Snowden Documents Indicate NSA Has Breached Deutsche Telekom

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/snowden-documents-indicate-nsa-has-breached-deutsche-telekom-a-991503.html

by mstolpm • 12 years ago

350 137 12 years ago

etiam• 12 years ago

You may also perhaps also be interested in the corresponding article at The Intercept, mostly the same journalists. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/

valevk3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure if they see this for the first time, or whether it's a little staged for the camera, but those guys have to be feeling really uncomfortable. Imagine some journalist coming to your office, and showing you slides with passwords, that can access you infrastructure. http://vimeo.com/106026217

kriro• 12 years ago

Well you can see it in their faces. It was a true WTF moment. The lead engineer visibly choked a couple of times.

As an aside...pretty weak password for such an important system.

metafex• 12 years ago

A few years ago I worked for a small Telco company who provided software for virtual MNOs, and security there was not that, let's say, inspiring confidence. It is generally a problem with small companies in the Internet and Mobile-services areas that security is only an afterthought. Partially also due to the fact that the protocols which are used are pretty old and do not implement much, if any, security measures.

edit: customers of the company were mostly in eastern europe, middle east and oceania, so maybe that was another reason ;-)

maxerickson• 12 years ago

Up until 2 years ago, Virgin Mobile USA rate limited PIN attempts using cookies:

https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/open-season-on-virgin-mobile-c...

(VM USA was a VMNO, but now it's more of a Sprint brand, since 2009 Sprint owns them outright)

schoen• 12 years ago

There's also the problem that when communications companies think of security, they may be thinking of "revenue protection" more than customer privacy (that is, making sure that customers have to pay to communicate, and that they get billed accurately).

Ross Anderson liked to point out that the crypto that some cell phones used to discourage you from using aftermarket batteries was stronger than the crypto they used to protect your voice calls over the air. He's also suggested that the crypto in GSM ended up more focused on subscriber authentication than on voice privacy.

There is also now a source for the notion that governments pressured the designers of GSM to make it not provide strong cryptographic privacy:

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Sources-We-were-pres...

Here is a sad thing: Governments are STILL pressuring the designers of GSM to make it not provide strong cryptographic privacy. Like, today. We got some documents from ETSI only a couple of years ago showing that they are designing a cryptographic backdoor mode for the official GSM end-to-end voice encryption, which isn't even deployed yet. The use of the backdoor mode will be optional according to carriers' view of their jurisdictional obligations.

Sorry, that last part is less on-topic for this thread. But in the big picture, I'm sure the people who are involved in those efforts are not making corresponding compromises in the billing and revenue-protection areas.

sauere3• 12 years ago

Imagine where Germany would be today if the US would not have been stealing trade secret, patented designs and other stuff over the last 70+ years.

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

It is too bad they are so helpless and spineless, maybe they will wake up someday.

sauere3• 12 years ago

Yeah uhm, you might not want to cause any trouble if you have 200+ US army installations in your country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_inst...

rmc• 12 years ago

Um... Last time that happened it was pretty horrible...

factorizer• 12 years ago

Thinking in terms of nations is something for peasants. The ruling elites don't care about nations. They care about class war. And they are winning it.

spain• 12 years ago

This is the most pretentious comment I've seen in a while on HN, congratulations. I suggest you come back when you've learned a bit of history.

pkinsky• 12 years ago

Not all war is class war, only most. Unless you think the ruling elite of, say, Israel and Saudi Arabia are on friendly terms.

Theodores• 12 years ago

Germany is doing very nicely when it comes to GDP, balance of trade, making progress on renewables and plenty of other metrics. The USA? Don't they just print money?

The kids at school that work out their own homework go on to do well. The kids that copy from others don't really succeed too brilliantly. Those that copy are a step behind.

In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts. I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes!

madengr• 12 years ago

Yeah, but the lowest spec German cars are not made in Germany; Mexican VWs. Can I even buy a German made car in the US, other than a Porsche? Last I had was a VW Corrado.

There are quality things made in the US, just not many domestic brand cars.

fnordfnordfnord• 12 years ago

The USA? Don't they just print money?

It isn't a mere house of cards; we bully developing countries for their resources, too.

The kids at school that work out their own homework go on to do well.

This is true, to some extent, but it isn't a guarantee.

The kids that copy from others don't really succeed too brilliantly. Those that copy are a step behind.

Are you implying some kind of meritocracy exists? Because I would disagree. Some of the kids that cheat seem to do quite well, much to our collective detriment.

In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts.

I agree. IMO some of that is a deliberate compromise between durability and cost, and some of it is probably just industrialized sloth and rent seeking. We do still have lots of innovation here, but IMO we've lost that edge, and are doing nothing that would help us regain it, or even remain competitive.

I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes!

You might be interested to know that I have two German (and two American) cars in my drive right now. I'm happier with the 1982 model though than I am with the 1999; but even with their problems they are superior to their American "equivalents". German cakes? You've gone a step too far!

aianus• 12 years ago

Germany is doing very nicely when it comes to GDP, balance of trade, making progress on renewables and plenty of other metrics. The USA? Don't they just print money?

The United States owns the tech industry. There's nowhere in the world comparable to Silicon Valley. I'm not familiar with other industries so YMMV there.

In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts.

What about Boeing? Apple? Intel? AMD? NVIDIA? Tesla? SpaceX? From my perspective as a Canadian, the United States makes some of the best stuff in the world.

I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes!

I'd take a Tesla over any car in production period.

mercurial4• 12 years ago

The kids at school that work out their own homework go on to do well. The kids that copy from others don't really succeed too brilliantly. Those that copy are a step behind.

Those that copy eventually stop copying and start innovating. See the US, Japan or Korea for examples.

In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts. I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes!

I'm not American but that's ridiculous. You're typing these words using (most likely) a CPU from a US company, on either a US-made OS, or one that contains really a lot of code from US software engineers. Bell Labs have defined a huge part of the modern software landscape. There is Edison, NASA, Boeing, Apple. And obviously, we have a discussion in a forum funded by a company whose business model is to foster innovation.

atmosx• 12 years ago

Thats a joke right? Imagine where Germany would be today if. Marshall had no plan for Germany after the WW2.

rhino3695• 12 years ago

Imagine where Germany would be if the USA didn't stop the Soviets from raping them out of existence in 1945.

japasc3• 12 years ago

As i see it, all the US patent system is invalid with this kind of revelation. They can not claim any original idea any more, because of spying

colanderman2• 12 years ago

Don't be ridiculous. An idea is original if there's no prior art. If there's no prior art, spying on other people doesn't magically cause prior art to spring into being.

japasc3• 12 years ago

If its developed as a secret, you will never prove prior art.

chippy• 12 years ago

I agree but it's not totally ridiculous, because prior art has to be published or at least known about. So if a technology was worked in a secret laboratory which was stolen, there was no prior art as all the thieves would say was "we've been working on this for years also, and released it before you".

ghshephard• 12 years ago

Has there been a single report, story, or even rumor that the United States has ever used the NSA to assist american corporations in developing inventions?

Nothing in any of the snowden reports even hints at this - so I think your comment that "no patents have original ideas any more because of spying" is a little out there.

sharpneli• 12 years ago

They do have plans for it https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments...

GP's comment is still far fetched. But US does indeed contemplate on starting economic espionage if they ever lose their tech lead.

_up• 12 years ago

The NSA allegedly stole Windturbine tech from a German Firm called Enercon GmbH and gave it to GE.

Article in German: http://www.zeit.de/1998/39/199839.c_krypto_.xml

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

The picture in the sidebar (Spiegel cover on the fall of the Berlin wall) is extremely painful in this context.

Millions of Germans that honestly believed they wouldn't be spied on anymore once they were part of the "free" West.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

That's a rather odd thing to believe. As an American, I certainly never felt like I was immune to foreign governments spying on me.

My problem is when my government collects tons of data about my own life and is then able to assemble it into any kind of crime they want. It's the collection of my personal information by my own government and then the use of that information for social control that I don't expect to happen. I would expect other governments to keep a close eye on me, especially if I were to get into a position where I could affect national policy. That is, after all, the role of an intelligence agency. [Insert long discussion about how spying and intelligence agencies have done a lot to prevent many wars.]

Why did they feel this way? Did they feel that freedom somehow meant being left alone by every government on the planet? There was a general understanding that people are in some form of agreement with their own government, right? And that this agreement had absolutely no bearing on any other government, right?

Spearchucker2• 12 years ago

By my interpretation of what you wrote, you're suggesting that freedom actually means having no expectation of privacy. I can't agree to that.

OP is correct. I have the expectation that my torment will not invade my privacy. I also have the expectation that my government protects me from other governments. That's just how it works.

For sure right now the reality isn't that effective - but that doesn't change my expectation.

anon1385• 12 years ago

There is very little distinction between your own government surveilling you and a foreign government surveilling you. Especially among western nations that share a great deal of intelligence.

This isn't just theoretical. Here is a very stark and relevant example of the power the US has over German citizens: http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/dec/13/cia-tortured-sodo...

There are currently hundreds of millions of people living in parts of the world where 'benign' foreign surveillance is the difference between being alive tomorrow and a US drone strike on your house.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

Why did they feel this way?

Because the vast majority of people know - rightly - that they have never engaged in anything at all that would in any way affect any foreign governments. And usually not their own government either. They don't see any reason why anyone would want to subject them to surveillance.

Because of the shock and horror that people displayed when the extent of the Stasi surveillance was uncovered - at the time, even the most ardent regime critics tended to be surprised at the Stasi revelations.

It seemed impossibly paranoid for anyone to engage in the level of surveillance that the Stasi did.

Granted, technological progress have made Stasi level surveillance vastly easier, but I don't think most people are even now accepting just how much data is being captured and analysed.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

That's a rather odd thing to believe. As an American, I certainly never felt like I was immune to foreign governments spying on me.

That's mostly due to cold war propaganda, and the tons of movies and shitty shows like 24 that legitimize the notion that small nations (e.g Yugoslavia of yore, or some insignificant arab country) have spies everywhere and perform high-tech James-Bond like operations...

Foreign governments never cared/dared to spy on Americans like that. Most don't have the means, and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about what they find. And of course it they were caught they'd have to face the consequences from the 100000-pound global military, diplomatic and economic gorilla. Plus, most world governments are in cushy terms with the US.

The worst offender was USSR -- and then again it was insignificant to the level that is going on today, and USSR was a paper-tiger in lots of ways itself. Smaller countries, at worst, try to spy a little on delevelopments involving their country, e.g to spy on some diplomats, large businesses with interest in their area, etc. And that's talking about countries like France, Germany etc, not Belize or Albania or whatever.

Believing this is like believing the school bully is equally bullied himself from the other children.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

It's called an expectation of privacy and it is something along the lines of not being investigated when you're not the suspect of some crime. Seems reasonable to me.

BillFranklin2• 12 years ago

This will strain the US-German relationship even further.

andreasvc• 12 years ago

Really? I get that as part of the diplomatic games they have to take on an outward posture of being shocked by such revelations, but aren't their intelligence agencies fully aware that these things are just par for the course?

pdkl95• 12 years ago

I'm not so sure - a decent argument could be made that the German government really wants to get into the FVEY club. Both Snowden and Drake have said things that suggest this.

(note: government != the people, who are justifiably mad)

igl2• 12 years ago

This article disappeared from the german frontpage of Spiegel.de very quickly :)

danbruc4• 12 years ago

It's still there, just not the featured one on top. And as bad as all this is, there are still worse things happening in the world.

igl2• 12 years ago

yes, if you scroll down to the Top ten list of most shared articles in the small widget to the right. It's #4.

By worse things you mean camerons face? In an article that asks "why isn't GB [the NATO] bombing the shit out of iraq yet [again]?"

IsTom2• 12 years ago

If we (as in democratic countries) don't keep outselves together because there are "worse things" (there always are) there will be no demoracies anymore in few dozens of years.

lispm3• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure our German services know much more than they say. There is also a lot of cooperation between German services and the US. Keep in mind that Germany hosts major military and intelligence installations for the US. The central US military commands for Europe and Africa are both hosted in Germany. The US organizes a lot of the world-wide military activities (aka wars) from Germany. We host US nuclear weapons. We have surveillance installations here. The CIA and NSA have bases here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command in Stuttgart/Germany. Imagine that, the US military activities for Africa are coordinated in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_European_Command in Stuttgart/Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex in Griesheim/Germany hosts 1000+ people working for the NSA.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Intelligence_Cent... under construction in Wiesbaden/Germany, for the US Army and the NSA.

valevk3• 12 years ago

And they are building new bases.

I am also convinced that the German authorities know much more than we like to think (they don't say that they know nothing), and I'm also pretty sure the NSA and CIA know as much as the German authorities.

sauere3• 12 years ago

The main problem is that the ruling political parties in Germany are - please excuse the language, i don't know how else to put this - sucking US d*ck big time. The way the whole NSA/Snowden thing has been handled in Germany is a fucking joke.

valevk3• 12 years ago

You know why? I think it's because we have the same situation in Germany as in the US. We are still waiting for "our Snowden".

enlightenedfool• 12 years ago

As far sucking US d*ck is concerned, most countries do that. The US goes to war of some or other kind on the countries that don't.

TehCorwiz2• 12 years ago

"sucking US d*ck big time." has several other options available:

"In cahoots with", "defers to", "is complicit with", "is subservient to", "is unquestioning towards"

See, you just need to sprinkle a little bit of vocabulary to taste. I'll admit, it doesn't have the same panache as your "dick", but it is less derogatory.

wglb• 12 years ago

please excuse the language

Let's just not do this.

pluma6• 12 years ago

What's more, the US and Germany have Cold War era agreements that basically allow the US to do whatever they damn well please.

Sure, they cancelled the one was made public (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/germany-nixes-surveillance-pa...) but considering Germany was founded under US/British occupation, I would be surprised if there weren't less public agreements that state more or less the same. After all, the German government was paranoid about the Soviets at the time, so they were happy to have the US handle everything.

MatthiasP• 12 years ago

Those cold war agreements always came with one important constraint: That the US would not use those facilities on German ground to spy on Germany.

jegoodwin3• 12 years ago

Representing Germany as a US client state made sense a generation ago, when it was an occupied nation not least because of its aggressive actions towards European Jewry, and because of the Cold War. Now it is home to a large Muslim population, many of whom are the targets of this surveillance, and the US is allied with Israel. Also, we have been fighting wars in the Middle East for over a decade.

I would suggest that the Germans are more than either a client state or allies. They are a leading state in the EU if not its defacto leader, and the EU is not your grandfather's EU.

Whatever metapolitical order establishes itself in cyberspace will certainly respect the real world politics, which is that relations between the US and EU are tense, and Germany's relationship with its own Muslim population is ambiguous as regards the concepts being thrown around here -- 'treason' and 'duties of a citizen' and 'sovereignty'.

Technical persons would do well to think through what they really want out of the world political order, and to pursue policies with good will that are conducive to peace. Perpetuating the political order of the last century will be both futile and counterproductive.

pluma6• 12 years ago

Our own intelligence agency is so biased against Muslims that it completely (and apparently wilfully) ignored the existence of a domestic neo-nazi group that murdered and bombed several "foreigners".

It's culturally acceptable to be "critical of Islam". Though the middle-class right-wing party ProNRW "only" received 1.5% of all votes in the last regional election, fundamentalist Muslim groups like the Salafists get plenty negative media coverage and the tabloids routinely run articles about those evil scary people.

I don't think the US has any reason to doubt Germany's willingness to pursue Muslim extremists.

EDIT:

To give you a quick impression of the German zeitgeist:

Most Germans are not aware of their status within the EU. Although we do complain about having to bail out other EU members and are proud of our industry most people merely boast about these things without realizing how far ahead we are.

The reason many Germans are critical of the EU these days is almost entirely the financial meltdown various EU members went through in the recent years. We don't feel about the EU the same way we feel about our country, but we feel a lot closer to Europe than to anywhere else (except for the US and Canada).

As far as I can tell most Germans think of Canada is the friendlier, cleaner, backwater sibling of the US. The general idea also seems to be that it's a great place to emigrate to because it's full of Germans (which of course isn't entirely accurate).

Germans generally think that the German government is pretty oblivious towards its citizens outrage about the NSA surveillance, but most Germans don't give it much consideration either. Except for the tech-savvy, nobody seems to really believe the NSA is actively looking (or even passively scanning and recording) their data.

I would say that most Germans generally think that while relations between the US and Germany (or the EU in general) have seen better days the two are still very closely tied, or at least as closely as Germany and France, and definitely closer than Germany and Russia (because a lot of Germans grew up during the Cold War and conflate Russia with the Soviet Union like Americans frequently do).

The tech-savvy crowd is split.

The start-up world mostly seems to have no problem relying entirely on US companies for their infrastructure. I would say those who are concerned about their users' privacy are similarly represented as "greens" were before "being green" became mainstream.

Big corporations mostly don't honestly care, but some see the publicity as an opportunity to make more money by catering towards those seeking some level of privacy. The result is more about marketing that about actually solving real problems, though.

Oh, and as for Israel: saying anything bad about Israel still is the easiest way to be branded an anti-Semite and Germans care a lot about not appearing anti-Semitic. There is some concern for Palestine, but that's mostly fuelled by far left-wing (and, less noticeably, far right-wing) parties. I'd say Germans are less unquestioning about Germany's allegiance to Israel, but it's generally seen as a historic duty than honestly agreeing with Israel's politics.

Disclaimer: I'm a software developer in Germany. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are much less interested in technology and politics than I am, but my appraisal of the cultural zeitgeist is still probably not 100% accurate (it can only be a snapshot anyway).

w1xonaut2• 12 years ago

German intelligence services are not sovereign .. In fact the USA runs all German intelligence services by proxy and has done so since the end of hostilities. Until there is a Peace Agreement, Germany doesn't have the right to its own intelligence services. This is true even still today.

lispm3• 12 years ago

Now it is home to a large Muslim population

Slightly less than 5%, mostly from turkey, 2/3.

Germany is allied with Israel, too. We delivered them the submarines which they use for their nuclear weapons.

Also, we have been fighting wars in the Middle East for over a decade.

Much more than a decade.

which is that relations between the US and EU are tense

Sure.

Germany's relationship with its own Muslim population is ambiguous as regards the concepts being thrown around here

Sure.

BillFranklin2• 12 years ago

Having access to an ISP at the level the NSA does, geolocation, complete communications surveillance and MitM attacks become very easy. I'm based in Cologne and a customer of one of the breached ISPs - very annoyed.

chestnut-tree• 12 years ago

The BBC broadcast a good documentary on the broad issue of internet survelliance a few weeks ago (Horizon: Inside the Dark Web). It's been uploaded to YouTube and is well worth a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjNkbLBEqg

There is a segment in the programme that starts at 4 mins 50 sec that explains how key fibre optic cables that connect the UK and US handle as much as 25% of all internet traffic. It also explains how relatively simple it is for GCHQ to insert an "optical tap" that allows them to capture the data that flows through the cables.

danbruc4• 12 years ago

The main problem in this whole story is the inability to punish the misbehavior without getting hit by the backlash. It's the same with Russia's recent activities. We lack efficient means of punishment on a global scale when dealing with powerful nations. Therefore the best option is usually to improve defense measures and that takes time.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

What "recent activities"? I'm afraid the very powerful nations that have done what TFA says have also frame your understanding of what Russia did.

Some thinking points: a) Russia is next to Ukraine, so it's like they're dealing with a dispute in their borders (e.g not like certain countries that go across the globe to the middle east or asia to assert their "national interests"). b) Ukraine's legitimate voted for government was toppled by a minority (including nazi sympathizers) with western support. c) The population of Ukraine has tons of people that are pro-Russia and are of Russian descent. Crimea in particular had voted to unite with Russia time and again.

Imagine Mexico's legitimate government had been toppled by a Russian-supported coalition (with pro-nazi's among them). Imagine Baja California had 90% people of USA descent that had voted for union with California. What the US response to that would be?

twoodfin2• 12 years ago

So you'd support a US invasion of Mexico under those circumstances? Somehow I doubt it.

danbruc4• 12 years ago

Russia violated the territorial integrity of the Ukraine. Period. The inner situation is obviously complex and splitting the Ukraine into two states may actually be the best option to resolve the inner conflicts, but this is the business of the Ukraine and not Russia.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

What are those Russia recent activities?

The misbehavior in Ukraine was US gobertment giving 6 billion dollars to rebels against the democratically elected, Russian speaking majority.

It was the Secretary of State of the US who talked about the 6 billions they gave.

After forcing a coup d'Etat in Ukraine and protecting the rebels (no violence should be used), the Pro Russian majority revolted and then the US of course change their opinion to VIOLENCE SHOULD BE USED against pro Russians.

It become clear that the US put a puppet in Ukraine gobertment. It was only after that Russia secured Sevastopol against the occupation. Sevastopol has been Russian for centuries.

US was alone in their war against Russia until the civilian plane crashed. Europe leaders were told by companies that breaking almost a trillion dollars pacific relationship with Russia in order to satisfy US interest was crazy.

Instantly after the crash US and Germany (then France) condemned Russia without proof. To this day we have not a single proof that Pro Russians hit the plane.

Quite the contrary, the Pro Russians were winning and hitting a commercial plane was against their interest.

In fact I bet it was manufactured like the chemical attack in Syria in order to put public opinion on the side of politicians.

I am not Russian, I am European, and seeing European leaders go against their interest following the war mongering US is disgusting.

The US is afraid about Europe-Russia and China integration, as it could force US out of Euroasia, and the petrodollar to collapse.

The US wants to invade Iran in order to steal their natural gas(more reserves than anywhere else in the world), and Syria in order to force European gaseoduct gas to be controlled by the US.

For this first they have to weak Russia, as Russia faced the US when the US attacked both countries. Russia has their Mediterranean fleet in Syria and a pacific relationship with Iran.

If someone should be punished, it is the US.

kaeso• 12 years ago

While everybody is mostly focused on Deutsche Telecom and Stellar, I'm more concerned about the long list of big-profile red-filled dots ('SIGINT collection points from AS') in the dox and slides:

* AS1299 (TeliaSonera)

* AS3549 (Level3/GBLX)

* AS6762 (TelecomItalia/Sparkle)

* AS3320 (DeutscheTelekom)

* AS1273 (CW Cable and Wireless)

* AS702 (Verizon/UUNET)

This list covers most of the uplink/transit/tier-1 providers, serving most of EU operators (TATA and TINET being the biggest absents here).

Keyframe• 12 years ago

It has now been a year+ since Snowden is out of the loop (I guess). I wonder how fast NSA moves and how much things have changed since this intel.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

Presumably a lot have changed, but if anything we can pretty safely assume it has changed for the worse, not better.

crazy1van• 12 years ago

Evidence that the US spy agencies engage in large scale espionage on its own people is outrageous. Evidence that US spy agencies engage is foreign espionage is expected.

What is the difference? The US has made explicit commitments to its people through things like the 1st and 4th amendments to protect their privacy.

panzi5• 12 years ago

And this is exactly why more and more non-US-citizen don't like the US anymore. Seeing the world in two classes "US" and "non-US". Yes, I know, no secret service is better. The question is: Are secret services compatible with democracy? More and more indicators let me think: no.

blumkvist• 12 years ago

Nobody lives in a true democracy. And it's actually a good thing. Unfortunately the majority of the population is willingly ignorant and refuses to be educated on complex issues. Instead, they have very unbalanced opinions, based almost solely on emotion. It is very easy to harness those emotions and use them to raise to power and then do unspeakable atrocities. Hitler, Musolini to name just a couple.

unfamiliar• 12 years ago

Except the situation we are in, the US spying on both Americans and non-Americans, seems to suggest that they are not at all seeing the world "in two classes" as you claim.

RivieraKid4• 12 years ago

Pretty much, this is one of the reasons why I don't like the US.

mike_hearn• 12 years ago

Fail. If you're outraged about being the target of such tactics, basic empathy would mean you should be outraged at others also being targeted.

alan_cx• 12 years ago

My take on that is that spying is supposed to have as it primary justification the objective of determining a foreign nations true intentions. Its a method to confirm or disprove what is said. Germany, for example, says its no threat to the US, and US spying will hopefully confirm this. And of course vice-versa. So, spying on politicians and policy makers can be argued to be legit. However whole sale spying on citizens is not.

What gone wrong here is that spying is now used for law enforcement, instead of a tool for diplomacy.

reirob• 12 years ago

And despite this in the meantime spy court renews NSA metadata program [0]. So they are continuing to spy on its own people.

I wanted to post it, but it was already posted and is a dead link. Why? I don't know, but it's a creepy feeling.

[0] http://thehill.com/policy/technology/217618-spy-court-renews...

pluma6• 12 years ago

The thing is that Germany is a close ally to the US. It's one thing to spy on your ally's leaders to make sure you know what they are up to, but it's another to engage in mass surveillance of their civilian population. The US is doing to friend and foe alike what they have publicly shamed China over.

Spying on citizens of another nation is an act of aggression because it undermines the sovereignty of that nation. If you're outraged to find out the NSA is spying on US citizens, why wouldn't you be outraged to find out the US closest allies (say, Japan, the UK, France, Germany or Canada) are spying on US citizens?

Why should it be acceptable for them to do what would be unacceptable if your own elected representatives did it to you? But undermining the sovereignty of other nations seems to be SOP these days. See US drone strikes in Pakistan or the Russian not-quite-official involvement in the Ukraine.

It's not that what the NSA has been doing is orders of magnitude worse (though some would argue it is), it's the sum of all these things the US has been doing while the presidents and media are continuously cheering for Team America as the One True Beacon of Freedom and Democracy.

Europeans (and Germans in particular) have been uneasy about US politics and how they clash with the country's public image at least since the days after 9/11 (I remember thinking "oh crap, the US will go to war with someone over this") and this is just another drop in the bucket. I guess you react to ultra-nationalism differently if you a have strongly engrained cultural memories of what it's like to be a nation that is "superior" to everyone.

perlgeek• 12 years ago

The thing is that Germany is a close ally to the US.

That's what we think in Germany. I get the impression that from the US side, Germany is merely one useful ally among many others.

meepmorp• 12 years ago

At this point, Snowden's clearly a traitor.

His revelations about domestic surveillance were important and timely (if not surprising to people who've been paying attention). But here, he's leaked data that's unarguably within the laws under which the NSA operates - it's a foreign telecom operator that operates abroad.

Releasing this information isn't whistle blowing, it's pursuing a political agenda.

plg• 12 years ago

The question is, who released this information?

My impression from all I have read about the Snowden affair is that some time ago he gathered some very large number of documents (large enough that he couldn't have gone through them all by hand, rather it seems he did something like a giant data dump). He then encrypted these documents, disseminated them to a small number of individuals/locations, and now he is not necessarily in control of them any more, perhaps even he no longer has access to them all.

This doesn't address the more general question, if you gather a crapload of documents indiscriminately, and then you end up losing control of them (and losing control of the ability to release what you want and not release what you don't want to), are you nevertheless responsible for future releases?

I don't know the answer to that

mpyne5• 12 years ago

Snowden, in an interview that he gave when this all started, stated explicitly that (unlike Manning), he reviewed each and every single document in that mass that he dumped.

Furthermore, that review was to ensure that it was material the the public "needed to know" and wouldn't actually harm the U.S. (as he claimed he could do).

So the question of who ended up with the material after Snowden is irrelevant, inasmuch as Snowden himself says he signed off on each and every single leak you see in the media derived from that initial document dump, even if he didn't directly control the editorial process of each media (or activist) outlet doing the publishing.

The alternative (that Snowden didn't actually review every document and simply negligently put stuff out there) is bad for him too, as it makes him a liar.

In either event this is indicative of a political agenda, not some concern with American civil liberties. But we've already known that since his leak of phone tapping in a certain Central Asian country where American (and allied) forces are fighting for their lives each and every day, something which can't possibly implicate American civil liberties.

tedunangst• 12 years ago

Is there a "reckless negligence" equivalent to treason, as manslaughter is akin to murder?

skrebbel• 12 years ago

The definition of 'treason' itself is subject to political debate. By subscribing to the meaning that is currently the law in America (basically, the neo-realist "us against everybody else" idea), you're adding your opinion to this discussion, not fact.

It is your rightful opinion to have, though. Others might wonder whether spying on an important military and economic ally is not, in fact, at least as bad.

WildUtah3• 12 years ago

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." [0]

Exposing the secret police agencies for dereliction of duty, corruption, violation of the law and their own enabling legislation, and counterproductive stupidity isn't treason. There's no war involved and no aid and comfort to the enemy.

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." [1] We don't yet know if the USA will return to constitutional government from the path it has been taking. Whether Snowden will be honored or despised in this nation will be one barometer of our future.

Also, Deutsche Telekom is a major ISP and radio telecom provider in the USA as well as abroad.

[0] United States Constitution, Article 3

[1] John Harrington

rhino3695• 12 years ago

Traitor doesn't mean someone who is guilty of treason.

RivieraKid4• 12 years ago

As a EU citizen, good, more traitors like him.

w1xonaut2• 12 years ago

He may be a traitor to that vile and heinous entity known as the United States, but he's a godamned hero to the rest of the world for exposing the crimes against humanity that the American people are allowing to occur in their name. It is the American people who cannot be trusted, for they have allowed their government, for decades, to get away with countless series of crimes against humanity, and done nothing to stop its military industrial masters from having with the world as they will.

So if you have a strictly America-first orientation towards the world, feel free to continue the justification. But if you can see the world outside the pretty box, Snowden is one of the most important figures in the world today. He represents what America used to be: brave, honorable, and doing what's right in face of the certain personal danger one faces when going up against totalitarian systems of control which have the purpose of enslaving us all.

baddox4• 12 years ago

He may be a traitor to that vile and heinous entity known as the United States, but he's a godamned hero to the rest of the world for exposing the crimes against humanity that the American people are allowing to occur in their name.

This is preposterous. It would make sense to blame the American people for the actions of the American government if there was a strong correlation between public opinion and government policy. I would argue that there is no such strong correlation, and even if there were, the blame would only apply to the specific individuals who approve of the government policies.

You can't just assume the middle school civics class description of government as reflecting the will of the people, then conclude therefore that the people are to blame for the actions of the government.

To be explicit: I am an American citizen (an accident of birth), I approve of and consent to very little of what the US government does, and I accept no responsibility for what the US government does.

mercurial4• 12 years ago

Well, take a look around you if you're in Europe, Australia or New Zealand and notice that while they're mouthing embarrassed platitudes, the heads of most, if not all, EU countries are busy cooperating with the NSA. If you're not, I'd be curious to know in which wonderful country you live, where something like "the rule of law" applies to intelligence services.

That said, wrt to Snowden being a traitor... if that is your reaction to "the previous and current administrations have created a completely out-of-control behemoth which invades both our and our allies' privacy without any oversight, and therefore threatens the notion of free and fair election anywhere in the western world", maybe you should rethink your priorities.

baddox4• 12 years ago

Why is the legality of an action relevant? Presumably all the things Snowden has leaked thus far have been legal. Remember, it's the government that decides what is and isn't legal, not you, me, or Snowden.

PaulHoule• 12 years ago

I knew skript kids who were networking mapping cities and national networks like TymNet back in 87. Around 2k I made a map of the Netherlands, because it was a small but interesting country. The bigger boys play with bigger toys.

rukugu• 12 years ago

Maybe we should have ethics taught in CS so that people know that it's wrong even if you are sitting at a terminal and having fun because the work is challenging.

takeda2• 12 years ago

Many universities do, I know for sure UCLA does, although the course it is taken by other engineers as well so many case studies are from other areas. The closest one to CS at the time I was taking it was about Intel's floating point fiasco, but it did not sound as bad as others because it did not affect people's lives.

Hopefully they'll add recent NSA scandal to the syllabus.

RivieraKid4• 12 years ago

That sounds silly. Ethics is subjective. When you teach "This is wrong." and the student replies "I feel it's right.", what do you say? Unless you have some ethical framework plus a good reason to follow act according that framework, you operate on the level of subjective feelings and opinions.

pluma6• 12 years ago

There is such a thing as "ethics class" and it's really not about dogmatic "do this" or "don't do that". Instead it analyzes various situations to derive insight about why some things are ethically right and some aren't.

By calling it entirely pointless you're dismissing a whole branch of philosophy. I know moral relativism is still popular among some groups of people, but there are other approaches to understanding morality. And no, I'm not talking about religion or Ayn Rand.

markdutton• 12 years ago

Interesting how this post is disappearing fast from the front page.

On the other hand, when Apple launches a new product, the front page looks like the front page of Apple.com, for more than 1 day.

doctorstupid• 12 years ago

Imagine the uproar that would ensue if Germany were to be found spying on U.S. citizens.

takeda2• 12 years ago

And they probably are.

What if US spies on German citizens, and Germany spies on US citizens and then they both exchange with each other what they have learned?

mgulaid• 12 years ago

Most likely, the hacked company in the video is Horizon Energy in the UAE. The first part of the IP matches of the UAE, and you can see the name horizon on the screen. after quick search you can see Horizon has energy operations in the ME and Africa.

Snowden Documents Indicate NSA Has Breached Deutsche Telekom

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