NSA spied on 125bn phone calls in one month
Press TV – October 24, 2013
The US National Security Agency monitored nearly 125 billion phone calls from around the world in just one month, including around 3 billion calls from US soil, according to documents released by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden.
The sheer extent of the NSA’s data collection effort was compiled from multiple sources and organized on Wednesday by members of intelligence website Cryptome, which regularly publishes government documents and other information.
The majority of calls monitored by the NSA originated from Afghanistan and Pakistan, where 13.76 billion and 21.98 billion calls were respectively collected during January 2013, according to the Boundless Informant “heat map” revealed by the Guardian.
Billions of phone calls were also recorded from countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Jordan.
Additionally, some 6.28 billion calls from India were collected. An estimated 3 billion US phone communications were also tapped by the NSA.
Perhaps the most controversial element of the NSA spying program is the effort to collect phone data from Western nations that have friendly relations with the US.
Germany, France and several other countries have expressed concerns about US spying after Snowden, former NSA contractor, revealed classified information about US surveillance programs.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, admitted in July that Snowden’s exposés have seriously damaged US ties with other countries. “There has been damage. I don’t think we actually have been able to determine the depth of that damage.”
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EU votes to suspend deal with US over spying scandal
Press TV – October 24, 2013
Members of the European Parliament (EP) have voted to suspend a security agreement with the United States, amid growing concerns over US spying activities against Europe.
“The EU should suspend its Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) agreement with the US in response to the US National Security Agency’s alleged tapping of EU citizens’ bank data held by the Belgian company SWIFT,” read a resolution passed by the EP on Wednesday by 280 votes to 254 and 30 abstentions.
While the resolution is non-binding, the EP stressed that it “will take account of the European Commission’s response to this demand when considering whether to give its consent to future international agreements.”
In 2010, the European Union and the United States agreed on the TFTP, which allowed the US limited access to the global financial database SWIFT as part of an anti-terrorism campaign.
The Wednesday vote came, however, after revelations by former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that the United States was using the access to spy on Europe instead of using it for counterterrorism purposes.
The European lawmakers also called on EU member states to launch an investigation into the reports on the US espionage involving SWIFT.
Revelations of massive spying operations by the United States have triggered condemnations across Europe and Latin America.
In a latest revelation, Snowden said Washington has spied on the phone conversations of German chancellor Angela Merkel. The disclosure prompted the German chancellor to call US President Barack Obama to seek reassurance that her phone calls were no more targeted by US spying.
On October 21, the French newspaper Le Monde disclosed massive surveillance by the US on French citizens and diplomats. The news angered French President Francois Hollande, who expressed “extreme reprobation” for the reported collection by the US of 70 million digital communications between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013.
NSA’s Italy op exposed: ‘Millions’ of private communications intercepted with govt awareness
RT | October 23, 2013
Everyday communications of Italians are also on the watch list of the US National Security Agency, a new report has revealed. While an Italian parliamentary committee seeks clarification of NSA activities, local security sources defend the snooping.
Italy’s spy watchdog COPASIR has recently learned details of large-scale monitoring of Italians by the US intelligence agency NSA, according to a report published by Corriere della Sera.
COPASIR stands for Parliamentary Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services and for State Secret Control, and is tasked with overseeing the activities of Italy’s own spy agencies. The body has free access to intelligence agencies’ offices and documents and has the authority to overcome judicial and banking secrecy.
In order to confirm the snooping on Italians, the committee members had to go to the United States and meet with US intelligence agency directors, as well as with congressional committee chairs.
A delegation of parliamentarians from the COPASIR confirmed their concerns regarding the extent of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program during an official visit to the US three weeks ago, the media said. As part of the program, phone calls and computer communications of “millions of Italians” are reportedly being gathered.
Moreover, Corriere della Sera added that the implications extended to “a monitoring network that started years ago and is still active,” of which the Italian government and spy agencies might have been well aware of.
Such discoveries have prompted uneasy questions to officials, with leading members of COPASIR now seeking clarification from the government, and reportedly awaiting the junior minister for the intelligence services, Marco Minniti, to visit the committee’s offices on Wednesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Italian intelligence sources quoted in the report rushed to justify the surveillance activities of their partners.
The acquisition of the sensitive private information “has as its sole aim the fight against terrorism,” one source was quoted as saying, while another denied that the NSA’s spying ever breached Italy’s sovereignty.
“We have never had any evidence that this kind of monitoring might have involved political spying on Italian public figures. All our investigations into any such eventuality have proved negative,” the source maintained.
However, such explanations did not satisfy COPASIR, nor did the NSA deputy director’s promise of “a complete overview of communications to and from the United States.”
According to the Italian media, the committee member Claudio Fava from Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party, was “openly perplexed” as he commented on such statements.
“It’s a data trawling system based on various sensors. US intelligence experts explained that their main concern was to comply with American data protection laws and intervene to safeguard national security. Whether this conflicts with other countries’ laws is of no concern to them but it should be to us,” Fava was quoted as saying.
Another COPASIR member, Felice Casson of the Democratic Party (PD), said that the replies the committee received from top Italian intelligence officials were “far from reassuring.”
“It is clear that the United States has acquired information on individuals and institutions across Europe. What concrete elements exist to rule out that this has happened to politicians and institutions in Italy?” Casson questioned.
Leading Democratic Party (PD) politician Ettore Rosato also demanded an explanation from the government, saying that “a few months ago, when the first [NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s] revelations emerged, both the prime minister, Enrico Letta, and the foreign minister, Emma Bonino, professed astonishment at what came out.”
So far, the documents obtained by various world media from the former NSA contractor Snowden have revealed that the Italian embassy in Washington was subject to spying along with the diplomatic missions of other countries. Italian intelligence sources have been careful to deny the claims only “off the record,” Corriere della Sera says.
Right before the NSA scandal emerged, the collaboration between Italian and American intelligence services was “at its peak,” and, according to the media, included sharing of communications through the SIGINT interception system. However, such cooperation appeared to have been justified by the ongoing allied wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the search for western hostages there, the media adds.
But in the wake of recent revelations on the US spying activities in France, which triggered a media frenzy and public outrage, the media speculates Italy may find it difficult to maintain the same “stance” towards the NSA programs.
NSA Spy Revelations Show Need to Recast US-Mexico Security Programs
By Laura Carlsen | CIP Americas Program | October 21, 2013
The latest analysis of Snowden leaks from the German magazine Der Spiegel is a bombshell for Mexico.
“The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years,” reads the opening line in the Oct. 20 issue.
The article goes on to detail three major programs that together constitute a massive espionage operation against Mexico. No one seems to have been immune from its intrusions, including two presidents.
The presidential computer network was infiltrated since 2010 when Felipe Calderon was still president. The ever-zealous National Security Agency (NSA) was apparently very proud of itself for hacking the private communications of the leader and cabinet members of an allied nation.
In a “top secret” report, its “Tailored Access Operations” division (TAO) crows:
“TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account”, calling it a “lucrative source” to gauge Mexican “political system and internal stability”. The leaked operation was code named “Flatliquid”.
Mexicans first found out that their nation, along with Brazil and other Latin American countries, was a major target back in September, when Brazil’s O Globo published an article by Glenn Greenwald, Roberto Kaz and Jose Casado on tapping Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s phone and other communications. The article noted that the NSA had Mexico in its sights too.
A specially designed NSA program spied on then-presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto to find out who he was planning to appoint to his cabinet and how he’d handle the volatile drug war—the cornerstone of US policy in Mexico.
That caused a stir and the Peña Nieto administration sent a diplomatic note and demanded a U.S. investigation.
Sunday’s revelations add details to the previous information and show a far vaster and more insidious operation than was first imagined. Text messages from Peña Nieto’s cell phone—85,489 to be exact, according to the Der Speigel-Snowden report– were harvested and organized into data bases, identifying nine close associates for surveillance and analysis.
A third program called “White Tamale” dates back to 2009, when the NSA managed to hack into the emails of high-level officials in the now-defunct Public Security Ministry.
“In the space of a single year, according to the internal documents, this operation produced 260 classified reports that allowed US politicians to conduct successful talks on political issues and to plan international investments.”
The documents note that the spy operation allowed the NSA to gain access to “diplomatic talking points”.
What does this mean? Wouldn’t using ill-begotten private communications in negotiations be something akin to blackmail?
In any case, it seems to have fulfilled its purpose because during the subsequent period U.S. intelligence, military, police and drug enforcement agencies achieved an unprecedented margin to operate in-country, effectively breaking down any remaining resistance to their activities on Mexican soil.
The Der Speigel article states that in spy operations in Mexico, “the drug trade” was given top priority level, while the country’s “political leadership”, “economic stability” and “international investment relations” received number-three priority rankings on a scale of five.
This latter category gives credence to charges from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff that the NSA used its apparatus for industrial spying, seeking advantages. Her charges are borne out by documents that show that Brazilian oil company, PETROBRAS, was a target of U.S. espionage. The Mexico revelations were more general but also indicate economic espionage.
The NSA, as reflected in its own documents, seems to have no sense of boundaries—it qualifies its invasions as unqualified “successes”. Der Spiegel quotes another document that reads,
“These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning — we intend to go much further against this important target.”
It goes on to state that the divisions responsible for this surveillance are “poised for future successes.”
Mexico’s Muted Response
The response from NSA to questions was predictable,
“We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.”
So far, no enterprising journalists have asked the Mexican government if it has 85 thousand text messages off of Obama’s phone.
Since September the Mexican government has known it was massively spied on by the United States. After the revelations regarding Peña Nieto’s communications and contacts with US diplomats, Mexico says President Obama agreed to carry out an investigation.
But what exactly does the Mexican government expect of this investigation? No one has questioned the authenticity of the documents. Everyone knows Snowden has them, otherwise why would the U.S. be trying to force his extradition and threatening countries offering asylum. And it seems that asking the U.S. government to investigate NSA be an exercise in futility, especially since the Der Speigel article states explicitly that the programs had presidential authorization.
Not surprisingly, Mexico’s response was widely considered weak.
So far, the response to this latest round of revelations hasn’t shown much more backbone. The foreign relations ministry called the practice “unacceptable, illegitimate and against the law”—and said it would be sending another diplomatic note.
“In a relationship between neighbors and partners, there is no room for the practices alleged to have taken place,” the ministry said.
When Der Speigel asked for a comment from Felipe Calderon, Harvard University, apparently the spokesperson for the beleaguered ex-president since it took him under its ivied wings as a Global Leaders Fellow at the Kennedy School, said it would give him the message.
A senior U.S. State Department official told CNN that the Mexican government reached out about the report, and that the two governments will be discussing it via diplomatic channels.
Peña Nieto has to react now. Brazil is taking specific steps to protect privacy from the long ear of the NSA. Rousseff has been outspoken in its indignation, taking it to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly and cancelling a state visit to Washington.
Mexico’s economic dependence on the United States under NAFTA puts the Peña administration in a tougher bind. Big business will put pressure on Peña to let it slide. The PRI is likely to be seriously annoyed, but it also knows an important part of its power base rests on its relationship with the U.S. government and economic elite, almost a tautology, as shown again in the fact that taxpayer-supported NSA spying was directed at industrial spying to give U.S. companies an edge in bidding, investing and competing.
Whatever the response, the revelations are a blow to a somewhat shaky relationship. Peña Nieto has made it clear it will not allow the same carte-blanche treatment U.S. agencies were given under former president Calderon, but he has also continued security integration and U.S. expansion under the guise of the war on drugs.
Calling into question the terms of the bi-national security relationship should not necessarily be viewed negatively. Demands for a more transparent and less military-oriented relationship between the U.S. and Mexico have been growing. The NSA documents reveal a global security doctrine that has spun dangerously out of control, with what Greenwald calls “the construction of a worldwide, ubiquitous electronic surveillance apparatus” that apparently has no qualms regarding the right to privacy or national sovereignty. Neither the Mexican nor the U.S. Congress has sufficient knowledge of what’s going on to provide reasonable oversight, and the Mexican government apparently has little knowledge of the realm of shadowy U.S. intelligence activity in its own country.
When you add in the private contractors hired under the $2 billion-dollar Merida aid package, it makes for a vast and murky world of post-Cold War conniving.
That can’t be good for diplomacy, or democracy.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Mexico City-based CIP Americas Program.
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‘Unacceptable and shocking’: France demands explanation for NSA spying
RT |October 21, 2013
France has called for an explanation for the “unacceptable” and “shocking” reports of NSA spying on French citizens. Leaked documents revealed the spy agency records millions of phone calls and monitors politicians and high-profile business people.
The US Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin was summoned by the French Foreign Ministry to account for the espionage allegations on Monday morning.
“I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry],” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told press. He added that “we must quickly assure that these practices aren’t repeated.”
In addition, citing the report on French publication Le Monde, Interior Minister Manuel Valls spoke out on national television against US spy practices.
“The revelations in Le Monde are shocking and demand adequate explanations from the American authorities in the coming hours,” said Valls on television channel Europe 1.
He went on to say that it is totally unacceptable for an allied country to spy on France.
Ambassador Rivkin refrained from commenting on the spy allegations on Monday morning and told Reuters that French-US ties are the “best they have been for a generation.”
Le Monde revealed in a report based on the security leaks of former CIA worker Edward Snowden that the NSA recorded 70.3 million phone calls between December 10, 2012, and January 8, 2013.
The NSA reportedly carries out its espionage in France using a program called ‘US-985D’ which is able to listen in on specific telephone calls and pick up on text messages according to key words used.
Moreover, Le Monde also wrote that it had reason to believe that the spying was not just limited to citizens suspected of being involved in terrorism. According to the data released by Snowden the NSA also eavesdropped on politicians and prominent business figures.
The newspaper did not give any indications as to the identity of the high-profile people.
France is not the only EU nation to be targeted by NSA surveillance. Germany took issue with the US government after it was revealed the NSA was tapping phone lines and recording electronic data in the country.
The EU will take steps to curtail US data mining on Monday in a vote to change data protection rules. The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties is expected to decide on the issue that would authorize fines for violation of EU data protection.
‘Investment benefits’
The US maintains that its spying activities are in the interests of national security and protect against terrorism. However, Snowden leaks released by Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald showed the NSA had monitored Brazilian state-owned oil giant Petrobras and infiltrated the electronic communications of the Brazilian and Mexican presidents.
Mexico has also demanded an explanation for reports released by Der Spiegel on extensive spying on Mexican top officials and politicians.
Der Spiegal revealed that former President Felipe Calderon had also been a target for NSA espionage. Citing a classified internal report, it said the US monitors “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.”
Acting with Impunity: The Case of General Electric
By Lawrence S. Wittner | History News Network | October 14, 2013
Can the world’s biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) — the eighth-largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 — the answer appears to be “yes.”
Let us begin with a small-scale case in upstate New York, where in late September 2013 GE announced that it would close its electrical capacitor plant in the town of Fort Edward. Some two hundred workers will lose their jobs and, thereafter, will have little opportunity to obtain comparable wages, pensions, or even employment in this economically distressed region. Ironically, the plant has been highly profitable. Earlier in the year, the local management threw a party to celebrate a record-breaking quarter. But the high-level financial dealings of a vast multinational operation like GE are mysterious, and the company merely announced that the Fort Edward plant was “non-competitive.” The United Electrical Workers (UE), the union that has represented the workers there for the past seventy years, has already begun a vigorous campaign of resistance to the plant closing, but it is sure to be an uphill battle.
If we dig deeper into the record, a broader pattern of corporate misbehavior emerges. Indeed, the Fort Edward factory is one of two GE plants that polluted the communities at Fort Edward and nearby Hudson Falls, as well as a 197-mile stretch of the Hudson River, with 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs for several decades. Worried about the dangers of PCBs, workers asked managers about them, and were told that these toxins were perfectly safe — in fact, that the workers should rub the PCBs on their heads to combat baldness! When the extent of this environmental disaster began to be revealed in the 1970s, GE began a lengthy campaign to deny it and, later, a multimillion dollar public relations campaign to prevent remedial action by the Environmental Protection Administration. GE lost this battle, for the EPA insisted upon the dredging of the Hudson River and ordered GE to pay for it. Thus, the Hudson Valley became the largest Superfund cleanup site in the United States, with a project that will take decades to complete.
GE has produced other environmental disasters, as well. Three GE nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power site in Japan melted down on March 31, 2011. This was the world’s worst nuclear accident in three decades, and quickly spread radioactive contamination nearly one hundred fifty miles. Indeed, the stricken reactors are still sending three hundred tons a day of radioactive water flooding into the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Helen Caldicott, who has studied nuclear power for decades, has estimated that up to 3.5 million people could eventually die from cancer thanks to the Fukushima radiation release. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when these boiling water nuclear reactors were installed, GE’s engineers and management knew that their design was flawed. But the company kept selling them to unsuspecting utilities around the world, including many in the United States. As a result, there are still thirty-five GE boiling water reactors operating in this country, most of them located near population centers east of the Mississippi River. Currently, in fact, more than 58 million Americans live within fifty miles of a GE nuclear reactor.
Another important product produced by GE is the export of jobs. According to an extensive New York Times report on GE in March 2011: “Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment.” By the end of 2010, another study found, 54 percent of GE’s 287,000 employees worked abroad. Not surprisingly, the company’s overseas operations in that year provided most of its total revenue. Responding to GE’s claim that it had created thousands of new jobs in the United States during the Obama administration, Chris Townsend, the political action director of the UE, produced a list of 40 U.S. plants the company closed in the country during the same period.
Townsend also noted that, even when GE kept its operations going in the United States, it slashed wages, sometimes by as much as 45 percent at a time. For example, the work of the Fort Edward plant will be moved to Clearwater, Florida, a non-union site where GE pays many workers $12 an hour and hires others through a temp agency at $8 an hour — little more than the minimum wage.
Although technically a U.S. corporation, GE — with operations in 130 nations — apparently feels little loyalty to the United States. Jack Welch, a former GE CEO, once remarked: “Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy.” According to a Bloomberg analysis, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, GE keeps more of its profits overseas than any other U.S. company — $108 billion by the end of 2012. Most of these profits, GE declared, would be invested in its foreign business enterprises. Thanks to this tax dodge and others, GE reportedly paid an average annual U.S. corporate income tax rate of only 1.8 percent between 2002 and 2011. In 2010, when GE reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, it paid no U.S. corporate income tax at all. Instead, it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. This is a sweet deal for that giant corporation, for the official corporate tax rate is 35 percent.
Despite this appalling record, the U.S. government has been very generous to GE. During the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the federal government’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program loaned approximately $85 billion to GE Capital, the company’s huge finance arm that accounts for roughly half of GE’s profits. GE needed the bailout because, among other reasons, GE Capital was marketing subprime mortgages, making GE the tenth-largest subprime lender in the United States. The Federal Reserve also bought $16.1 billion worth of short-term corporate i.o.u.’s from GE in late 2008, when the public market for this kind of debt had nearly frozen, and GE became one of the largest beneficiaries of this federal program. In yet a further indication of GE’s influence, President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s CEO, as chair of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which strategizes about how to revive America’s manufacturing base. One of Immelt’s favorite panaceas is to end taxes on the overseas profits of corporations.
Thus, it might seem that those two hundred embattled workers at Fort Edward have no possibility at all of effectively challenging a corporation this wealthy and influential. But stranger things have happened in the United States — especially when Americans have had their fill of corporate arrogance.
Kicking the can: Budget deal will not solve Washington’s problems
RT | October 18, 2013
Despite a deal to lift the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown, the United States is far from a respite, as it won’t address the underlying, internal issues that have usurped its power in the world, economics professor Rodney Shakespeare told RT.
RT: The default is averted. That’s good news, isn’t it?
Rodney Shakespeare: Nothing has been averted. Instead, there’s going to be some sort of meeting between the Democrats and the Republicans, who are two sides of the same coin. And there are three subjects, which they’ll refuse to discuss. The first is the out of control military budget, which ought to be cut to one tenth of what it is at the moment to bring it in line with comparable nations. The second thing is that the system works by exporting jobs. They’ve exported the jobs to about 56,000 enterprises over the last 11 years. That’s five million jobs – and each job creates another three. That’s roughly 15 million jobs which aren’t coming back. And the third thing, which they aren’t going to discuss at this ‘wonderful’ meeting between the Democrats and the Republicans – they will not discuss the core of the issue, which is a corrupt banking system, whose center is the Federal Reserve. Instead, what they’ll do is they’ll blame everything on the poor. So, you see, nothing has been put off. Nothing has been solved. Nothing has been addressed. The situation goes on and ultimately it’s going to result in the final collapse of the dollar. But that may be a year or two off at the moment.
RT: It’s only a temporary fix for the US debt ceiling. But what happens when America is on the verge of running out of cash again?
RS: The same thing is going to happen as is happening at this moment, except that another two or three months will have passed, in which they’ve failed to address the underlying issues and their vanity and the essence of the corruption of the system will not have been addressed. So, you’re going to find at some point that they’ll then…the world will wake up to the overall level of the American debt, which is now just at the point when it becomes unrepairable. And when that happens, you’ll get a sudden, irrevocable slide in the dollar. So, they’ll kick the can down the road for a bit.
RT: It may also be difficult for the rest of the world to understand why there had to be so much last-minute drama in Washington, DC before they reached an agreement. A domestic squabble that held the rest of the world to economic ransom – can the global community afford to risk that again?
RS: The world community should continue doing what it’s quietly doing at the moment: starting to organize it in ways which are separate [from] and outside the West. They should do it in their banking agreements. I’m pleased to say that the BRICs are creating on optic fiber cable, so that the banking can be done away from the West. They should do it by creating different national and central banks, which put out interest-free money. They should make agreements among themselves, particularly among the non-allied nations. This should be political agreements and financial agreements. They must accept that the West now…its economic powers have declined; its political powers have declined. And as of America’s moral authority? Forget it! They are putting out a poisonous depleted uranium. They’re attacking. They’re assassinating. They have no moral authority whatsoever. Everybody else should get on with organizing themselves away from the pariah states, which are now the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, with their poodles, which are the UK and France. I say to the rest of the world: Get on with it. Organize yourselves and give up this corrupt, out-of-date system, which no longer is providing adequate leadership.
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NSA practices cannot be excused as ‘fighting terrorism’
RT | October 16, 2013
The NSA has attacked key European institutions such as the EU parliament and banking system, using malware to find out all there is to know about other countries in a power game, Andy Mueller-Moguhn, founder of Buggedplannet.info, tells RT.
He says that in a world where so many communications go over the web we all have something to protect rather than something to hide, as proponents of mass surveillance often argue.
RT: No matter what precautions companies take or measures to protect the privacy of subscribers isn’t the agency [NSA] capable of bypassing all these routes?
Andy Mueller-Moguhn: I would say it like this; unfortunately in Germany we have a situation that the trustworthiness or our foreign and interior intelligence service watching their high level of cooperation with the NSA and GCHQ does not make them trustworthy at all. If they can intercept the stuff, they might hand it over in a bargain to the Americans, which is not helpful.
So this means that what is to be done, is to ensure on whatever level in whatever country that encryption for the end user is becoming available like easy to use and as a standard tool, because you send your postal letters in an envelope so should you do with your emails.
RT: Let’s look at the situation from both sides. On the one hand we have the privacy of citizens that has of course to be respected, but on the other hand there are some companies who are fighting hard to protect their privacy. Doesn’t that give us a cause for concern, that they have something to hide, some skeletons in the closet as they say?
AMM: The point is that we have seen that installations of the United States National Security Agency, attacking also carriers in Europe, as we’ve seen with things that have nothing to do with terrorism or with fighting terrorism. They have a lot to do with power games or with knowing everything about other countries, about business, about embassies, about other country’s governments as we also see with the Brazilian presidential interception.
So obviously the thing that you have nothing to hide is totally wrong in the case that everybody has something to protect and in the days where everything, cultural, economic, political, things go over the internet and advance knowledge of a political decision, which can have for example an impact on stock rates, on currencies, on country’s reputations and so on. This is worth a lot of money and we have not really come to the bottom, we have seen a big part of this NSA approach, we have seen a lot of money, a lot of effort internationally to intercept all communications, but we have not yet come to the question, who is the customer, in the sense who are the guys ordering this, getting the product and using that.
That it is still a very interesting question where we come to monetary, political and other influences being taken with blackmailing, with greymailing, with advanced knowledge about what other people think, act and do.
RT: You mentioned an interesting point here saying that it’s not the point whether we have something to hide, but it’s what we have to protect. In that case what’s your take on the role of America as a global policeman? Does it have any moral authority to conduct global surveillance?
AMM: The point is that we have seen attacks, not passive interception but buggedplannet.info was subject to an attack in the sense that there was malware installed in the system, there were exploits used, the NSA literally took control over the network. This cannot be excused with fighting terrorism at all. This obviously was targeting the European parliament, it was targeting the European airspace control, it was targeting the SWIFT network or the banking network, so obviously there is no moral excuse here in terms of this being to do with fighting terrorism or ensuring security. This is about the global interest of the United States against other European and other peaceful acting countries and democratic organized entities.
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Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
