
Britain pulls out spies as Russia, China crack Snowden files – report - cm2187
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/britain-security-idUSKBN0OU02420150614
======
agd
This story is very dubious. Timing very suspect. No official willing to say
any of this on record yet they do a simultaneous briefing to the BBC and
Sunday Times?

China and Russia both decrypting the cache? Notice how none of the actual
quotes say that China/Russia decrypted anything or have access to info not in
the public domain.

“It is the case that Russians and Chinese have information. It has meant
agents have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped
us getting vital information. There is no evidence of anyone being harmed.”

The Sunday Times article can't even get some basic facts right:

"David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was
seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 “highly classified”
intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow."

Not true. He was visiting Poitras in Berlin.

I'm gonna need more evidence than 'anonymous government sources' for this.

~~~
tajen
I don't understand how this could be orchestrated (NSA letters?) and yet no
orchestration be done against comments like yours and HN in general? Too quick
to be censored?

------
mhandley
The BBC article has a few more details:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068)

I'm British, and it seems to me that if British Intelligence need to move
spies as a result of what an unprivileged contractor like Snowden could find
out, they've done a really poor job of ensuring that critical information was
only available to people who needed to know. Maybe Snowden has done them a
favour by revealing how poor their internal security is, without (as the BBC
article says) harming anyone. Now the real question the media should be asking
is who at MI6 should take responsibility for their poor internal security?

~~~
cnvogel
Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm for
the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

One would assume, given all the propaganda, that it should be easy to document
a dozen impressive cases (of the hundreds allegedly existing) in a convincing
way...

~~~
mahranch
> Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm
> for the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

I'm no expert on geopolitics (none of us are), but I'm fairly certain that
kind of thing cannot be quantified. It's like trying to quantify how much love
you have for someone. The harm isn't direct and measurable, any harm would be
almost entirely indirect.

Before the leaks, maybe Russia wouldn't have invaded Crimea because they were
unsure what the U.S/NATO plans are or were and didn't have enough information
to move. After the leaks, they had all the information they needed and moved
forward with their plan. Or maybe they invaded precisely because they had the
evidence which showed the U.S would be unlikely to act.

Those kinds of things aren't inherently measurable so quantifying them is a
futile endeavor. I'm no fan of the government but to pretend there are zero
negative consequences for us as a country is ignorant and naive. Like it or
not, there is a bigger picture and ignoring it doesn't mean it goes away or
ceases to exist.

~~~
cnvogel
I don't think that the NSA really deals with plans about military operations.
And also the original article mainly concerns itself with agents that had to
leave hostile countries once their cover has been blown.

But yes, certainly some of the information in the Snowden revelations might
have been valuable, but one would have to compare their impact with the
constant stream of information obtained by reciprocal spying which is going on
all of the time and (I'm convinced) is highly targeted...

~~~
foxhedgehog
The NSA is under the Department of Defense and, by their charter, provides
information to the USG about military operations. You are also confusing the
issue of what NSA produces vs. what information they have access to.

I'm also not sure that I follow this second argument. Snowden's revelations
are clearly supplemental to any espionage that might have been going on
against the U.S.

------
glimmung
The timing of this seems a little convenient, coming as it does after a week
in which a huge data breach has occurred. Also, it seems that when Greenwalds
partner was detained the UK could not decrypt what he was carrying, so the
suggestion seems to be that Russia and China can crack what the UK and US
cannot. Finally, the Snowden data is now pretty old, so odd that this should
come up now.

Of course, as suggested below, Snowden data may have leaked via a media
organisation with lesser OpSec, but if so then perhaps best to say so.

For my own part, I think that Snowden did us a service on balance, but he can
expect to be the scapegoat in every data breach of this sort for years to
come.

~~~
mozumder
Or, Russia/China cracking the NSA Snowden files were responsible for both OPM
breaches and this.

Maybe those countries gained access to OPM data via the Snowden data?

~~~
qrmn
The mismanagement of security at OPM predates Snowden's disclosures. However,
it's pretty much target #1 for any foreign intelligence agency.

The OPM data contains enough details that would allow a good intelligence
agency to track down damn near every agent under non-official cover, and
blackmail damn near every official under official cover. It should never have
been on any network, ever.

If _any_ element of this story is true - and I'm entirely unconvinced about it
- then it's not Snowden's data that's caused this, but the OPM breach.

Don't insult our intelligence, JTRIG. This is some oldschool Правда shite.
You've gotten sloppy. I'm very disappointed in you all. You don't have to wag
your tail every time Theresa May barks.

------
escapologybb
Listening to BBC news on the radio this morning, the presenter said something
along the lines of "we have in on the highest authority from Downing Street
and Security Services insiders."

No proof, no named sources, just a parroting of the government line. Something
sounds a bit fishy to me.

Edit: spelling, grammar, give me a break it's Sunday morning!

~~~
alfiedotwtf
From the same people who gave us Saddam's WMDs.

If The Sunday Times had shown hard proof that Snowden's files have been
decrypted, I would have sat up and noticed. But at this point in time, western
governments have lost all credibility. Would it have mattered if the sources
were named? Colin Powell gave "evidence" at the UN of possible reasons to
invade Iraq. All of it was bullshit.

Hard proof, or GTFO.

~~~
hahainternet
> Hard proof, or GTFO.

So the Bush administration's failure to prevent 911 was completely reasonable
and couldn't be criticised, right?

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Not sure what you're implying. I never mentioned 9/11

------
snowpanda
>> citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David
Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services.

\--------

So the sources of these claims are the exact same people who are a significant
part of the mass surveillance which Snowden exposed. There is some
substantially flawed journalism going on here.

Also, in other news, apparently China and Russia are allies now. Or did they
just happen to simultaneously crack these files on the exact same day?

~~~
glimmung
Yes, the scattergun "Russia _and_ China" line seems to be over-egging it a
bit.

~~~
jeo1234
Soon we'll be hearing about how North Korea and the Galactic Empire have also
gained access.

------
randomname2
Glenn Greenwald's reaction to the article:

"That Sun Times article is filled with so many factual errors- demonstrable
ones- along w/the worst journalism. Will be fun writing about it."

[https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011072)

Followed by a retweet of the following response:

"unsourced, unverifiable nonsense smears by a group that knows it's losing,
the spying fascists"

------
sschueller
Where is the hard evidence? The media has to stop being so gullible and do
some actually journalism. The wild accusations can start wars!

~~~
vidarh
Actual journalism costs more money because you actually have to invest the
time to dig, and comes with the added cost of getting reduced access to senior
government officials, which makes it even more expensive to keep up with the
competition.

When the public appears to not care whether their news consists of parroted
lines or actual journalism, there's little incentive for most of the press to
dig, and many incentives not to.

My favourite recent example was when a Norwegian newspaper published documents
from the Snowden files that appears to show extensive surveillance in Norway.
This was underlined by the fact that others have admitted to surveillance
based on the exact same documents.

What followed was surreal: Norway has two main security agencies, the Police
Security Service, responsible for internal intelligence, and the Security
Service (Etteretningstjenesten), which is external intelligence. The latter
used to pretty much never talk to the press.

But after that article, they suddenly got chatty, and all of their own accord
they invited to a press conference to "admit" that yes, _they_ were
responsible for the surveillance in question. Never mind that for all other
countries that have made admissions the documents in question have indicated
_internal_ surveillance, and that the Security Service "admitted" that this
was surveillance in Afghanistan, where Norway according to this admission are
intercepting metadata for pretty much every call. But nowhere else.

At this point you'd think the press would have some _questions_ , such as "why
are you revealing to the press - and thus implicitly to Taliban etc. - that
Norway is intercepting all calls in Afghanistan?" or "why would the numbers
for Norway refer to interception in Afghanistan when there's a separate entry
for Afghanistan in the same numbers?" and "why would the NSA depend on
_Norway_ for surveillance in Afghanistan?" and "how much money does this
surveillance in Afghanistan cost us?" and "if we have the capability to
conduct surveillance in Afghanistan on this scale, why is that the _only_
place, we're conducting this kind of surveillance?"

Not least "why, when the article talked about internal Norwegian surveillance
did you feel compelled to host a press conference to reveal details about your
notoriously secretive operations instead of letting the Police Security
Service deny the allegations". Heck, if it really was the Security Service
that this document referred to, the Police Security Service could just state
that they invite the parliamentary oversight committee to audit, and that they
will naturally find no such surveillance.

You'd also expect they'd go back to the Police Security Service and ask them
"why should we believe you're not doing this, when your predecessor in name,
operated by most of the same people, were caught having conducted illegal
political surveillance for several decades not that many years ago?"

Nothing. No follow up at all. Instead the single press conference was enough
to make the paper that broke the story backtrack and apologise.

A few months later it became clear that the NSA were in fact _recording_ most
calls in Afghanistan, which makes the idea that the NSA would explicitly call
out vast amounts of _metadata_ collection by our Security Service as valuable
even more silly.

Still no follow up from Norwegian press.

Basically they don't want to rock the boat. When they don't rock the boat,
they get to get spoon fed information they'd otherwise have to work for and/or
read about in the competitors papers. When they don't rock the boat they get
exclusive interviews and photo ops.

It's a fantastic lesson in "soft" censorship: Don't outlaw publishing material
you want to suppress. Instead make it economical and professional suicide.
Make journalists that dig sacrifice their career by making sure everyone know
they will never get any kind of inside access. Make papers or tv channels that
publish too hard hitting stories know they'll lose any chance at access,
interviews and photo ops. Soon enough, large parts of the press will self-
regulate.

This is part of why we used to have a politically affiliated press, where
political parties would fund papers that would be paid explicitly to provide
viewpoints that weren't popular even if that viewpoint was unprofitable. Sure
that have flaws too, but those flaws were counteracted by having a wide range
of them publishing alternative viewpoints. That more and more media outlets
have gone "independent" means more and more of them are no implicitly beholden
to play to government interests, or at least staying not straying _too_ far
from the script, to be profitable.

(sorry for the long rant - the above story still makes me angry)

~~~
sschueller
This is infuriating and sadly turning into the norm. :(

------
venomsnake
This looks like Snowden smear campaign. There were never reports of anyone
besides the journalists of getting their hands on the documents.

------
richmarr
If this is true, surely the bigger story is that AES-256 isn't safe anymore.

------
andrewchambers
So how do they know Russia and China cracked the files in the first place?
Seems like a smear.

------
cyphunk
Lets see... recently USG had all files from federal employees stolen,
including background check information which as I heard included spies [1].
Germany's Prime Minister had a Trojan on her computer [2]. Government networks
are falling like flies and all the sudden some 5 eyes countries are pulling
their spies out, and blaming it on snowden?

1\. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/security-clearance-
information-l...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/security-clearance-information-
likely-stolen-during-breach-of-government-agency-1434143820) 2\.
[http://rt.com/news/267070-trojan-bundestag-merkel-
computer/](http://rt.com/news/267070-trojan-bundestag-merkel-computer/)

------
orblivion
This is all rather short on context. What encrypted files are these exactly?
Are these something Snowden took with him? How did they get them from him? If
they took a copy by force, why didn't they ask for an encryption key by force?
How exactly would they go about cracking it? Is there something we don't know
(and Snowden didn't know) about the state of the art of cryptography?

------
ttpol8
Garbage story, the Intercept addresses it well:
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-
times-r...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-
snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/)

------
alan_cx
I don't understand the story. From what I can tell, Snowden had information
taken from the US which could compromise its apparently closest ally's spy
networks. But didn't tell the UK that? More over, the UK had no idea that the
US has such info? I would like to believe that as soon as the Snowden breach
happened, the US told the UK, and the UK took measures to mitigate it. I would
also like to think that the UK assumed it anyway. Or did the UK leave its
networks vulnerable for all this time? Or did the US assure the UK that its
encryption couldn't be broken?

Perhaps, the UK moved its spies some time ago, and decided to keep it quiet
until the Russians and Chinese broke the encryption.

I have great difficulty taking this story at face value.

------
k-mcgrady
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712820)

------
p01926
Just assume for one second this is a genuine revelation and not recycled
propaganda from mid 2013. Couldn't someone entrusted with the Snowden cache
just dump it online now? If the trove is already circulating between hostile
intelligence agencies, that seriously skews the risk/reward calculation
regarding mass dissemination.

------
peterkelly
Full text of the original Sunday Times article (primary source is paywalled):

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

[http://pastebin.com/UJpJxDnj](http://pastebin.com/UJpJxDnj)

Statements from the article that seem questionable:

 _> Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the
fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden_

Both? Seems a little strange that they would independently do this
simultaneously, unless they had been working together on it (though this is
plausible).

 _> Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former
American security contractor_

The only reason Snowden is in Russia is because the US state department
cancelled his passport on his route to Ecuador. Russia was not his intended
destination, but his presence there has been extremely helpful for his
opponents to paint him as being in collaboration with them. And if it _is_
indeed true that they have gained access to the info (either through his co-
operation or otherwise), then perhaps cancelling his passport while in transit
and forcing him into exile there wasn't such a great idea.

 _> One senior Home Office official accused Snowden of having “blood on his
hands”, although Downing Street said there was “no evidence of anyone being
harmed”._

So which is it?

 _> David Cameron’s aides confirmed the material was now in the hands of spy
chiefs in Moscow and Beijing_

Where's the evidence? The only sources of the article are from the US/British
government, who have given only unsubstantiated claims.

 _> people are being pulled back and operations where people are exposed are
having to be shut down_

Perhaps this might be due to the US Office of Personnel management (OPM) being
unable to keep the data of millions of federal employees protected? The
Chinese hack got this information directly from the agency that held it:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of-
pers...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of-personnel-
management-hack-china/71146452/)

 _> David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald,
was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 “highly classified”
intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow._

They can't even get basic facts straight. He had been in Berlin visiting Laura
Poitras, not in Moscow visiting Snowden:
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-
miranda-detained-uk-nsa)

------
yenda
Imagine if the NSA had spent more of its grey matter and money on IT security
rather than shameless spying of western citizens.

~~~
aw3c2
> shameless spying of western citizens

should be

> shameless spying on innocent people all around the world

~~~
skidoo
Right on. The way I always saw it was that the NSA were the thieves,
collecting data they did not own. Snowden, while accused of stealing secrets,
actually set them free.

