Britain pulls out spies as Russia, China crack Snowden files – report

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/britain-security-idUSKBN0OU02420150614

by cm2187 • 11 years ago

47 50 11 years ago

snowpanda• 11 years ago

> citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services.

--------

So the sources of these claims are the exact same people who are a significant part of the mass surveillance which Snowden exposed. There is some substantially flawed journalism going on here.

Also, in other news, apparently China and Russia are allies now. Or did they just happen to simultaneously crack these files on the exact same day?

cm2187• 11 years ago

What I always found curious is how did Snowden (or anyone) could think that the newspapers could keep all the intelligence agencies of the world away from these files. Journalists are usually the type who switch off the monitor to turn off a PC.

glimmung3• 11 years ago

Yes, the scattergun "Russia and China" line seems to be over-egging it a bit.

jeo1234• 11 years ago

Soon we'll be hearing about how North Korea and the Galactic Empire have also gained access.

jester17• 11 years ago

My guess it has more to do with the recent hacking of the U.S. Personnel files that contain lists of those with top secret clearance but it is politically advantageous to blame snowden instead of lax government security.

mhandley• 11 years ago

The BBC article has a few more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068

I'm British, and it seems to me that if British Intelligence need to move spies as a result of what an unprivileged contractor like Snowden could find out, they've done a really poor job of ensuring that critical information was only available to people who needed to know. Maybe Snowden has done them a favour by revealing how poor their internal security is, without (as the BBC article says) harming anyone. Now the real question the media should be asking is who at MI6 should take responsibility for their poor internal security?

TwoBit• 11 years ago

And what kind of crappy security were they encoding those files with that the foreigners could crack? Maybe it was encryption that the NSA put a back door into, which means they are now getting their just desserts. It sucks to be back doored, NSA, doesn't it?

gleenn2• 11 years ago

Given enough cpu time, and knowing you'll find the identity of spies, I think China and Russia would be more than capable to crack quite a bit of encryption even with brute force.

mozumder2• 11 years ago

They could be encrypting everything with one-time passwords but it still wouldn't matter if the journalists decide to send emails containing open text passwords...

cnvogel4• 11 years ago

Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm for the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

One would assume, given all the propaganda, that it should be easy to document a dozen impressive cases (of the hundreds allegedly existing) in a convincing way...

foxhedgehog4• 11 years ago

Of course, this information, if it existed, would be classified highly.

Greenwald's rhetoric has had a declension from "nobody can prove that harm came from any leaks" down to "there was no harm that came from leaks." If known harm did come from leaks, that would (obviously) be valuable information for the people doing the harming. Disseminating it would be highly irresponsible.

mahranch• 11 years ago

Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm for the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

I'm no expert on geopolitics (none of us are), but I'm fairly certain that kind of thing cannot be quantified. It's like trying to quantify how much love you have for someone. The harm isn't direct and measurable, any harm would be almost entirely indirect.

Before the leaks, maybe Russia wouldn't have invaded Crimea because they were unsure what the U.S/NATO plans are or were and didn't have enough information to move. After the leaks, they had all the information they needed and moved forward with their plan. Or maybe they invaded precisely because they had the evidence which showed the U.S would be unlikely to act.

Those kinds of things aren't inherently measurable so quantifying them is a futile endeavor. I'm no fan of the government but to pretend there are zero negative consequences for us as a country is ignorant and naive. Like it or not, there is a bigger picture and ignoring it doesn't mean it goes away or ceases to exist.

gleenn2• 11 years ago

Snowden wasn't "unprivileged", I think he had relatively high clearance. Also, I'd say they did a pretty good job if the government protected their spies' identities for a couple years after the documents were released. I'd think that would be plenty of time to close up shop and gtfo.

akira2501• 11 years ago

unprivileged contractor like Snowden could find out

It was my understanding that he was employed as a system administrator and had nearly unlimited access to NSA files.

This is according to an unnamed NSA source in this piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/12/16/an-nsa-...

felipeerias• 11 years ago

The really scary thing is: they only knew about what Snowden had done because he told the press. How many more in the NSA are also stockpiling secrets, not moved by high ideals but by other motivations?

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

The ones with functioning brains?

glimmung3• 11 years ago

The timing of this seems a little convenient, coming as it does after a week in which a huge data breach has occurred. Also, it seems that when Greenwalds partner was detained the UK could not decrypt what he was carrying, so the suggestion seems to be that Russia and China can crack what the UK and US cannot. Finally, the Snowden data is now pretty old, so odd that this should come up now.

Of course, as suggested below, Snowden data may have leaked via a media organisation with lesser OpSec, but if so then perhaps best to say so.

For my own part, I think that Snowden did us a service on balance, but he can expect to be the scapegoat in every data breach of this sort for years to come.

mozumder2• 11 years ago

Or, Russia/China cracking the NSA Snowden files were responsible for both OPM breaches and this.

Maybe those countries gained access to OPM data via the Snowden data?

glimmung3• 11 years ago

Maybe those countries gained access to OPM data via the Snowden data?

How? What on earth in the Snowden data could have fuelled the OPM breach? Aside from anything else, given the reportedly atrocious state of IT and security at OPM, it would hardly seem necessary, even if possible.

qrmn• 11 years ago

The mismanagement of security at OPM predates Snowden's disclosures. However, it's pretty much target #1 for any foreign intelligence agency.

The OPM data contains enough details that would allow a good intelligence agency to track down damn near every agent under non-official cover, and blackmail damn near every official under official cover. It should never have been on any network, ever.

If any element of this story is true - and I'm entirely unconvinced about it - then it's not Snowden's data that's caused this, but the OPM breach.

Don't insult our intelligence, JTRIG. This is some oldschool Правда shite. You've gotten sloppy. I'm very disappointed in you all. You don't have to wag your tail every time Theresa May barks.

andrewchambers• 11 years ago

So how do they know Russia and China cracked the files in the first place? Seems like a smear.

k-mcgrady• 11 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712820

escapologybb• 11 years ago

Listening to BBC news on the radio this morning, the presenter said something along the lines of "we have in on the highest authority from Downing Street and Security Services insiders."

No proof, no named sources, just a parroting of the government line. Something sounds a bit fishy to me.

Edit: spelling, grammar, give me a break it's Sunday morning!

alfiedotwtf2• 11 years ago

From the same people who gave us Saddam's WMDs.

If The Sunday Times had shown hard proof that Snowden's files have been decrypted, I would have sat up and noticed. But at this point in time, western governments have lost all credibility. Would it have mattered if the sources were named? Colin Powell gave "evidence" at the UN of possible reasons to invade Iraq. All of it was bullshit.

Hard proof, or GTFO.

hahainternet• 11 years ago

Hard proof, or GTFO.

So the Bush administration's failure to prevent 911 was completely reasonable and couldn't be criticised, right?

orblivion• 11 years ago

This is all rather short on context. What encrypted files are these exactly? Are these something Snowden took with him? How did they get them from him? If they took a copy by force, why didn't they ask for an encryption key by force? How exactly would they go about cracking it? Is there something we don't know (and Snowden didn't know) about the state of the art of cryptography?

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

This looks like Snowden smear campaign. There were never reports of anyone besides the journalists of getting their hands on the documents.

sschueller2• 11 years ago

Where is the hard evidence? The media has to stop being so gullible and do some actually journalism. The wild accusations can start wars!

vidarh• 11 years ago

Actual journalism costs more money because you actually have to invest the time to dig, and comes with the added cost of getting reduced access to senior government officials, which makes it even more expensive to keep up with the competition.

When the public appears to not care whether their news consists of parroted lines or actual journalism, there's little incentive for most of the press to dig, and many incentives not to.

My favourite recent example was when a Norwegian newspaper published documents from the Snowden files that appears to show extensive surveillance in Norway. This was underlined by the fact that others have admitted to surveillance based on the exact same documents.

What followed was surreal: Norway has two main security agencies, the Police Security Service, responsible for internal intelligence, and the Security Service (Etteretningstjenesten), which is external intelligence. The latter used to pretty much never talk to the press.

But after that article, they suddenly got chatty, and all of their own accord they invited to a press conference to "admit" that yes, they were responsible for the surveillance in question. Never mind that for all other countries that have made admissions the documents in question have indicated internal surveillance, and that the Security Service "admitted" that this was surveillance in Afghanistan, where Norway according to this admission are intercepting metadata for pretty much every call. But nowhere else.

At this point you'd think the press would have some questions, such as "why are you revealing to the press - and thus implicitly to Taliban etc. - that Norway is intercepting all calls in Afghanistan?" or "why would the numbers for Norway refer to interception in Afghanistan when there's a separate entry for Afghanistan in the same numbers?" and "why would the NSA depend on Norway for surveillance in Afghanistan?" and "how much money does this surveillance in Afghanistan cost us?" and "if we have the capability to conduct surveillance in Afghanistan on this scale, why is that the only place, we're conducting this kind of surveillance?"

Not least "why, when the article talked about internal Norwegian surveillance did you feel compelled to host a press conference to reveal details about your notoriously secretive operations instead of letting the Police Security Service deny the allegations". Heck, if it really was the Security Service that this document referred to, the Police Security Service could just state that they invite the parliamentary oversight committee to audit, and that they will naturally find no such surveillance.

You'd also expect they'd go back to the Police Security Service and ask them "why should we believe you're not doing this, when your predecessor in name, operated by most of the same people, were caught having conducted illegal political surveillance for several decades not that many years ago?"

Nothing. No follow up at all. Instead the single press conference was enough to make the paper that broke the story backtrack and apologise.

A few months later it became clear that the NSA were in fact recording most calls in Afghanistan, which makes the idea that the NSA would explicitly call out vast amounts of metadata collection by our Security Service as valuable even more silly.

Still no follow up from Norwegian press.

Basically they don't want to rock the boat. When they don't rock the boat, they get to get spoon fed information they'd otherwise have to work for and/or read about in the competitors papers. When they don't rock the boat they get exclusive interviews and photo ops.

It's a fantastic lesson in "soft" censorship: Don't outlaw publishing material you want to suppress. Instead make it economical and professional suicide. Make journalists that dig sacrifice their career by making sure everyone know they will never get any kind of inside access. Make papers or tv channels that publish too hard hitting stories know they'll lose any chance at access, interviews and photo ops. Soon enough, large parts of the press will self-regulate.

This is part of why we used to have a politically affiliated press, where political parties would fund papers that would be paid explicitly to provide viewpoints that weren't popular even if that viewpoint was unprofitable. Sure that have flaws too, but those flaws were counteracted by having a wide range of them publishing alternative viewpoints. That more and more media outlets have gone "independent" means more and more of them are no implicitly beholden to play to government interests, or at least staying not straying too far from the script, to be profitable.

(sorry for the long rant - the above story still makes me angry)

sschueller2• 11 years ago

This is infuriating and sadly turning into the norm. :(

peterkelly• 11 years ago

Full text of the original Sunday Times article (primary source is paywalled):

https://archive.is/BkuMM

http://pastebin.com/UJpJxDnj

Statements from the article that seem questionable:

Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden

Both? Seems a little strange that they would independently do this simultaneously, unless they had been working together on it (though this is plausible).

Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor

The only reason Snowden is in Russia is because the US state department cancelled his passport on his route to Ecuador. Russia was not his intended destination, but his presence there has been extremely helpful for his opponents to paint him as being in collaboration with them. And if it is indeed true that they have gained access to the info (either through his co-operation or otherwise), then perhaps cancelling his passport while in transit and forcing him into exile there wasn't such a great idea.

One senior Home Office official accused Snowden of having “blood on his hands”, although Downing Street said there was “no evidence of anyone being harmed”.

So which is it?

David Cameron’s aides confirmed the material was now in the hands of spy chiefs in Moscow and Beijing

Where's the evidence? The only sources of the article are from the US/British government, who have given only unsubstantiated claims.

people are being pulled back and operations where people are exposed are having to be shut down

Perhaps this might be due to the US Office of Personnel management (OPM) being unable to keep the data of millions of federal employees protected? The Chinese hack got this information directly from the agency that held it: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of-pers...

David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 “highly classified” intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow.

They can't even get basic facts straight. He had been in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, not in Moscow visiting Snowden: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-m...

agd• 11 years ago

This story is very dubious. Timing very suspect. No official willing to say any of this on record yet they do a simultaneous briefing to the BBC and Sunday Times?

China and Russia both decrypting the cache? Notice how none of the actual quotes say that China/Russia decrypted anything or have access to info not in the public domain.

“It is the case that Russians and Chinese have information. It has meant agents have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped us getting vital information. There is no evidence of anyone being harmed.”

The Sunday Times article can't even get some basic facts right:

"David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 “highly classified” intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow."

Not true. He was visiting Poitras in Berlin.

I'm gonna need more evidence than 'anonymous government sources' for this.

tajen• 11 years ago

I don't understand how this could be orchestrated (NSA letters?) and yet no orchestration be done against comments like yours and HN in general? Too quick to be censored?

richmarr• 11 years ago

If this is true, surely the bigger story is that AES-256 isn't safe anymore.

p01926• 11 years ago

Just assume for one second this is a genuine revelation and not recycled propaganda from mid 2013. Couldn't someone entrusted with the Snowden cache just dump it online now? If the trove is already circulating between hostile intelligence agencies, that seriously skews the risk/reward calculation regarding mass dissemination.

yenda• 11 years ago

Imagine if the NSA had spent more of its grey matter and money on IT security rather than shameless spying of western citizens.

aw3c2• 11 years ago

shameless spying of western citizens

should be

shameless spying on innocent people all around the world

skidoo• 11 years ago

Right on. The way I always saw it was that the NSA were the thieves, collecting data they did not own. Snowden, while accused of stealing secrets, actually set them free.

randomname2• 11 years ago

Glenn Greenwald's reaction to the article:

"That Sun Times article is filled with so many factual errors- demonstrable ones- along w/the worst journalism. Will be fun writing about it."

https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011...

Followed by a retweet of the following response:

"unsourced, unverifiable nonsense smears by a group that knows it's losing, the spying fascists"

alan_cx• 11 years ago

I don't understand the story. From what I can tell, Snowden had information taken from the US which could compromise its apparently closest ally's spy networks. But didn't tell the UK that? More over, the UK had no idea that the US has such info? I would like to believe that as soon as the Snowden breach happened, the US told the UK, and the UK took measures to mitigate it. I would also like to think that the UK assumed it anyway. Or did the UK leave its networks vulnerable for all this time? Or did the US assure the UK that its encryption couldn't be broken?

Perhaps, the UK moved its spies some time ago, and decided to keep it quiet until the Russians and Chinese broke the encryption.

I have great difficulty taking this story at face value.

cyphunk• 11 years ago

Lets see... recently USG had all files from federal employees stolen, including background check information which as I heard included spies [1]. Germany's Prime Minister had a Trojan on her computer [2]. Government networks are falling like flies and all the sudden some 5 eyes countries are pulling their spies out, and blaming it on snowden?

1. http://www.wsj.com/articles/security-clearance-information-l... 2. http://rt.com/news/267070-trojan-bundestag-merkel-computer/

ttpol8• 11 years ago

Garbage story, the Intercept addresses it well: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-r...

Britain pulls out spies as Russia, China crack Snowden files – report

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