NSA Hacked French President’s House
gosint.wordpress.com
gosint.wordpress.com
US and France have been spying each other for ages.
U.S. Intelligence and the French Nuclear Weapons Program – Documents Show U.S. Intelligence Targeted French Nuclear Program as Early as 1946 http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB184/
Former head of France’s counter-espionage understands what is the name of the game:
http://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squarc...
>“The French intelligence services know full well that all countries, whether or not they are allies in the fight against terrorism, spy on each other all the time,” he said. “The Americans spy on French commercial and industrial interests, and we do the same to them because it’s in the national interest to protect our companies.” “There was nothing of any real surprise in this report,” he added. “No one is fooled.” "Chancellor Merkel is important. If the NSA was not surveying her communications, it was only because it was unable to do so," "How could the NSA not want to listen in on the person rated by Forbes as the second most powerful person in the world after President Obama?”
This gives inordinate power to organizations that have greater spying capability--the United States with its NSA will have more influence in global affairs than France, even if we both have one vote in the UN security council.
Whether this has "always gone on", though, is irrelevant to whether it is antithetical to democracy.
I doubt the French President or any world leader is so cowed by the premise of NSA spying that it paralyzes them into inaction and submission. Paranoid people on the internet who think that the CIA might black-bag them for typing "Snowden" into Google may be that naive, but the actual political elites are likely far more aware of, and accepting of, the global surveillance network than you or I.
>Whether this has "always gone on", though, is irrelevant to whether it is antithetical to democracy.
That's true, but an assertion of a global political chilling effect remains speculative at best. If anything, the constant leaks about NSA spying seems to have the opposite effect.
How can spying effect change?
1. Providing knowledge to the US to improve our decision making
2. Providing intelligence to the US to change French decision making
3. Using (1) and (2) effectively so that 100% spying is not even necessary. That is, France chooses the path that would result from spying anyway
But the main message to me from the leaks is that despite America knowing everything, the government usually decides to act like it knows nothing.
The political term for this is Power Projection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection
Better than in the 90s, whent he French president was using his anti-terrorist powers to listen to the conversations of good looking TV stars!
You take "The Art of Intelligence" and it's so oversimplified and naive it's unbearable. I refuse to believe the author, an Ambassador at Large, thinks that way. His assets are brave and courageous, other nations' assets are traitors and evil. It's all good guys (him) vs. bad guys (others) and there's absolutely no way an Intelligence Officer, anywhere in the world, who is not mentally challenged, can think that way. It's people who don't know terrorism and have had nothing to do with it who have the most clear cut, black and white, views.
Contrast with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEKEfkdrOU
Who says the exact same thing as Michael Scheuer (former Intelligence Officer tasked with Bin Laden).
https://youtu.be/E0dPy2XCst8?t=6m29s
Describing what he says as blunt is an understatement. In that video, he says some things about Bin Laden that would get anyone thrown in a hole somewhere for apologia for terrorism. That's almost a eulogy.
But I ask, favorable to whom?
There isn't a single sentence in what I wrote where I made this assumption. This is what you perceived I assumed.
My point wasn't on the ethics of spying which I haven't addressed at all in my reply. My point was on the reaction different people have to spying.
He can rest assured that the USA never saw France as no2 in anything, except maybe gastronomy.
When Europe was reshaped at the end of WW2, De Gaul was not present on the table. It was Roosevelt, Churchil and Stalin who got the spoils.
I believe the only reason France enjoyed a sort of leadership in Europe was because Germany historically was seen as too dangerous to cut loose and the UK never felt part of Europe.
The US via Marshall's plan and the global money recycling scheme (Bretton Woods) made of a broken Germany a surplus country and the European powerhouse we all know and love today. Of course German culture (protestantism) had a lot to do with it. So, indirectly the US put Germany on a the road to become the most powerful country in Europe in the long run anyway.
>He can rest assured that the USA never saw France as no2 in anything, except maybe gastronomy.
Merkel is the German chancellor...
i'm no geopolitical or history expert (i just like to travel and observe) but i don't think it was indirect at all. germany (and central europe in general) has shown that unless it is powerful, rich and well-integrated with the rest of the world, it will lead to very, very bad things. if you've ever been to germany and talked with normal people, they are absolutely convinced that their way is the best. this is something to be harnessed and directed, not rejected.
the post-war plan was to ensure that happened, on our terms. the soviets nearly fucked it all up, but thankfully we won that war also. we drive around in german cars, the whole of europe borrows their money, we eat their food, drink their beer, buy their overpriced coffee grinders and other assorted bauhaus-influenced home goods, and that makes everybody happy. we're all nice and fat and contented with our shiny and delicious german stuff and stuff financed by german cash, and they don't feel the need to forcibly take over the world to shove it down our throats (or worse). it's a fantastic arrangement that's worked out swimmingly so far.
fwiw, the refugee crisis and mass immigration from the middle east into this region concerns me.
p.s. the same goes for japan too, except their border policy is basically completely racist (even though in my experience japanese people are extremely friendly and open-minded -- it's a very strange and unique dichotomy) so they'll just invent robots to do the work that the non-existant immigrants would have done. german industrial robots are no slouch but so far the domestic/service situation is still handled by people, as far as i can tell. in japan they're trying to automate away all that inconvenient people-to-people stuff.
While Secretary General [of NATO], Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of the alliance was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down," a saying that has since become a common way to quickly describe the alliance.
I think in your haste to put down France you misread the quote which in fact states what you say later on in your response. Here's the quote again:
> "Chancellor Merkel is important. If the NSA was not surveying her communications, it was only because it was unable to do so," "How could the NSA not want to listen in on the person rated by Forbes as the second most powerful person in the world after President Obama?”
It's quite clear to me that they're referring to Merkel and her communication being spied upon, not the French President.
But this part got cut even before the video was completely removed. You can only see him starting the story, and then it stopped.
Honestly, as a french i'm a bit scared to see someone mention all those recent "state secrets" in a campus, with cameras all around. He even described the working method (mixing human intelligence and electronic), the workplace ( it ressembles a lot the "Bureau des affaires secret" TV show, because they had access to the DGSE offices), and the limits of the service (number of men, lack of resource to treat the information, damages done by snowden to surveillance capabilities, etc.)
At this point i only see two options :
1/ the guy's a bit old and senile.
2/ He knows exactly what he's doing, and he thinks France's intelligence capabilities are such in a mess that he needs to make this information public.
Judging by the recent intelligence fiascos, and the ever increasing terrorist threats the country's facing, i'd say 2/
EDIT: I'm pretty sure I've seen a variation of that dude in every Lifetime movie ever.
https://blog.fox-it.com/2015/04/20/deep-dive-into-quantum-in...
It looks like they reply to a request instead of a legitimate server (poisoning DNS, or routing tables, maybe by jus adding a server to an anycast service) to infect the target machines. Once the target machine is infected, ssl, passwords, etc... No longer matter.
Yeah, except you'd have to give the Germans time to remove all their malware from the French servers before you could green light that.
The NSA enjoys a workforce 20 times larger (60,000 vs 3,000), and a budget 40 times bigger (US $50 Billions). Even the GCHQ (UK) & UNIT 8200 (Israel) have twice more resources.
The NSA probably think its adorable when the French pop up on one of their honeypot servers.
In fact what we have in a US empire implemented in part through interlocking relationships in the Deep State: Militaries talk directly to the US military outside of control by elected officials and so do intelligence officers. The US sphere of influence uses US technology that enables US spying.
Note that I'm not saying they are not doing it (I actually assume everybody does it), but I don't recall seeing any formal proof.
They don't make a stink about it because you don't rock the boat when you don't need to. Advise those with sensitive information of how to proceed and move on.
Think about why French intelligence would give this to the press, rather than obviate it either technologically or diplomatically.
Doesn't make it right.
Overall, a significant share of these powers have been and will be used in ways and for goals that are detrimental to the well-being of democratic political systems.
What's the difference between an unelected man in charge and an elected one, if you can't know what they do, anyway ?
For that, you would need oversight, which intel shops typically don't provide. For instance, there's a history of scandals being revealed long after they were done in western democracies.
There's also the matter of being able to effectively implement a political program reducing the powers of intel agencies. To my knowledge this has never happened outside of political upheavals. Even then, if you look at the Church committee report and the Snowden affair, advances seem to be quickly erased.
You can say that the process can be improved but it's not like there is a shadowy organization that does w/e it wants without any oversight.
Snowden is another good example of how poor the oversight is - whether because they didn't think any of what has been revealed was wrong, or because they didn't know. I'm not sure which is worse.
And how would you know when documents are classified and everything can be overrun by secret courts and intelligence puppeteers?