American spies in Germany: Up pops another… and another | Hacker News Reader

American spies in Germany: Up pops another… and another

economist.com

28 pointstormeh13 comments

"When members of Germany’s anti-spying parliamentary commission meet now, they throw their mobile phones into a box and turn up the music (Grieg’s piano concerto)—for fear of America, not Russia. That is what things have come to."

Always nice to have an occasion to use the word "flabbergasting".

I would imagine all the main Western governments are building meeting rooms inside Faraday cages somewhere hard to reach and not in a line-of-sight of other buildings &C

Above seems somewhat lo tech

My wife's grandfather designed buildings like that in the 1960s for the Ministry of Defence in the UK. They had special wall and ceiling coverings, artificial floors and were lined with RF shielding even back then. They had an immense list of engineering checks that had to be done right down to light transmission.

One of the really cool things is they had developed a method of determining what keys were pressed on a typewriter by the sound back then (these were IBM ones so this wasn't hard) and had to design ways for the sound to be dampened enough to not reveal it outside of the communications rooms. Even things like heating pipes were carefully dampened.

You are aware that you can record audio and send it later?

Well, yes.

Are you suggesting that the music being played is to frustrate a member of the meeting from secretly recording the proceedings? Or that the local secret service can't sweep the room and deny subsequent access to hostile agents?

If the mobile phones are turned into bugs, they should not record the voices.

Yeah, likely implemented in a hurry, but Faraday cages don't solve all. Remember that wire is a thing. Turning up the music and speaking quietly in a small group may be lo-tech, but it works. You'll need a widely spaced microphone array with more microphones than there are loudspeakers at the very least to separate the music from the speech. That's easier to do when you don't have to worry about wiring, but it's still hard.

Or "disgusting".

Our allies live in fear of us. What does that say about who we really are?

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the world now knows that the USA has no allies, only pawns.

I would find it interesting why this post was downvoted. What's wrong about voicing the opinion that this is no way to treat allies?

or, "awesome"?

Spycraft - with governments - is fascinating - and everyone does it. Including the Germans.

Remember - if Germany knows there is a mole in their operation, they can use him to give false info, which is known as "counter intelligence". This is often times more useful than having your own spy.

So, I don't think this is just a random episode, it's an attempt to express displeasure with the US, most likely over Ukraine. Doing so publicly embarrasses the US.

If this phone bugging can be overcome by throwing it in a box with music playing, we really have to think whether all these bullshit backdoors are going to work for intelligence.

What I agree is disgusting is that the backdoors won't ultimately capture the useful intelligence a country might need - it's the basis for totalitarianism, plain and simple. Apparently the NSA records 80% of all phone calls in the USA, including civilians. That's sick.

Governments spying on other governments, necessary evil. Is it possible to draw a distinction? i think so.

Any way to bypass the subscription paywall?

Nevermind, opening in private/incognito works. So stupid..

open it in an incognito window

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