

U.S. government spied on Brazil's Petrobras oil firm - stfu
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idUSBRE9870AD20130908

======
dictum
DNI James Clapper has issued an official statement:
[http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/60712026846/statement-b...](http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/60712026846/statement-
by-director-of-national-intelligence) or
[http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/191-pre...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/191-press-releases-2013/926-statement-by-director-of-national-
intelligence-james-r-clapper-on-allegations-of-economic-espionage)

He manages to twist it into a matter of defense against terrorism:

> Our collection of information regarding terrorist financing saves lives.
> Since 9/11, the Intelligence Community has found success in disrupting
> terror networks by following their money as it moves around the globe.
> International criminal organizations, proliferators of weapons of mass
> destruction, illicit arms dealers, or nations that attempt to avoid
> international sanctions can also be targeted in an effort to aid America’s
> and our allies’ interests.

> As we have said previously, the United States collects foreign intelligence
> - just as many other governments do - to enhance the security of our
> citizens and protect our interests and those of our allies around the world.
> The intelligence Community’s efforts to understand economic systems and
> policies and monitor anomalous economic activities is critical to providing
> policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that
> are in the best interest of our national security.

~~~
devx
It boggles my mind that this guy thinks he has more than 0 percent credibility
at this point. How is he not in prison, or at least fired yet?

~~~
frank_boyd
And that question is valid for a lot of people in the administration and
Congress.

------
zorked
I just watched the TV report. It's interesting. The slides mention as targets:
Petrobrás, French diplomacy, SWIFT and Google. Everything pointed towards MITM
attacks against VPNs and SSL. There was no reference to what data was stolen.

The NSA actually called the program and said that none of their spying was
used to give unfair advantages to American companies but they wouldn't comment
further.

There were slides showing that they perform MITM against Google, as well as a
slide that listed diplomatic and economic espionage as NSA goals.

~~~
kefs
Here's the report, in English, that aired on Globo tonight. It details most
everything you've mentioned.

[http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-
documents...](http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-
show-united-states-spied-brazilian-oil-giant.html)

~~~
rst
Also of note there: claims that NSA does routine MITM attacks on SSL/TLS. The
relevant programs are "Hush Puppy" and "Flying Pig", mentioned around the
middle of the article; the description is a little garbled (I suspect
translation artifacts), but the basics are clear enough.

------
Vivtek
I like how Reuters shies away from acknowledging Greenwald is a _journalist_.
Apparently reporting on the US government makes you an _activist_ these days.

~~~
redcap
They go on to call him "a blogger and civil liberties activist who lives in
Rio de Janeiro".

In comparison, Wikipedia lists him as an "American political commentator,
lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I smell an edit war. I wonder how many times it has been changed.

edit: I checked, looks like none, someone go change it and let's watch the
fireworks.

------
guelo
Now imagine every IT purchase decision in Brazil from now on, "We need a few
million dollars of network or computer systems, should we buy it from Cisco or
HP or IBM or Microsoft? Hell no! It'll probably have an NSA bug in it."

Repeat for every other country and you have the beginning of the end for the
dominance of the American computer industry.

~~~
pekk
Except that isn't happening in Brazil, let alone every other country. Instead
we will have more hot air and stoking of jingoism from politicians. At the end
of the day everyone including the US is always buying huge piles of
electronics from China, which is also big and scary - and yet their industry
does not magically go belly up. Usually meeting requirements at a decent price
is a higher priority than whatever elicits extreme angst from Hacker News.

~~~
outworlder
Except that, while China is "big and scary", it's not proven to have launched
a spy campaign on the same scale.

Sure, they have tried to hack the US on multiple occasions, but that's
geopolitics, and very different from selling bugged devices.

~~~
pekk
China has been documented engaging in state-sponsored industrial espionage on
a number of occasions. To write off everything they do as "geopolitics" and
not to do the same with the US is a non sequitur.

------
Sagat
It amazes me that many people still think the US are somehow the "good guys"
or "the leader of the free world". Americans believe themselves to be the
chosen few favored by God. Their manifest destiny leaves no place for the
rights of other peoples. With such an ideology, it is not surprising that they
hold foreigners in contempt and show a severe lack of interest for the fates
of others.

Americans are far more dangerous than any bearded fanatic.

~~~
67726e
s/Americans/US Government/

Don't toss us all in the same group.

~~~
Sagat
The government is put into place by the Americans. They elect their own
masters. Most of what the U.S. government does is the result of the demands
and constant pressure stemming from the electorate. The aggressive foreign
policy is a direct consequence of the semi-religious jingoism and
fundamentalism that affects the majority of citizens.

I'm met both online and offline a ton of Americans with aggrandizing and
myopic views. Like you I used to think they were victims of the state that
time is past. They share the blame.

------
Aloisius
Spy agency spies. News at 11.

It is in the NSA's mandate to engage in any espionage that will give the US an
advantage. I just don't understand how us spying on a state-controlled
Brazilian company is somehow a revelation. It would shock me if we didn't spy
on _every_ major foreign company in the world.

~~~
nitrogen
Obviously complaints about spying are questioning whether the agency's purpose
itself is just. Fulfilling one's purpose is still unethical if that purpose is
unethical. Nobody excuses murder when the story is "Murderer commits murder.
News at 11."

~~~
Aloisius
The agency's purpose is espionage. Espionage, last I checked, was illegal
everywhere. Yet every country has spies. Being just or unethical doesn't
factor into it.

We know spying is unfair, but it is also something people have been doing
since the dawn of civilization in order to get a leg up on the competition.

~~~
CamperBob2
Technically, the 'S' stands for 'Security,' not 'Spying.'

~~~
mpyne
You don't really think that an entire agency's remit can be _specifically_
summed up within three _generic_ words, do you?

Hell, the Navy used to run their personnel management out of the "Bureau of
Navigation".

------
GauntletWizard
This isn't news. If anything, it's news that the NSA is doing something right:
Looking into the large, nearly-state-run enterprises of not-so-friendly
foreign powers.

~~~
betterunix
That's funny, here I was thinking that the NSA's surveillance resources were
supposed to be used to gather intelligence on foreign threats. Where do you
see a threat from Brazil's oil enterprise?

Oh, wait, I forgot that the NSA's resources are, in practice, also used to
conduct industrial espionage:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy)

~~~
anigbrowl
_here I was thinking that the NSA 's surveillance resources were supposed to
be used to gather intelligence on foreign threats_

I'm noticing a pattern of you being outraged about discovering your own
misconceptions to be ill-founded. The NSA just gathers foreign intelligence.
Military and terroristic threats are the most important source of foreign
intelligence, but we have a vested interest in knowing What's Going On. As
does everyone else, of course - it's a two way street.

~~~
betterunix
You missed the sarcasm ;)

I know full well that the NSA does more than gather intelligence on foreign
threats. The link in my post is about the allegations of industrial espionage
that surfaced in the 90s.

This is not just about the US wanting to know what's going on. This is about
the US engaging in the sort of behavior that we have rebuked China over --
state-sponsored industrial espionage. It is an abuse of power, regardless of
what "everyone else" is doing.

As for my own misconceptions, I assume you are referring to the notion that I
and many others had that the NSA would not go as far as to actively sabotage
civilian cryptography. I was not alone in believing that. It was common to
dismiss such allegations as far-out conspiracy theories until the day the
story broke. You can look at the archives of sci.crypt and the cryptography
mailing list if you do not believe me. As I said before, _nobody_ expected the
NSA to share its cryptanalysis techniques. Nobody expected the NSA to alert us
to weaknesses in publicly designed ciphers or cryptosystems. It was widely
assumed that the NSA would watch us fumble about and try to find exploitable
weaknesses in our systems, not that they would be part of a vast conspiracy to
introduce such weaknesses. Plenty of people thought that the NSA was trying to
balance its signals intelligence mission with its duty to protect our own
communication from foreign interception. There is nothing wrong with being
outraged to discover that there is no real attempt to strike such a balance
and that the crypto wars are not over by any stretch.

~~~
mpyne
> This is not just about the US wanting to know what's going on. This is about
> the US engaging in the sort of behavior that we have rebuked China over --
> state-sponsored industrial espionage.

If the NSA were only focused on industrial espionage with these programs then
I don't see why they felt the need to target Google (a U.S. corporation in the
first place).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but oil is certainly a strategic resource
and even if the U.S. never had a single plan to _do_ anything with Brazil's
oil, there are both military and national-interest reasons for knowing what
Brazil knows about their own oil reserves, refinery capabilities, etc.

Likewise there are embargo-related reasons to know if Brazil has secret
agreements to export oil to nations embargoed by the UN.

And the worst part about it all is that whether NSA is around or not, the U.S.
does _live_ in a cloak-and-dagger world, just like every other nation does.
They can either somehow convince other nations to go about things "fairly" as
well (possible with the EU and Brazil perhaps, not so much with Russia and
China), or they can immerse themselves in that game as well.

Certainly the U.S. is familiar with the problems of industrial espionage and
secret economic agreements (some would say "bribes"), as both have been
deployed against the U.S. (yes, even by friends, even by allies).

~~~
jeltz
> If the NSA were only focused on industrial espionage with these programs
> then I don't see why they felt the need to target Google (a U.S. corporation
> in the first place).

Many foreign companies use Google.

------
dtf
_“The Department of Defense does engage” in computer network exploitation,
according to an e-mailed statement from an NSA spokesman, whose agency is part
of the Defense Department. “The department does NOT engage in economic
espionage in any domain, including cyber.”_

[http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-30/world/41620705...](http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-30/world/41620705_1_computer-
worm-former-u-s-officials-obama-administration)

~~~
joe_the_user
We take your stuff and won't tell you how, when or why. But don't worry, we
wouldn't do that with it.

------
Mordor
Well, at least we can all understand the "war on terror". It was really about
securing US dominance via a secret system of courts, government agencies and
secret deals between US corporations.

All this due to the ending of the cold war.

Now, with the Arab Spring, the US has sought to twist events into a new war.
Syria being just the beginning...

------
coldcode
I'm sure they spy on just about everything. Someday the US will pay just about
everything. Even mighty Rome got sacked in the end.

~~~
beedogs
It's pretty clear at this point that the only thing propping the hollow US
economy up is this massive spying apparatus. You can only front-run the market
for so long, though, before the whole thing comes crashing down in a heap.

------
frank_boyd
NSA doing industrial espionage now.

How can the international community accept that?

Also:

> Obama said he would investigate the allegations.

How can he still have the guts to play the surprised and innocent one?

~~~
pekk
How did the international community accept it when it was done by other
countries?

------
lifeisstillgood
But ... They have spied on _everyone_. Every politician, every mistresses,
every CXO looking to move, every VC talking to a new equity partner. Everyone.

This is not one scandal - this is the same scandal played out over a mlion
times, but there are just not a million front pages of newspapers.

Many years ago Schneier said that our data trails were like the pollution of
our age - and it seems we have just noticed the NSA are the Dark Satanic
Mills. This is a fast turnaround - will we be as fast in creating an EPA or a
Clean Air Act?

------
neves
It shows that the espionage isn't just for terrorists.

------
houk
the strange danger generation is all grown up. now they're scared of everyone.

------
ianstallings
In fairness to the US intelligence agencies, this might have been a
verification of their claims since they are looking fairly aggressively for
oil sources outside of the middle east. The President or higher ups in the DoD
would seek this information for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately people are
distrustful because our country has taken so much unscrupulous action for
energy in the past.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
In 2012, the US imported 40% of their oil. Of that, 13% is from the middle
east. The middle east hasn't had the lions share of US oil consumption for
quite some time.

[http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-
america-g...](http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-
oil-you-may-be-surprised)

~~~
ianstallings
Yes that's actually the reason I mentioned this. When GWB was in office they
started looking for other sources outside of the ME and we get most of our
imported oil from Africa now AFAIK. Brazil could be part of that push.

