
British spies 'moved after Snowden files read' - k-mcgrady
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068
======
peteretep

        > we are told authoritatively by people in Downing Street,
        > in the Home Office, in the intelligence services
    

It seems disingenuous to use the word "authoritatively" when talking about
people with a huge stake in the game, who will at no point be willing to (or
needing to) verify their claim.

~~~
NN88
Yet you seem to think that Russia and China would never try to do just
this...huh?

The world isn't just this peaceful and happy place where only the USA is the
big bad wolf.

~~~
peteretep
Quite the opposite - I'm sure they are. I also have a huge amount of respect
for and trust in my (UK) government and that they keep my best interests at
heart.

The word "authoritatively" just seems obviously wrong.

~~~
venomsnake
> I also have a huge amount of respect for and trust in my (UK) government and
> that they keep my best interests at heart.

Austerity politics, London real estate boom, UK knife laws

------
deepnet
The level of access Snowden accrued may be symptomatic of structural access
failure.

Chelsea Manning, too, got away with a considerable amount of material.

Surely other state actors would have moles at these levels - so they probably
got all this stuff as well.

Security by obscurity may be a bad rule to follow at the state level - in the
future we may need to know we are safe and not trust spies or wonks with our
safety.

Cryptography needs to be provably secure. Perhaps safety should be? Which
raises the question can National Security be performed transparently ?

Was the hack of GMail by China attributed to a NSA backdoor ?

The real problem may be general to any government department that lacks
oversight - total and utter incompetence.

No-one has publicly hacked Greenwald - the secret services have been caught
with their pants down at least twice.

The BBC reports Russia and China have cracked encryption implemented by
Snowden. From what I read about Snowden it seems he would have used the best
publicly available crypto and so that is quite a considerable claim.

Conclusion : leaks are more likely to come from the leaky sieve.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460)

I cite Adam Curtis :

"Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their job and
don't know very much about the world"

These super secret departments get more funding and power when there is more
terror not less.

The career incentives of the intelligence classes may not align particularly
well with actual national security.

------
scotchmi_st
I can see 3 possible scenarios here.

1\. Russia/China have got hold of the files, and know how to decrypt PGP (Very
unlikely).

2\. A journalist with access to the files and the encryption keys has left
them lying around, or was cooerced into decrypting them. (Unlikely but
possible).

3\. Intelligence services are lying, possibly for political gain ahead of new
legislation (specifically in the UK), and/or have fallen for a bluff by China
and Russia. (Most likely).

~~~
UVB-76
More likely is that the Snowden documents have been widely distributed in
encrypted form (as one of the Wikileaks insurance releases) and Russia/China
have managed to brute force the key.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
This is least likely.

~~~
ryan-c
Snowden's passphrase[0] advice is pretty bad - perhaps they came up with a
list of phrases based on what they know of him and successfully cracked it.

> “The best advice here is to shift your thinking from passWORDs to
> passPHRASES,” Snowden recommended. “Think about a _common phrase_ that works
> for you. It’s too long to brute force and also make them unlikely to be in
> the dictionary.”

(emphasis mine)

0\. [http://rt.com/usa/248401-snowden-oliver-password-
protection-...](http://rt.com/usa/248401-snowden-oliver-password-protection-
advice/)

~~~
programmernews3
I expect Snowden actually advocates people use something like diceware
passphrases and the journalist misunderstood.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diceware)

~~~
ryan-c
That sure isn't what he said to John Oliver.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGzB-
yYKcc#t=1m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGzB-yYKcc#t=1m30s)

He mentioned "margrattethatcheris110%SEXY" \- I would be totally unsuprised if
someone managed to crack that.

Diceware is a great choice.

------
DennisP
I'm wondering whether there's any way for journalists to verify this, and if
not, why we should trust statements by the U.S. or U.K. governments on this
topic, given their repeated falsehoods in the past.

~~~
thedatabase
Hmm. The UK has a Freedom of Information request process, much like the US (ie
just as neutered). The request would be, essentially: "prove it". The hard
part would be putting it in a form likely/able to be answered.

~~~
M2Ys4U
It won't be answered.

Section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000:[0]

"Information held by a public authority is exempt information if it was
directly or indirectly supplied to the public authority by, or relates to
[...] the Government Communications Headquarters"

[0]:
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/23](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/23)

------
cyphunk
Ironically I thought the title meant "moved" as in "moved to tears".

Anyway, you know how when one person shits in the pool everyone has to get
out? GCHQ, NSA, you're that person and this is your moment.

------
alextgordon
Are relations between Russia and China so cozy that they'd share intelligence
of this magnitude?

Alternatively, is it believable that they both miraculously broke the
encryption at exactly the time?

------
strathmeyer
I assume this is to coverup the government's other mistakes.
([http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/the-
hack...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/the-hacking-of-
federal-data-is-much-worse-than-first-thought/395807/))

------
username
These are _anonymous_ government sources. Can we really expect them to tell
the truth? It seems more likely that these officials are exploiting the
general public's lack of knowledge on this issue to turn them against Snowden
and the journalists.

~~~
revelation
It's getting really silly with these _government sources speaking under the
condition of anonymity_. You would think journalists would have read, under
the assumption that they lack the minimal intellect to see through the
charade, some of the Snowden documents that clearly speak of using _anonymous
sources_ for more or less sophisticated psyop.

------
Sideloader
It is disconcerting how blatantly parroting the official government line
without question has become SOP at "respectable" western media organizations.
They are increasingly becoming propaganda outlets for the state. See also any
article about Russia, NATO and the Ukraine.

------
aburan28
These 'sources' also forgot to mention that he took 900,000 documents not 1.7
million per the official DIA analysis [http://cryptome.org/2015/06/dia-
snowden-vice-15-0604.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2015/06/dia-snowden-
vice-15-0604.pdf)

------
richmarr
If the US & UK governments really didn't want these documents ending up in
Russian hands, maybe they shouldn't have, ummm, chased him to... y'know...
Russia.

------
miscellaneous
Is it common practice for a newspaper to essentially reprint an article from
another publication, without seeking a response from the (accused) parties?

I would expect at the very least for the BBC to seek a response from
Snowden/Greenwald/theGuardian/etc before publishing this article with
subheadings like: >'Hostile Countries' >'Huge Setback'

~~~
pcrh
In the UK there is little pretense that any journalistic publication is truly
objective, so the tradition is for opposing parties to use different channels
in the media.

------
mladenkovacevic
Dealing with the Snowden leaks has been priority #1 for these intelligence
agencies. If they are desperate enough to use this kind of blatant propaganda,
it frightens me to think about what their next move will be. Look for some
very draconian laws to be rammed through as they try to keep the powers
they've been enjoying without any challenges or oversights. And if that
doesn't work: war.

------
alexandercrohde
It sounds to me like the implication here is --Snowden disrupted our
intelligence agencies by preventing us from crucial information, therefore he
harmed our government--. The assumption being that America and it's allies are
entitled to all the information we are stealing through spying. When a non-
American ally spies on America it's a crime, but when America spies, stopping
it is a crime?

It's worth considering the idea that technological spying by procuring
vulnerabilities without reporting perpetuates a technological arms race and
concentrates power in the executive with no balance among other branches.

~~~
IBM
I'm sorry but what in this article suggests that US/UK intelligence agencies
spying is hypocritical in any way? Sovereign states have spied on each other
for hundreds of years, long before the age of computers. When they're captured
they are imprisoned or executed. There isn't anything hypocritical at all
about conducting counter-intelligence while also trying to spy on others.

------
bwilli123
.."the Russians and the Chinese have all this information and as a result of
that our spies are having to pull people out of the field because their lives
are in danger." If the Russians and Chinese didn't previously know their
identities (allegedly via Snowden) by subsequently extracting thespies we are
confirming who they were and thus the ability to identify their former
networks. Dammned if you, damned if you don't.

------
adamnemecek
Who's ballsy enough to message /u/SuddenlySnowden
([https://www.reddit.com/user/SuddenlySnowden](https://www.reddit.com/user/SuddenlySnowden)).

------
aestetix
Link to the original article that BBC gleaned from:

[https://archive.is/BkuMM](https://archive.is/BkuMM)

------
NN88
This is why he should have stuck to the domestic stuff...but nooooo

~~~
Sideloader
You are assuming Snowden is responsible...because the government says so? That
massive security breach, of course, couldn't possibly have anything to do with
this, and it absolutely isn't a case of using Snowden as the scapegoat for
government incompetence. Our governments are completely trustworthy and would
never lie to "their" citizens.

------
NN88
Annnnd Treason.

------
comrade1
Were the snowden files encrypted? If so, maybe an attack vector was the
journalists.

Or maybe we're confusing the wiki leaks insurance file with the snowden files?

------
pasta_2
It was always a crock of shit to equate Snowden to the Pentagon Papers or the
Watergate scandal, and this is why.

~~~
ceejayoz
Snowden having that level of access and the ability to siphon off so many
documents undetected virtually guarantees that Russian/Chinese moles have been
doing the same (without going to the press about it, naturally) for quite some
time. The idea that they don't already have the data is a crock of shit.

