
Latest Snowden Doc Shows NSA Spied on German Intelligence - jdimov9
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-snowden-document-reveals-us-spied-on-german-intelligence-a-1055055.html
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Someone1234
I agree that this is a legitimate intelligence target. All of the allies spy
one one another all of the time, that's how we keep trust.

I think the biggest scandal that isn't discussed often enough (in the US) is
not spying on foreign government officials for legitimate security-related
reasons (e.g. this), it is spying on foreign government officials to give the
US an advantage in trade negotiations or worse passing on "tips" to US-based
private companies so they can gain an advantage during negotiations/bidding.

The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem
hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other
quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and
advantages.

Even people in the US should be asking why large US corporations are given
these tips/advantages/etc while small-medium US businesses are not. Let alone
the immorality of helping a US company win against a foreign one due to state
supplied corporate espionage.

The justification "well China does it!!1!" while true, is just kind of
pathetic. China does a lot of things, doesn't make it right for a country that
claims it is the beacon is capitalism and democracy to do the same.

~~~
sayhar
> The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem
> hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other
> quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and
> advantages.

For many of us, "capitalism" involves precisely this -- the wealthy using
their wealth and power to cement their position.

~~~
cpursley
The correct definition is "cronyism", not "capitalism".

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

~~~
task_queue
Leninism/Stalinism/those fucking Trots/Maoism isn't true Communism.

~~~
monstruoso
It isn't. It is state capitalism. It is still capitalism.

~~~
deciplex
If pure capitalism isn't robust enough that it won't devolve into cronyism
then it's just as worthless an ideology as "communism", and for much the same
reason. It's not enough that something sounds good and works in theory -
humans have to be able to implement it too.

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pachydermic
Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game even if they are our
allies. I don't think the NSA should be collecting massive amounts of data on
ordinary citizens in a way which violates our constitutional rights, or that
they should collaborate with other intelligence agencies to effectively do the
same thing, but I think they should still exist and they have a real reason to
exist.

Not enthused about this leak.

~~~
NullCharacter
So is Snowden still a whistleblower? Honest question, not trying to be snide.

If you abscond with 1,000 legitimate mission-oriented documents for every 1
document you leak that pertains to something you think an agency shouldn't be
doing, are you still blowing the whistle? At what point are you no longer able
to use that title as a defense? 10,000 documents for every 1? 100,000? Can he
be both a whistleblower and a criminal or are the two mutually exclusive?

I don't have answers to these questions so I hope someone else does.

Try not to downvote for simply disagreeing with the question, as though it
were even possible to disagree with a question.

~~~
pvnick
Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed
over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our
government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the
responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately. I for one believe
that the releases have been done with impeccable professionalism, and in fact
if it were up to me I would have been even more liberal with the releases
(Greenwald, Poitras, et al. have actually worked with the government during
this process).

~~~
jazzyk
This.

It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak
everything indiscriminately).

~~~
irishcoffee
Yes he did, to journalists.

Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over
every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them
to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time
between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to
have done that.

So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.

~~~
jazzyk
No, from the context of the post above mine, it is obvious that by "leaking
indiscriminately" I meant to the general public.

You are either lacking context comprehension skills or intentionally splitting
hairs to make Snowden look bad...

~~~
irishcoffee
How are journalists not the general public?

Giving classified documents to _anyone_ who isn't cleared to see them is the
"general public." Journalists are no exception. Not sure why you think that.

~~~
facetube
Are you arguing that Snowden giving all of the documents to me would have
produced the same outcome as giving them to journalists to review and redact
and write articles about?

~~~
irishcoffee
Yes.

What qualifies you, or journalists, to know umpty-squat about national
security?

99% of what snowden leaked had _nothing_ to do with the privacy of U.S.
citizens. Nothing.

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unreal37
Seems like a non-story. The NSA was in possession of a couple of documents
created by German intelligence. There's no evidence how they got them. Perhaps
there was a leaker inside of the German intelligence service who posted a copy
of these memos to a pastebin? They have no idea how the Americans got it.

------
on_
Many people are saying the same thing:

> Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game

> This is legitimate activity for the NSA

> I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on
> foreign intelligence agencies.

Correct. This is what spy agencies do. Edward Snowden is an American Hero, and
it is a shame what has happened beyond the obvious. His name is invoked for
shock headlines, and at this point there is almost no reaction to these
disclosures and that is worrying. If there was a way to lower the power
distance between "Government Actors" and citizens, we could expend resources
cooperatively instead of competitively.

Until then, there will be numerous government agencies AND companies, on many
continents and countries, building systems to collect and analyze your data
creating a single point of failure. That sounds counter intuitive, but if we
assume all of your data is essentially uniform and the Chinese/NSA/BND etc.
all have essentially the same data. If even one of those places has a breach
event, your data will be in the hands of bad individual actors. This leaves
aside, that the data is already in the hands of questionable players.

To conclude, the Snowden docs were illuminating but no longer hold the shock
they once did. Not much has changed. The initial disclosure confirmed for a
lot of us what we already knew, and publicized it to those who didn't. The
ongoing disclosures are marginal now and really a function of leveraging
Snowden's name for ad-traffic. Hopefully, going forward there will be a
framework for protecting privacy that regular, everyday people can easily use.
Until then, these disclosures are just a disheartening reminder of the
inability to seperate gov. tyranny from legitimate activity.

[0]Snowden is living in an undisclosed location in Russia, a country hostile
to the US, and barred from entering America without being tried for treason.
Disappointing.

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merb
Currently the more get's leaked, the more I'm afraid.

I live in Germany and I hope that there won't be any global war. But currently
the policits between countries getting stranger and stranger. Mostly due to
the governements. Shouldn't they suppose to work for freedom and not war?

I mean I think even germany will send weapons to bad behaved countries
(americans aswell), just for the money, who cares about weapon embargos?!
Money is all and the fact that so many people care so much about Money and
some kind of 'status' inside their culture makes things really really worse.

I hope that I can live in peace until I die. Hopefully.

~~~
mindcrime
_Shouldn 't they suppose to work for freedom and not war?_

Here's an interesting take on that[1][2][3].

    
    
        Father: You're gonna make the world safe for democracy!
    
        Joe Age 10: What is democracy?
    
        Father: Well it's never bright clear on myself. 
        Like any other kind government it's got something 
        to do with young men killing each other I believe. 
    

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_\(film\))

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns)

------
NullCharacter
A signals intelligence agency conducting intelligence operations on foreign
signals?

Stop the presses!

------
cryoshon
There's some weird activity in this thread which I think bears mentioning.

Lots of people saying either "good, this is their job" and "old news"\-- shill
trademark phrases. I'm not making any accusations exactly, but I am concerned
at the mass of simple, positive, and vapid comments in this thread.

~~~
mindcrime
Let's face it, there are almost certainly NSA / CIA / FBI / $ASSORTED_GOVT_TLA
plants here. Or, if not actual human plants, at least an automated system that
posts astroturf "pro military-industrial-espionage complex" comments on their
behalf. That they use this kind of technology is well established. And
considering that HN is a pretty prominent social-media site, frequented by a
lot of potential influencers in the technology community, I think the odds are
approximately 100% that this site is one of their targets.

~~~
avn2109
Agreed. Which leads to two questions: 1) Why is this post so far down the
page? and 2) If anyone is qualified to combat automated (or perhaps even
human) astroturfing by technical means, it's YC. Dang/other mods, are there
efforts underway to detect and mitigate this?

I ask both on principle and because the quality of discussion is noticeably
damaged by having to wade through many questionably real comments before
finding actual discussion.

And of course it's not just the Americans doing this, undoubtedly the
Russians/Chinese etc do something similar.

~~~
mindcrime
Looks like there has at least been some academic research on detecting astro-
turfing on social media, although not sure if anybody has looked for the JTRIG
stuff specifically.

[http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM11/paper/view/2...](http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM11/paper/view/2850/3274)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3768](https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3768)

[http://ra.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2011/companion/p249.pdf](http://ra.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2011/companion/p249.pdf)

------
rdl
I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on foreign
intelligence agencies. FFS, that, and spying on heads of government/military,
is their ultimate purpose.

Counterterrorism and such, which has the slippery slope to spying on private
citizens, is completely secondary at best.

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bobowzki
I'm not a big fan of the NSA, but isn't that kind of their job..?

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Luc
Edward Snowden's just created a Twitter account. I've never seen the follower
count go up that quickly:
[https://twitter.com/Snowden](https://twitter.com/Snowden)

~~~
krapp
looks legit.

~~~
acqq
"Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden 3h3 hours ago:

Meanwhile, a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter."

It surely sounds like him. And Chuck Norris can confirm. Hi Ed.

------
ccalvert
This is legitimate activity for the NSA, but it plays badly in Europe. My
guess is that Snowden and his friends are pandering to folks in Europe who
naturally dislike this kind of thing, and particularly to folks in Germany.

Imagine the reaction on the far right here in America to a news report that
Russia, Germany or France spies on American intelligence agencies. It's
natural that such things should happen, but its also certain to create discord
among certain factions here in America.

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masteryupa_
All information might as well be completely free and open to the public for
the security the practice of counter spying provides us. Additionally, the
reason this level of infringement of privacy is so damning is that it
completely absolves any notion of trust the German authority might have had
towards the US. Attempts to form a more cohesive alliance in international
politics will not be fruitful with this strategy.

~~~
happyscrappy
What is Germany supposed to do, align with Russia? They really don't have any
choice.

~~~
masteryupa_
Probably not but I don't see any reason why this kind of information needs to
be sourced through spying rather than through a formal declaration between
intelligence services. Not that that process need be transparent, just that
the act of willing participation by the German administration would likely
produce a more amicable friendship.

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sonoffett
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

But seriously, is this not what the NSA is paid to do?

~~~
braythwayt
The "I'm shocked, shocked" meme from Casablanca is most appropriate when the
speaker is themselves hypocritically complicit in the wrongdoing being
described.

So... I think it's up to the German Minister of Security to say they are
shocked, shocked that the USA is spying on the people Germany uses to spy on
the US.

~~~
matthewmcg
So maybe a more apt classic movie paraphrase would be "Hey! There's no
eavesdropping in here--this is a SIGINT room!"

~~~
braythwayt
Great Strangelove reference!

But I should be more clear. I'm not saying what you said isn't funny, it made
me smile! I'm just trying to share that under certain circumstances, it's even
truer to the original scene and thus funnier.

:-)

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ihsw
Since they've tapped pretty much _everything_ then isn't it physically
impossible that they cannot spy on _everybody_?

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ForHackernews
So...spies spied on spies doing spying? I'm not seeing the problem here.

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bizkeep2
Trust, but verify.

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omouse
well I guess we know who watches the watchers.

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vinceguidry
Isn't that their job?

~~~
kaonashi
Look where this is published.

~~~
vinceguidry
Ahh, missed that. Thanks.

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codecamper
I guarantee that the only reason the NSA did this was so that some few fatsos
could continue to live in Germany, drink great beer with their friends, live
in a swank apartment in the old town, and collect their foreign earned income
exclusion.

~~~
trhway
looking at recent busts of Russian "spies" (quotes because they were so inept
in their activities) in US, it is pretty much the same picture - young lazy
morons from well-connected families get a good job in a good country (i.e.
like a trade representative in US of a Russian state owned corporation) with
only downside is a possibility of being deported/non-grata-ed if busted (again
they have been so inept that US seems to happy to just get rid of them instead
of keeping them in prison)

