Singapore & South Korea Help NSA Tap Undersea Cables 137
An anonymous reader writes "Singapore and South Korea are playing key roles helping the United States and Australia tap undersea telecommunications links across Asia, according to top secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Indonesia and Malaysia have been key targets for Australian and Singaporean intelligence collaboration since much of Indonesia's telecommunications and Internet traffic is routed through Singapore. The NSA has a stranglehold on trans-Pacific communications channels with interception facilities on the West coast of the United States and at Hawaii and Guam, tapping all cable traffic across the Pacific Ocean as well as links between Australia and Japan. Japan had refused to take part."
Drop an Anchor (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe "Dropping Anchor" is code for wire tapping without permission. The old "a boat dropped anchor on the cable" so the internet is a trickle in Australia for 3 days trick.
"I'm just going to go drop an anchor on this call"
"We were dropped anchor off the coast of China last week"
Self-interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that we're asking this question on a US forum we can take it as granted that 60% of the readers couldn't find either country on a map and that 90% have zero knowledge of their political and historical position. So about 90% will be ill-equipped to understand where Singapore's and South-Korea's self-interests might lie. But now that the question is asked, we can remedy that.
South Korea, needs the US to help defend themselves against neighbours who would be prepared to wage a full-scale war against them (North Korea). The US are pretty much the only ally of note and value they have, and they know it.
Singapore is surrounded by neighbours that completely dwarf them (Malaysia, Indonesia) only 50 years ago encompassed them (Malaysia), have an Islamic majority (Malaysia) or a virulent Islamic minority (Indonesia) and are debating whether to become a fully Islamic state (Malaysia).
Both countries have brought about an economic boom and depend on security (i.e. the absence of shooting wars), good trade relations with the West, open sea lanes and suchlike.
In both cases a critical part of their national security is having accurate information on what their neighbours are really up to. And in both cases the only serious partner is the US. As a stabilizing factor, a main ally, or a party with whom to trade information that they themselves cannot collect (like e.g. satellite coverage, ocean reconnaissance, comprehensive traffic monitoring etc. etc.).
For countries like that, helping the US eavesdrop on message traffic makes an uncommon lot of sense and is a small price to pay.
Whilst Snowden's relevations may have a beneficial effect on US *domestic* intelligence oversight, having such data-collection arrangements splattered on the front page are detrimental to the collective national security of the US, Singapore, and Korea.
Turn it any way you want, knowing what people are up to gives you a head start in dealing with them, and the US have been a stabilizing factor in Asia for 60 years or so. Eroding this data-collection capability is the price we pay for openness. I'm not certain if the price is too steep, all I'm saying is that it's a very real price we pay. Even if not everybody realises it or wants to hear about it.
Re:let's get some crap out of the way (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah the Poe's Law Troll, one of my favorites. However, I'll oblige.
You're not important enough for anyone to care about your private communications.
Until you are. Then you're fucked, even if it's a bullshit reason, like making anti-NSA political statements on the Internet, while also being an OS developer and having knowledge of unpatched OS exploit vectors, and developing your own cryptographic ciphers. Then you may find your router firmware mysteriously bricked by an exploit gone wrong -- You see, upon suspicion of odd things going on in my network (like 350 MB uploads in the middle of the night when no one was using the net to IP addresses owned by the US government) I cleansed my systems and replaced my router and its firmware, but caused it to still be fingerprinted as stock. That's called a canary, and my canary is dead. When I look at things from an intelligence perspective, It seems like I might be interesting to them, even though I'm a pacifist not a terrorist.
I'm not sure who wants into my systems or for what purpose. However, condoning such actions against citizens is abhorrent. If they showed up at my door step with a warrant I'd shake their hands and give 'em few cases of my homebrewed beer to take home and help them to everything they want to know -- That's what they should be doing. Now, I have to assume it's malicious attackers or enemy state actors. It's really not helpful to be at war with your allies... I don't think we should have to live in fear of whether or not the NSA style spying will be leveraged against citizens, or make the governments of our world illegitimate by violating citizens trusts and rights. Regardless if they are "legally" allowed, it means nothing if your populous abhors the action and despises the state for it. We should not have to wonder; We should know we can trust that our governments are not evil -- We should be able to prove it. We shouldn't allow them to do anything we don't know about. In the NSA's case they lie to their overseers. The threat such actions pose to national integrity and stability is far too a high a price to pay. The risk is too damn high.
I, for one, think it's hot that the NSA sees my sexts.
When the government retroactively declares your "sexts" to be offensive and illegal material they probably won't arrest you for it -- Unless they decide that they don't like you for some other reason. This is how police states operate. [youtube.com] Anything you say or do can and will be used against you. They will not have the obligation to use the information they have to exonerate you. In fact, once they "like you" for a crime the states will employ the practice of Parallel Construction. [wikipedia.org] And no matter how sexy, your sexting habits may be just the ticket to nail you for something else. In other words: We shouldn't help them fuck you. They should have to work for the taxes we pay.
If the NSA didn't do this, we'd already be dead.
Everybody already knew the NSA does this, so it doesn't matter.
This line of reasoning is pure bullshit. We suspected, but we didn't have evidence, and given that Habeas Corpus is now eliminated upon mere accusation of threat it does matter more than ever before. Those who love their country are not so content to have it turned into the same things their soldiers fight against. The greatest risk is that the honorable will STOP fighting for those who are seen as dishonorable when countries become like the enemies the soldiers were trained to despise. The NSA actions, and the spying actions like them by countries world wide are threats to national security and national sovereignty of all the world's peoples.
Finally, the terrorist threat is pathetic, though they say it's nothing to sneeze at the flu kills six times more Ameri [cdc.gov]