQ was around long before NSA came along, and from my time there, there was no yank anywhere near the place, even government personnel weren't allowed into most of our buildings. The fact both agencies have intelligence sharing and pissing contests, is neither here or there. But keep your tin-foil hat on, though!
Yes, the UK and her colonies were doing the spy game long before the USA, and taught them all their tricks; that's well documented. For example, see the career of William Stephenson [wikipedia.org] from Canada in the inter-war years as he set up British Security Coordination [wikipedia.org] and the OSS.
But it's my impression that at the same time, and particularly after the Tizard Mission [wikipedia.org] of 1940 when the UK traded nuclear secrets to the USA for microwave tubes, the original balance of power - between the UK as the world's spymaster/banker and the USA as merely the "arsenal of democracy [wikipedia.org]" producing the weapons - significantly tilted.
By 1944, at Bretton Woods [wikipedia.org], the US position had become so strong that they were able to overrule the British desire for a neutral Bank for International Settlements and designate the US dollar as the world's default currency for the entire post-war Western world order. This was no small policy defeat. The British Empire crumbled in the face of the war and the independence movements that followed, and the US became her creditor. American loans to the UK for WW2 expenses were only paid off by 2006 [wikipedia.org], by the way.
So while I'm sure GCHQ remains nominally British, it's not the case the British interests are as separate from American ones as they were in 1939.
There's a reason why George Orwell snarkily demoted Great Britain to 'Airstrip One' of the Anglo-American alliance in 1948. It's been apparent for over fifty years where the world's military-intelligence center of gravity has shifted to since WW2, and where it remains. The 'Special Relationship' points in one direction - as the world saw demonstrated clearly with Tony Blair's increasingly bizarre and desperate kowtowing to Bush in the runup to Iraq in 2003. He had no obvious reason to obey Bush's demand for war, and yet. There it clearly was, the invisible leash around his neck with the other end in Washington.
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The 'Special Relationship' points in one direction - as the world saw demonstrated clearly with Tony Blair's increasingly bizarre and desperate kowtowing to Bush in the runup to Iraq in 2003.
The United Kingdom is the only country to which the United States sells nuclear weapons.
If push came to shove in the Falklands, the US government was ready to provide an aircraft carrier to the British government if need be.
American loans to the UK for WW2 expenses were only paid off by 2006 [wikipedia.org], by the way.
What's a little debt between friends? [bbc.co.uk]
"In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free," says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.
"The loan was really to help Britain through the consequences of post-war adjustment, rather than the war itself. This position was different from World War I, where money was lent for the war effort itself."
Britain had spent a great deal of money at the beginning of the war, under the US cash-and-carry scheme, which saw straight payments for materiel. There was also trading of territory for equipment on terms that have attracted much criticism in the years since. By 1941, Britain was in a parlous financial state and Lend-Lease was eventually introduced.
The post-war loan was part-driven by the Americans' termination of the scheme. Under the programme, the US had effectively donated equipment for the war effort, but anything left over in Britain at the end of hostilities and still needed would have to be paid for.
But the price would please a bargain hunter - the US only wanted one-tenth of the production cost of the equipment and would lend the money to pay for it. . .
Also, look at the Destroyers for Bases Agreement [wikipedia.org]. The US gave the UK 50 warships, destroyers, in return for basing rights. What do you think that was worth, especially at the time?
Interesting contrast to today:
Lord West 'horrified' at size of navy [defencemanagement.com]
Re:Seems fishy (Score:4)
GCHQ has access to the NSA's data. It would make sense that the NSA would have access to GCHQ's data.
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I would think that data sharing between NSA and GCHQ, to the extent that it exists, is on a strictly controlled, only what is agreed to basis, not a wide open file sharing agreement. I don't think the intelligence community tends to roll that way, especially for programs that would involve what is alleged here: spying on diplomatic activity by a national intelligence service. I would expect that to be among the most tightly controlled information.
It isn't that I would necessarily rule out HM intelligence
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Because UKUSA and ECHELON exist.
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Sharing of this information has long been rumored (IIRC, in one or more of James Bamford's books/articles [who has been writing about this for decades]). Long before PRISM, there was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [wikipedia.org] It has a common database amongst all participating countries.
The political hand waving that the U.S. (or England) "doesn't spy on its citizens" is gotten around by having another country do it for them (e.g. England/Canada is free to intercept U.S. citizen communications (e.g. they're "for
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GCHQ is a British organization. How would Snowden get copies of their plans, if there are in fact legitimate? He seems to be making some mighty big claims for having been employed as an employee of an NSA contractor for three months.
One might be tempted to suspect that the NSA is 100% to be trusted when it comes to securing those giant piles 'o data they are Hoovering up, even in the (vanishingly unlikely) event that they are, as they claim, actually not doing anything illicit with them themselves.
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This line is beyond tiresome. Are you too stupid to understand the difference between assuming and knowing?
Assumer: Gov't spies on allies!
Listener: GTFO foil hatter.
Knower1: Gov't spies on allies!
Knower2: We should think about whether we really want to do this.
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Live updates on who's calling who? We'll see if it's "just metadata" when it's the government's representatives being spied on.
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The sad fact that nobody wants to admit is that ubiquitous surveillance just works.
Yeah, but the question is who it works for.
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Congratulations on finding your little safe corner of the world. I have never felt unsafe in the US and while I do own firearms and encourage everyone possible to carry, I actually do not carry a weapon myself.
I've been to Compton, NYC, Chicago, Miami, as well as many Midwest areas and never once felt unsafe. There was one time in Compton CA where a gang gunfight broke out near me, but I ducked behind a car with 2 or 3 others and waited for the shooting to stop. They weren't shooting at me, I didn't feel un
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Wasn't it about the United Kingdom this time? And who cares if this was treasonous or not? What matters is whether it was good or bad, and you haven't made any argument for why it was bad that he exposed this. I live in the UK at the moment, and I certainly found it interesting that the government is low enough to steal login credentials from its allies.
I guess you will say that everybody is doing this, so exposing it serves no purpose other than embarassing the government. Well, nobody should be doing this