Intel Officials Says French And Spain Intelligence Agencies Did All The Dirty Work In Gathering Data On Millions Of Calls

from the so-many-twists,-from-so-many-twisted-entities dept

All that noise being made by French and Spanish officials over the NSA's collection of millions of phone records is turning out to be just that: noise. The Wall Street Journal reports that, while the NSA did end up with millions of foreign phone records, it didn't do the actual collection.

U.S. officials said the Snowden-provided documents had been misinterpreted and actually show phone records that were collected by French and Spanish intelligence agencies, and then shared with the NSA, according to officials briefed on those discussions.

U.S. intelligence officials studied the document published by Le Monde and have determined that it wasn't assembled by the NSA. Rather, the document appears to be a slide that was assembled based on NSA data received from French intelligence, a U.S. official said.

Rather than being a domestic collection, like the Section 215 program, the records gathered by Spanish and French intelligence agencies apparently only touched calls originating outside of these two nations.

Based on an analysis of the document, the U.S. concluded that the phone records the French had collected were actually from outside of France, and then were shared with the U.S. The data don't show that the French spied on their own people inside France.

U.S. intelligence officials haven't seen the documents cited by El Mundo but the data appear to come from similar information the NSA obtained from Spanish intelligence agencies documenting their collection efforts abroad, officials said.

While this all seems very above-board, both for the NSA and the foreign intelligence agencies, there's still a good chance that this isn't the entire picture. The NSA is still very leery of exposing methods and sources and, despite trying to defuse the current outrage, it will probably still hold some cards close to its chest. Officials are even admitting this sudden burst of clarity still leaves things uncovered.

U.S. officials said the European collection programs were part of long-standing intelligence sharing arrangements between the U.S. and its closest allies. Officials said the figures may not reflect the entirety of the phone records collected by France and Spain.

So, while European officials may be playing this off as a horrible intrusion, the latest statements seem to indicate it isn't. There may still be a layer of intrusion as of yet uncovered and both countries are still presumably doing their own domestic spying. If so, there are undoubtedly more outrages to come, only in this case, the public, rather than officials, will be making the most noise. The NSA's many cozy relationships around the world are now backfiring, even when it's not directly to blame. Making friends with foreign intelligence agencies while alienating foreign officials is a hell of a way to fight terrorism.

Filed Under: allies, europe, france, nsa, nsa surveillance, spain

India Wants To Ban US-Based Email Systems For Government Communications Over NSA Concerns

from the pissing-off-our-allies dept

Back in June and July, during much more innocent times, Glyn Moody and Tim Cushing doubled up on stories about the intrusive surveillance system India had set up and commented on how the NSA must have been drooling over having that kind of capability. Now, those stories probably seem sweetly ignorant, since we know much more about what the NSA is both capable of doing and how little restraint they suffer, but the point is that India is not made up of saints when it comes to respecting the privacy of their citizens.

But, having said that, India is an incredibly important friend and ally of the United States. They're an important trading partner and a nation with aligned goals when it comes to fighting terrorism. So it may be a sign of trouble that India distrusts the American government enough to force government officials to pull their email from American-based email providers.

The move is intended to increase the security of confidential government data and information after it was revealed earlier that NSA may be involved in widespread spying and surveillance activities across the globe.

In a statement to reporters here J. Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology, said that data of Indian citizens using US based email services like Gmail is residing on servers which are located outside India and for now the government is concerned about the large amount of official and critical data that may be resident on those servers.

That's the problem with unfettered hubris from a global power like the United States: you're going to start losing friends. It's one thing to spy on unfriendly nations. That might still have its problems, but you're going to have an easy sell to your citizens on the question and it doesn't matter all that much if you're found out because, hey, the spied-upon already hate you. But when you begin turning your spy-sights on your allies, particularly allies as important as the Indian government, you just have to wonder whether more harm than good will come of all this. Yes, there's a cynical response that this also helps those in power in India better use their own surveillance capabilities to spy on everyone within the government, but that doesn't diminish the potential harm between US and India.

In an increasingly connected globe, the postures of our allies are every bit as important as those of our enemies. The American government pissed off a friend in India, Hopefully that won't come back to bite us.

Filed Under: allies, email, india, nsa surveillance, surveillance

Latest Leak Showing US Spying On EU Embassies Not That Surprising

from the is-this-a-surprise dept

Over the weekend there were a few more "Snowden" leaks released, starting off with evidence that the US intelligence community (possibly involving the NSA, CIA and FBI) had been bugging a whole bunch of EU officials, including in their US embassies, but also in Europe as well. There is the reasonable and expected outrage from EU officials who really don't like the idea that their own allies are spying on all their calls, emails, faxes, etc. I can see how this may be quite awkward from a diplomatic standpoint, but of the various leaks to date, this one seems the least interesting. This kind of thing is exactly what intelligence agencies do. They spy on each other's government officials. Bugging embassies is a tradition that goes back quite a few decades. I'd actually be more surprised if we found out that the US wasn't bugging those communications.

Of course, that doesn't make things comfortable for the US, who will now certainly have to explain itself to a large number of allies.

The eavesdropping on the EU delegation to the US, on K Street in Washington, involved three different operations targeted on the embassy's 90 staff. Two were electronic implants and one involved the use of antennas to collect transmissions.

[....] The operation against the French mission to the UN had the covername "Blackfoot" and the one against its embassy in Washington was "Wabash". The Italian embassy in Washington was known to the NSA as both "Bruneau" and "Hemlock".

The eavesdropping of the Greek UN mission was known as "Powell" and the operation against its embassy was referred to as "Klondyke".

This kind of stuff just confirms more typical intelligence agency activities. The original leaks about surveillance specifically on the public remains a much bigger concern, though I do wonder if revealing spying on allies may lead to some chillier reactions to various agreements like the upcoming TAFTA negotiations.

Filed Under: allies, cia, diplomatic problems, ed snowden, espionage, eu embassies, leaks, nsa, nsa surveillance, surveillance