
NSA spied on UN, breaking active agreements - sarnowski
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-hoerte-zentrale-der-vereinte-nationen-in-new-york-ab-a-918421.html
======
njuyhbgtrfvcdew
Some English translations from the original German:

    
    
      New documents prove to SPIEGEL information: 
    
      Even the United Nations headquarters in New 
    
      York was tapped by the U.S. NSA, although an 
    
      agreement prohibiting just that. Even the U.S. 
    
      Consulate in Frankfurt served as a listening post.
    
      -----
    
      The U.S. Secret NSA has not only the European Union 
    
      bugged, but also the headquarters of the United 
    
      Nations. This is evident from the NSA secret 
    
      documents, the DER SPIEGEL has analyzed.
    
      -----
    
      > "The traffic gives us the internal video 
         teleconferencing the UN (yay!)." 
    
      Within three weeks, the number of decrypted 
    
      communications had risen from 12 to 458th
    
      In one case, the NSA had also caught the Chinese 
    
      intelligence in it, also a spy.

------
stalled
See also, GigaOM article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6271259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6271259)

------
webreac
Very difficult to read if you do not understand German. The German text is
clearly written, but The google translation is awful. Is it a plot of Google
to convince people to learn foreign languages ?

~~~
lutusp
> The German text is clearly written, but The google translation is awful. Is
> it a plot of Google to convince people to learn foreign languages ?

Automated German to English translation has never been a walk in the park.
Nicht wahr?

But it could be worse -- it could be English to German, which is in some ways
worse, among other things always longer than the original.

------
greenyoda
Not only did the NSA spy on the UN, but Hillary Clinton instructed State
Department employees to spy on the UN. Here's an article from Der Spiegel from
2009 that I stumbled upon:

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/diplomats-or-
spook...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/diplomats-or-spooks-how-
us-diplomats-were-told-to-spy-on-un-and-ban-ki-moon-a-731747.html)

And this spying by the State Department may have provided the NSA with the
information they needed to do their own spying:

 _" The State Department was also particularly interested in the UN's internal
communications facilities. In her wish list, Clinton wanted to find out
everything possible about the organization's telecommunications infrastructure
and also extensive information on "current technical specifications, physical
layout, and planned upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and
information systems, networks, and technologies used by top officials and
their support staffs." The intention seems clear: This information would make
it easier for the National Security Agency, the US intelligence agency
responsible for wiretapping of phones and interception of electronic
communications, to easily attack telephone, computer and e-mail accounts."_

This information came from the diplomatic cables leaked to WikiLeaks by
Bradley Manning.

------
Questioneer
To summarize my two other comments, talk of anything remotely against the
whims of HN mods gets your account, your submissions deaded.

Nevermind how _hackers_ who have taken on the White House, Washington Post and
others are defecting against Assad due to his chemical attacks[1]. The topic
involves a whiff of politics so it must be moderated against! Any hacker,
technical, code related aspects are ignored if one shred of the topic goes
against the whims of HN mods.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6252592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6252592)

~~~
jacquesm
If you keep going like this I think you'll need a new account soon. HN is
pretty fair when it comes to talking about things that go against the whims of
the moderators, if it weren't I would have been banned long ago.

~~~
stephengillie
From the other posts, it seems this individual has spare accounts to burn.

------
Questioneer
One of my accounts was hell-banned for this very topic.

If HN wants to halt discussion they are finding a very effective way to do so.

edit: Why is this comment getting down-voted? Must I start collating a list of
users complaining their submissions are being overrode by others? Or show how
they get down-voted/dismissed when bringing it up?

Is this what HN has come to?

~~~
devx
Maybe you should try writing a more coherent comment, instead of spamming the
thread with a lot similar comments. You can also edit your comment.

~~~
Questioneer
If form is the best critique you can muster, please don't even comment. If you
wish to read a longer more heart-felt comment of mine regarding egregious
copyright violations, here[1]. It is a topic that pains me to this day, take a
moment to read if you will.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262162)

Edit: Read before down-voting.

~~~
swombat
This is not a critique, just an observation:

You're well on track to get hellbanned again. Do you learn from your own
mistakes?

~~~
Questioneer
One article I submitted was overridden by an elder member when he submitted
it. Long after the thread gained positive discussion. Pointing out this flaw,
received me one of my first hell-bans.

What I am to learn from this? Do not submit things older members may later
submit? Do not point out the flaws in such a system?

edit: Thanks swombat for ending with a question, a way to further discussion
instead of making it a pointed statement. :)

~~~
gus_massa
It's the wrong conclusion. For example, yesterday there were two submissions
of "Linux 3.9 introduced a new way of writing socket servers"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6269332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6269332)
(222 points)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6270330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6270330)
(dead, 3 points, 5 hours later)

The second one was submitted by a user with more karma, average, and days in
HN.

Sometimes a story is submitted by two persons and the dupe detector fails. One
of them get traction, the selection is by random events, like the hour of the
submission, how many upvotes it get's in the first hours, which other stories
are in the first page, ... I have seen some good stories that get only 2 or 3
points, and after a month someone else submits a similar story from another
source and it gets 50 points. It's also a matter of luck.

~~~
Questioneer
Was the second article posted with the '/2' at the end of the link? Things
like that seem to cause most filter hiccups, I tried to discount those
obviously.

For science and all that, can you think of other examples?

edit: Oh I see it is different chapters, /1 /2 etc. Nevermind that.

------
Questioneer
Infact, in another topic I provided very technical details to an event being
linked[1]. That article was deaded, rendering my commentary on the technical
aspects useless.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248144)

edit: In-case users are down-voting before reading what was linked. The
comments I provided showed how monitoring hardware was used to track people of
'interest' like religious followers. I have been attempting to focus on the
ramifications for hardware like Bluecoat's ending up being used to monitor and
persecute others.

This persecution is not just using to harass others but to know what leaders
of Sunnis to 'cleanse' as to make populating Alawites easier[2].

[2] [http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/syrian-army-
ren...](http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/syrian-army-renews-
offensive-homs)

