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."
Re:Seems fishy (Score:2, Interesting)
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, Interesting)
The tech was probably shared with them by the NSA.
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.
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.
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]
Re:File this under (Score:2, Interesting)
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). Neither does blackberry messenger (BBM). Both PIN and BBM work fine without a BES, or even if the BES is down.
PIN messages are not encrypted. BBM is encrypted with 3DES, which isn't that strong - the keyspace is small enough to the brute-forced in a reasonable amount of time for anyone with a million dollars of compute power.
What you CAN do with a BES is have AES encrypted email from your office to the blackberry. Good luck brute-forcing that.
The blackberry platform offers many different services, with different levels of encryption.
The really interesting thing would be to know exactly what is disclosed here.
The BES platform remains certified by many organizations: http://us.blackberry.com/business/topics/security/certifications.html [blackberry.com]
If there is a flaw in the AES implementation that would be news.
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.
False. You don't know any better. You can send PIN messages to any blackberry device (unless sending PIN has been blocked on your device by your admin).
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.
Re:War on Terror == War on Everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
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, despite the names). If it crossed wires, the AFSA/NSA was reading it or recording it. If it had a frequency, they were listening. Anything, anywhere, anytime. They still are. Nothing has changed for the NSA.
Spy agencies spy. That's what they do. Spying on foreign leaders at conferences like the G20 is pretty much the Superbowl of what they do. And they all do it: Russians, Germans, Brits, Americans, Frogs, anyone with the capability to bug each other (and the G20 is basically the top group of countries with the technological know-how, financial support, and proactive sense of initiative to do just that). The Europeans have known for years that they were all intercepting any communications they could: see the table in section 2.5 of the explanatory statement to this July 2001 (before 9/11) report on ECHELON from the European Parliament [europa.eu]. Anyone not too poor or too small to do so was intercepting anything they could get their hands on.
If you think 9/11 has anything to do with "increased" surveillance, you've been sold a bill of goods. Surveillance was always as complete as was technologically feasible, and that's how it will be in the future as well, and it's got nothing to do with national borders or allegiances: it's a game that no first-world country is not playing. The quintuple alliance of US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand (and sometimes the Dutch for a sixth hand) just happens to be the best at the game, which is why they can read things that other countries haven't gotten access to yet. "Yet" being the operative word.
CAPTCHA: puppets
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.
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.
Re:Seems fishy (Score:2, Interesting)
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 that.
For example, if you want the US to provide you with intelligence, you need to provide the US with intelligence. And US intelligence is more useful to you than the other way around. Ditto for free trade. You want to export your goods without hassles? Then you need to let other countries export to yours without hassles.
Your leaders are choosing a couple of percent of economic growth plus a tiny increase in security over your privacy and autonomy, and they are doing it because your voters would kick them out of office if they didn't. And US politicians are making the same choices for the same reasons: people complain about the negative consequences, but they'd complain even more if politicians chose differently.
Yes, we are. We got into this position after enduring centuries of European imperialism, and European military and intelligence dominance. And the way we got into that position was because Europe self-destructed and then after the war was content to let the US run its affairs while it relaxed for a while. And I include Australia and NZ under "European imperialism"; don't fancy yourself as being somehow separate from that.
Who are you kidding? European obsession with, arrogance towards, and dislike of, the US has been around, with brief interruptions, since the US was founded. Don't expect American voters to suddenly start caring after two centuries of European intellectuals getting their panties in a knot.
Having said that, in many ways, many Americans dislike the same things about the US government that the Europeans dislike about the US government, and hopefully we can emphasize privacy and civil liberties more in future elections. But how we deal with that is our business, not yours. Go fix your own country, it seems to need it.