Only Five eye countries are close allies to US. France and Germany act more independently and sometimes against US interests. They are watched with suspicion.
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:
>“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?”
The point of the "game" is to induce a chilling effect on private conversations to limit the available discourse about decisions. The French President becomes afraid not to just make a particular decision, but also to even discuss it. It should be obvious that knowledge of spying changes bevahior during diplomatic relations.
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.
> The French President becomes afraid not to just make a particular decision, but also to even discuss it.
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.
Yes, but I don't buy into the premise of French (or any particular government's) policy being primarily influenced or directed by a chilling effect created by NSA spying.
As a public figure a president is very vulnerable unless he has absolutely nothing to hide from the public, IMHO, but he is only vulnerable as soon as he knows he is spied on. Which happened here.
Anyone in that position who doesn't assume they're being spied on at all times, or who would let that realization intimidate them, doesn't deserve the job.
The US president is listening to the current French president conversations, while the current French president is listening to the former French president conversations.
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!
> 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.
Each plays a different game. Only the general public and politicians make a fuss about this. The general public is shocked because they don't know, politicians act shocked because they must. People in Intelligence are a bit more clinical about it because they're not politicians. But even in the Intelligence Community, it's amazing how much gung-ho some former Intelligence Officers display.
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.
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.
> "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?”
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.
> So, indirectly the US put Germany on a the road to become the most powerful country in Europe
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.
> He can rest assured that the USA never saw France as no2 in anything, except maybe gastronomy.
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.
Funny part of the video, is that at one point he was starting to talk about how the chinese raided Areva (major french nuclear company).
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/
Reminds me of a guy who planted loads of spyware in his girlfriend phone. He genuinely said it killed all doubts and made him happy and ensure he could make her happy.
A female friend of mine had such a bf. We figured it would be fun to put a location randomizer on her phone and pretend not to know anything about her daily foreign trips. His spyware certainly didn't give him a whole lot of confidence but he was at the same time loathe to confess he knew where he thought she'd been.
Assuming he was indeed truthful saying that, I doubt that happens in most such cases. I think the type of people who do that also tend to "overreact" over anything their partners would do that isn't 100% in concordance to what they said they'd do, which I think in the end leads with a breakup or a bad relationship/many fights, etc.
So do I understand this correctly - they intercepted the palace's web traffic and were somehow able to read it and inject malicious code? If so, how were they able to bypass ssl?
They used QUANTUM INSERT which is for HTTP not HTTPS. So they just needed to wait until someone accessed HTTP site. Here is more technical description on how QI works:
> Quantum Insert requires the NSA and GCHQ to have fast-acting servers relatively near a target’s machine that are capable of intercepting browser traffic swiftly in order to deliver a malicious web page to the target’s machine before the legitimate web page can arrive.
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.
Barbier ridicules the idea of a “European CIA/NSA.” However, he believes that a joint French-German Intelligence Agency could be established and would be very efficient.
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.
Of course, that's apparently how the game is played. I assumed the French are spying on the Germans and every one else they can install malware on. They just don't have the resources like the NSA.
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.
I love the part "you guys are good". It's like attacking someone with baseball bats on a dark street, break bones, kick face and say "sorry mate, you're good' and leave without consequences.
Also, Barbier confirmed at the same conference that France had hacked Canada's house, which was denied by the French government. So yeah, the US are clearly not the only ones to do that.
Well, the French are going to have their "Snowden Moment" one day. And the NSA will sh*t a collective brick when documents reveal the Michelle O. was a French operative the whole time. D=
Maybe. If I remember correctly, Barbier said that it was less likely, as french intelligence sysadmins (or people with the same access rights as Snowden) have been working for the Defense for ages, whereas Snowden was a young outside contractor from Dell.
What follows from the attitude that "Of course allies spy on each other" is that one would expect a greater effort to create secure systems and enable actual autonomy in decision-making and confidential communications in carrying out state decisions.
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.
NSA is spying ? What a surprise... It's crazy how everybody seems surprised everytime news like that show up. Everybody spy on each other and i'm sure France does the same.
This is scary because the direct implication of this event is a creep of power for intelligence agencies, which is not very good to have in a democratic system (because lack of oversight, accountability, significant means to alter democratic process, etc).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the explicit purpose of intelligence agencies to gather intelligence about foreign countries (allied or otherwise) to further the national interest? I don't really see how this is a creep of power (as opposed to, say, counter-terror activities, where an agency that previously only surveilled foreign powers may now monitor its own citizens).
French intelligence services are using this to ask more money and less restraint right now, that's how funding and manpower comparisons made it in the article. US intel services probably did the same a couple of years back when Obama moaned about chinese spying.
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.
I'm not defending any state spying, but geopolitics is different from individual interactions. Not anticipating the moves of the other nations means risking millions of lives of people from you country. Wars, nuclear wars, economic depression, etc. It's sad but we haven't yet solved many problems to fully become a democratic Earth (e.g. distribution of knowledge, election of politics. which basically are the same problems we see in distributed computing systems).
There is no such thing "national interest." There is only the interest of individuals. Sometimes they align with the majority of people, sometimes they do not.
Why do you assume that this was done not at the direct orders of the executive branch?
The director of the NSA is a general, the NSA is the only intelligence agency that is almost under the direct control of POTUS.
The difference is that we elected the guy doing the overseeing, Barack Obama. In fact we elected him twice. That's democracy. If we don't like what NSA is doing under the President's command, we'll elect a different president, or our elected men and women in Congress can hold the President accountable.
> If we don't like what NSA is doing under the President's command, [...]
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.
Remember when the CIA managed to finally get even Feinstein to make statements critical about surveillance, after it was clear that the CIA was caught spying on the Senate intelligence committee while they prepared the report on torture?
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.
I wonder how the US government would react if european nations were caught doing it to them (especially Considering the childish reaction after some countries decide to not get involved in the 2nd war in Irak).
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.
The US government knows that our European allies spy on us all the time. That's been known since the founding of the nation.
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.
This is exactly what American intelligence shoukd do: gather intelligence from other countries. It's when they spy on their own citizens that I get a little upset.
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?”