
NSA Hacked French President’s House - peterkelly
https://gosint.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/nsa-hacked-french-presidents-house/
======
nabla9
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/](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...](http://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squarcini-
dcri-hollande-ayrault-merkel-usa-obama)

>“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?”

~~~
trendia
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.

~~~
krapp
> 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.

~~~
trendia
The NSA is spying for a reason, and it's not just because they enjoy the
challenge. Rather, they want to effect change.

How can spying effect change?

1\. Providing knowledge to the US to improve our decision making

2\. Providing intelligence to the US to change French decision making

3\. Using (1) and (2) effectively so that 100% spying is not even necessary.
That is, France chooses the path that would result from spying anyway

~~~
neves
4\. To give American companies unfair advantages in the workspace.

------
bsaul
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/

------
jacquesm
With friends like that who needs enemies? Really, the whole concept of an
'ally' has gone out the window.

~~~
ceejayoz
The best ally is one you know for certain isn't plotting against you in
secret.

~~~
retox
"Trust, but verify"

~~~
agumonkey
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
agumonkey
smart, mean and beautiful.

------
martinko
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?

~~~
comboy
I don't think that creating a fake cert is a problem for the NSA.

~~~
rvschuilenburg
I think it's fair to assume the US Government has control over a root CA.

------
ourmandave
_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.

~~~
Gmo
Because you don't think it's also true the other way around ?

~~~
ourmandave
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.

~~~
Gmo
Sure, but you were talking about Germany previously.

------
akerro
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.

------
plopilop
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.

~~~
ourmandave
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=

~~~
plopilop
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.

------
Zigurd
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.

------
pilooch
The video was removed! Anyone with a copy ?

------
GOSINT
Does anyone know when the video of Barbier was removed from YouTube? Thanks

------
erazor42
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.

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giosch
This is quite scary. I know, it's not something new, but still...

~~~
ceejayoz
Why is this scary? This is what everyone's always assumed the NSA was doing.
It's their explicit job - to monitor the rest of the world.

~~~
pyrale
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).

~~~
chowell
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).

~~~
peterkelly
It's a bit like saying that the explicit purpose of hitmen is to murder people
for money.

Doesn't make it right.

~~~
watwatwatwat
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).

------
GirlsCanCode
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.

~~~
Bakary
You can't have your cake and eat it too. i.e. You can't have a security
Leviathan and expect it to ignore inner threats

------
SixSigma
don't worry, if Hillary becomes president and the French read her emails
again, she will send in the ground troops

