
Leak Suggests NSA Was Deep in Middle East Banking System - denzil_correa
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/major-leak-suggests-nsa-deep-middle-east-banking-system/
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rdxm
As a US citizen, and given how things like 9/11 were funded, this is _exactly_
what I want NSA to be doing. This is thier job.

What I don't want them doing is hoovering up internal comms traffic without a
warrant and passing it to people like DEA. That is exactly _not_ thier job.

Frankly, it's a bit bizarre to me that US citizens don't understand how to
draw the distinction between those two sceanrios...

~~~
biktor_gj
I'm sorry, I guess that me not being American makes me unable to stand by your
position, but I don't get it.

I'm an European citizen and I don't think it's Ok for any agency to spy in
others' banking systems (or in anthing for that matter). If it was Iran doing
this the US would go to war with them. If it was Palestine who was spying on
US banking systems the US military would be killing left and right until
nothing but corpses would remain, but is it OK for the NSA to shit on
International laws to make America "safe"? The NSA is out of control of the
American people, as all the other agencies. It seems like the US government
and ther agencies feel they can do whatever they want, wherever they want and
however they please, and no, that's not OK for the rest of the world. And
about that 9/11 funding thing... It was proven that the CIA had knowledge
about the attack before it happened... Do you really think they need to spy on
the entire world to stop another one? And given the recent events, do you even
think they need banks to attack the US, France or any other place? Gathering
this information seem to have much more to do with controlling foreign
goverments than with preventing terrorism. Please stop using 9/11 as an excuse
for everything, there are lots of countries which have suffered many more
terrorist attacks in the last 5 years and don't use it ad an excuse to fuck
with everyone else in the planet.

~~~
meowface
All globally-competitive countries are doing this to all other countries. I'd
be very shocked if Iran's intelligence agencies didn't have (either in the
past, or presently) some level of access to our financial systems.

It's pretty absurd to suggest we would kill people just because we caught a
spy agency snooping on us. We've caught and rebuked foreign spy agencies all
the time. The usual punishment is covert retaliation (escalating malware
attacks, etc.), and the times when it isn't covert (like with the Russia
revelations), responses usually involve sanctions and condemnation.

NSA would be doing the American people a disservice if they weren't competing
with the rest of the spy agencies out there. It's just a fact of life. We just
want them to do it without warrantless mass surveillance of US citizens.

>It was proven that the CIA had knowledge about the attack before it
happened...

They didn't. To suggest they did is to allege a massive conspiracy. They
received hints it might happen, but intelligence agencies receive tens of
thousands to millions of pieces of new information per week, 99.99% of which
turns out to be nothing. You can apply this argument to almost every war or
attack in history (including Pearl Harbor). Sieving the signal out of the
noise isn't easy.

I'm an American but neither a nationalist nor a patriot. I just realize
they're doing their job. I also realize and acknowledge Russia wouldn't be
doing its job properly if they _didn 't_ try to influence the Presidential
election.

~~~
ithought
I believe he's referring to the 50 CIA employees who knew there were 2
suspected terrorists inside the US. As Richard Clarke alleged, the CIA
purposely withheld this information from the White House because they appear
to have been running a sting operation.

If you look at "Interview #07 (Washington, DC) by FF4Films on Youtube, Richard
Clarke makes this allegation. It's pretty clear the situation is quite
different than just saying the warnings were too non-specific to notice.

~~~
meowface
True, good point. But that seems more like basic incompetence or cockiness
rather than awareness that 9/11 was about to happen.

~~~
bigbugbag
I remember something about European agencies (UK and France IIRC) giving
specific warnings a few weeks or months in advance to the US agencies and the
US agencies doing nothing then later scrambled to justify this inaction.

-/edit- here: [https://cpj.org/2007/12/french-journalist-investigated-over-...](https://cpj.org/2007/12/french-journalist-investigated-over-intelligence-l.php) -edit/-

Then again 9/11 is not a valid excuse as the US has been orders of magnitude
worse for decades, had been preparing for such an event but did nothing and
even the contrary when it actually happened and then used it to go to war to
unrelated countries for unrelated reason (access to oil). So please just stop
brandishing 9/11 as a justification for doing more of what the US have been
doing all along.

~~~
meowface
>Then again 9/11 is not a valid excuse as the US has been orders of magnitude
worse for decades, had been preparing for such an event but did nothing and
even the contrary when it actually happened and then used it to go to war to
unrelated countries for unrelated reason (access to oil). So please just stop
brandishing 9/11 as a justification for doing more of what the US have been
doing all along.

I agree with you. That isn't what I was arguing at all.

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hl5
Eroding confidence in banking systems shouldn't be an American goal. Instead,
protecting and securing those systems should be the goal.

~~~
notyourwork
How does NSA spying on financial transactions erode confidence in banking
system?

~~~
hl5
Because it encourages adoption of alternative systems.

The Swiss Banking Act of 1934 is an indicator of the magnitude of change that
can occur when banking privacy is not respected.

~~~
folli
Some more information about the Banking Act:
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-
files-...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-
files-1934-swiss-law-secrecy)

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potato_mOWX2EVX
I don't understand how this is news.

This entries are years old:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication#U.S._government_involvement)

Unless stated otherwise, NSA is there, even here.

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CodeWriter23
The debate on whether the spying is justified going on in here assumes the NSA
is only seeking intel, and completely ignores the possibility they compromised
the systems at EastNets with the specific intent of defeating KYC and other
money laundering / anti-terrorism controls so money can flow to groups they
want to ensure receive money. Sure, it's speculation on my part. Well,
speculation viewed through the lens of a US citizen who has witnessed decades
of covert empire building perpetrated on the world by my government. I'm not
even saying the NSA is directly funding any groups, they could just be silent
kingmakers, working in the back room like the Wizard of Oz, pulling levers
here and there to ensure funds flow to favorable groups and not to unfavorable
ones. No matter how morally dubious those receiving this favor are.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
In the same vein, here is an interesting DEF CON lecture titled, How To
Overthrow a Government:

[https://youtu.be/qbTPkKB9Ffc](https://youtu.be/qbTPkKB9Ffc)

One of the key elements of the lecture is pwning the central bank of the
target country in order to frame political oponents by creating false
transactions to terrorist groups.

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f4rker
People be like : "spying is bad and I don't like it"

Aggressive spying has been standard since forever. If you are outraged it
means you have not been paying attention. This is not new.

~~~
bigbugbag
That the US have been going at it for decades does not mean it is OK or that
not being new means it should not spark outrage.

Then again show us how Liberia has been into the aggressive standard since
forever, or even how this forever existed before 20th century.

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petre
The NSA were just checking out those who are funding ISIS and other terrorist
groups.

