Do Dutch Spies Also Have Access To PRISM's Data? And If So, Who Else Does?
from the clear-as-mud dept
In the wake of the leaks about NSA's spying activities around the world, one of the interesting subsidiary questions is: who else had access to this stuff? We know that the UK did, and now there are indications the Dutch did as well, according to this report on DutchNews.nl:Justice minister Ivo Opstelten on Tuesday refused to comment on claims the Dutch security service AIVD works together with the US secret services in collecting information from email and social media traffic.Some pretty dramatic claims are being made:
…
Dutch security service AIVD has also received information on email and social media traffic via US spy system PRISM, the Telegraaf reports on Tuesday.
If the AIVD lists an American address as suspicious, it is supplied all the information within five minutes, a source told the paper. The source worked for the department which monitored potential Dutch Muslim extremists, the paper said.There are a few points to note here. First, this is a report about a story in the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf, which draws on unnamed sources. So the chain of information is quite long, and it's likely that details have been lost or mischaracterized along the way. It's also worth noting that PRISM is not the only system mentioned here for gleaning information about people. That's probably muddying the waters yet more, as sources reveal tantalizing information about other spying initiatives that then get subsumed under the general heading of PRISM, simply because it's in the headlines at the moment.
Dutch companies also cooperated with the US authorities' request for information, the source said, claiming that 'there are agents ready to deal with requests for information inside companies and institutions.'
'There are a couple of those secret programmes like Prism active in the Netherlands,' the source is quoted as saying.
That's not to minimize the shocking nature of these revelations -- the idea that spies around the world may be accessing within minutes any private information they want, is troubling -- merely to note that the picture we have of what is going on remains frustratingly vague. And that, of course, is an argument for more transparency from the authorities, both in the US and elsewhere, about what is really happening to our personal information when we go online, and who has access to it.
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Filed Under: access, data, europe, netherlands, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, us
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OK, so also the Dutch.
Regardless of whether or not an agency based in my country should be able to access information on me, which is in itself a can of worms, at what point does it become OK for my government to participate in sharing potentially damaging information about me with foreign intelligence agencies?
Surely that's the opposite of what intelligence agencies are for? Surely that's the opposite of what governments are for?
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As someone from the Netherlands, I have been quite annoyed about how much of the rage wasn't the warrantless spying in itself, but the warrantless spying on own citizens, as if the distinction matters. As if that's even possible on the Internet.
One thing that also occurred to me while I saw Opstelten on the news here, explaining that he wasn't going to tell anyone how our intelligence agency did its work, is that he does in fact realize why privacy is important. He just gives it to the wrong people.
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Law enforcment
Everyone in Law enforcement is Exempt from those same laws and can not be prosecuted.
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So...
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This is great news for the Chinese/Iranians/etc.
Or to put it another way, if the NSA's goal was to assure that the enemies of the United States get their hands on valuable intelligence without having to do very much work, then sharing it with the UK and the Dutch and the [...] is a wonderful idea.
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Re: This is great news for the Chinese/Iranians/etc.
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Sorry, not sure this link will work properly..
Revealed � Australia�s own PRISM facility
http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/govenrment-tech-policy/60282-revealed-%E2%80%93-austr alia%E2%80%99s-own-prism-facility
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Want me to send you an invite? I have like 7 left.
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Why is there no public interface?
I'm completely prepared to give up my privacy entirely, but I want EVERYONE ELSE'S in exchange.
There is nobody on earth whose privacy is worth more than the sum total of the data about what everyone else is doing.
And there still are hiding places, if you really need secrecy, as in "distributed database in the form of a blockchain, with homomorphic encryption on all data, connected by a PEER-to-PEER, onion-routed mesh network".
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NSA simply gives the Dutch or British spy agencies access to the full content of American citizen telephone/email/internet data that NSA collects. Those foreign agencies then data-mine 'everything' on Americans... and quickly give it back to the NSA -- but officially labeled by NSA as Dutch/British "Foreign Intelligence" shared with the U.S. government under longstanding allies agreements.
Essentially NSA "launders" its domestic spying output... thru friendly foreign spy agencies. There's no U.S. law enforceable against the Dutch/British spying on Americans.
So NSA gets "deniability" -- "...hey, our Dutch friends are simply sharing their intelligence with us ... what's wrong with that ? "
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But if he were to give that confidential data to a foreign intelligence service, spies employed by a foreign nation, it's not only not espionage, it's just business as usual, part of the job?!?
Has it never occurred to anyone in our government that those foreign nations are sovereign, and free to do whatever they want with that data whether the US government likes it or not? That those nations often are friendly with nations that are our deadly enemies?
This is utter madness!
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European Union and FBI launch global surveillance system
... this was in 1997.
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