The Dutch have an absolutely amazing intelligence apparatus.
In 2014 AIVD hacked the office network of Russia's APT29, and maintained access at least through the 2016 DNC hack. The best part was they also had access to the security cameras and were able to watch the attacks in real time.
From what I've read, things started going wrong when an (ex?) official of the US released information the Dutch shared with their American allies[1].
Details on when or why access to the Russian networks was lost aren't readily available (secret service and all that) but I do remember reading about the intelligence agencies being not particularly pleased with the way the information was publicly released by their allies. It makes sense that someone gloating about how there's an ally of theirs in your network will make you take a second look at the traffic flowing through your network if you're waging cyber warfare.
In general, in the spyworld you do not talk about your tricks. But if you've already been found out, and your tricks no longer work, there is still political advantage to be had (damage your adversary, obtain credit from partners, obtain funding, easier recrutement).
Covert access for over two years to every part of the GRU's election meddling apparatus is very impressive, actually. Once you're caught, too, there's sometimes value in sort of showing it off and embarrassing your adversary.
It doesn’t seem an English translation of the book has been released yet. I don’t speak Dutch so apologies if this is a silly question but when you mention FoxIT are you referring to the PDF application?
They were pretty public with the evidence when it came out (including releasing security camera footage and names of Russian agents). Which parts do you think are false?
Agree with you. Sounds too good to be True. IMO, Probably somebody had a mole inside GRU who was instrumental in getting the info. but in order to provide cover for its source, they invented a success story of the AIVD.
There isn't much literature on it (Dutch spying activities), but the little there is might convince you.
A fun exercise is applying with the AIVD or NFI (involved in spying on home soil). You may meet someone who can tell you some good war stories. Of course, you'll be bound not to speak of it outside company walls ;)
I'm skeptical of that story. I know a Russian on Facebook who disputed it. He said that the Red Square building described in the report doesn't exist, and provided a Google Maps view of Moscow to support his claim. It's also curious to me why the Dutch even would allow APT29 to get away with their activities at the time, if they truly had access as deep as they claimed.
"According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg" from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14, which was four days after Seth Rich died.[80][81][82] In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence.[83] BuzzFeed described the messages as "the starkest proof yet that Assange knew a likely Russian government hacker had the Democrat leaks he wanted. And they reveal the deliberate bad faith with which Assange fed the groundless claims that Rich was his source, even as he knew the documents' origin."[83]"
So, there's no evidence, other than people with at best a vested interest against the Clintons or obviously compromised by Russian intelligence - if you work with them once, they've got you.
Not at all, but judging from the amount of effort put into starting a war with Russia around the same time I find it more likely that the whole thing was made up.
US intelligence, Dutch intelligence, UK intelligence, German intelligence, who cares? They're all in the same boat, and it's sinking fast.
>At the same time they colonized Crimea, fought a war with Georgia. Who is starting wars here?
Well, one could say those who befriended and armed their neighbourhood states like Georgia to use them against them, or helped install Nazi sympathisers toppling the legitimate government in Ukraine?
I know it's probably unintentional considering the false news reports at the time, but the 2016 DNC hack was actually never conclusively pinned on Russia.
In fact, according to a recent release the entire basis for the US intelligence appartus' opinion was totally unproven.
CrowdStrike never conclusively proved Russia was behind the hack, and in fact didn't even conclusively prove a hack even occurred.
As a citizen, I am not okay with this degree of intra-sovereign surveillance. If I am to live in, pay taxes, and otherwise contribute to a society, I want to be free of surveillance and subterfuge within that society - my states laws, designed to protect me from thugs and mafia (a very real threat), should not be thwarted by military industrial mafia hell-bent on exerting control over sovereign states, in spite of my desires as a citizen.
The trouble is, I see no way forward for citizens of the 5-eyes states to address this issue, other than either a) revolution to uncover and dissolve the control networks that have been covertly put in place, or b) sedition - leaving the state, and not contributing (taxes) to its continued economic development.
As we have seen with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its not enough to just reveal the covert secrets that underpin this inner state-within-a-state - there have to be actual repercussions for those involved, and this isn't happening at any rate near well enough for my needs.
So, it appears that sedition is the only option - and indeed, that is what I have done: I no longer participate in the economies of any of the 5-eyes states, directly, and I"m about to give up my citizenship in my birth nation over the issue.
But we know this isn't a solution. Do we have to start a brain-drain revolution which moves the economic power of an intelligent class from state to state? Or, do we just let mother nature do its thing, and 'hope' that things will 'change' in the 5-eyes super-state somehow? Too many people I trust and respect in the crypto-anarchist sphere are responding to this appeal with "well, covid-19 will sort it out" for my liking .. but what other options are there, really? Journalism is utterly dead and decrepit in the West, this is not an avenue. Violent revolution makes no sense whatsoever. So, brain-drain it is ...
The subtext is one state using another states spying activities in order to gain an advantage in its own war against a third state, and is presented in a way that seems designed to popularise the idea of surveillance economies exchanging with one another, without civilian oversight.
I don't think this is a good thing. We have seen that the USA has, essentially, co=opted the intelligence-gathering communities of the peer states in its coalition - and only seems to be 'acceptable' because its being done by 'our side'. But I think the state issue is such a large problem that such circumstances can only lead to further catastrophes in the future, when these extra-sovereign entities, not bounded by any local state laws, decide that they need to justify their continued existence by exerting that covert power in order to create conditions conducive to the prosperity of the secret apparatus, itself.
Are Australians okay with not being spied on by their own intelligence agencies, while being spied on by the CIA, which then shares that information with Australian spy agencies as an extra-sovereign economic exchange? Perhaps they are - but I hope this is not the case elsewhere in the 5-eyes world.
What it indicates to me is that we civilians will always have to work hard to get ahead of the military sovereign and lessen the dependencies they put in place to continually justify their existence - i.e. we need to make peace faster than they can make war. Would that we had another Lennon around to assist that process...
> The subtext is one state using another states spying activities in order to gain an advantage in its own war against a third state
Do you understand what an 'ally' is? They're allies. Helping each other is what allies do. You make it sound like it's some bizarre underhand agreement. They're just allies. I'm sure the UK would return the favour to the Dutch if Aruba were invaded (don't actually know about their defence agreements but you get the idea.)
> without civilian oversight
This article is about civilian agencies, and discusses civilian politicians talking about them. Talking about civilian oversight doesn't make any sense here. What were you trying to mean?
> Would that we had another Lennon around to assist that process...
>Do you understand what an 'ally' is? They're allies.
Helping allies route around local legislation designed to protect the rights of citizens in one state, by using another states surveillance apparatus to violate those rights, as is the case with the 5-eyes war coalition: this is the end of sovereign state-hood and the beginning of a new world order where the 'intelligence' community ends up having more rights than the citizens they're "sworn"^Wsupposed to protect...
I don't think we should be so easily swayed into accepting this state of affairs.
>This article is about civilian agencies, and discusses civilian politicians talking about them. Talking about civilian oversight doesn't make any sense here. What were you trying to mean?
That's the state of affairs now, but it was not the case in 1982, during the conflict, and it was a long road until we, the citizens who paid for these actions, found out just how it all went down.
>The pop singer?
Yes, he was a pop singer, and he also was the founder of one of the most effective Peace Movements, which deflated with his assassination. We need more individuals like him, now more than ever.
If the island were heavily populated prior to colonization, or even filled with Argentinians, it would make sense. But it was uninhabited before colonization, and they voted 96% in favor remaining a colony in 1986. The UK actually attempted to transfer the island to Argentina twice in the 20th century, but stopped because the Falkland islanders themselves hated the idea.
I think it’s pretty hard to argue that Argentina did anything but invade here, not liberate, given the disposition of the actual people who live there.
It was uninhabited before the French and Brits settled there, but soon the French and later the Brits were replaced with Spanish settlers. It had been a Spanish colony for decades before the British invaded and kicked the Spanish settlers out. Of course replacing the original inhabitants with you own works, it's the oldest trick in the book.
> the Falkland islanders themselves hated the idea.
Well apart from nationalism and resentment after the invasion joining Argentina is also a bad move in economic terms because it has a severe crisis every other decade.
I don't think you can ask them to join a country that does such a poor job managing itself and Argentina should focus on economic and legal stability before talking about it again.
Nevertheless, the point still stands: should we be so willing to allow our intelligence apparatus, as citizens, to be sold on an open market of economy for subterfuge and covert action?
I would argue, definitely not. To allow this to occur, creates a super-state - as we have seen - which answers to nobody but itself, and is thus an usurpation of democracy.
We tend to like surveillance as long as it's in our favor and interest. Aren't we?
But the moment you hear some surveillance or espionage from another country, then it's time to bash them hard and feel bad about them.
But, I'm afraid we don't have a choice because we are living in a zero-sum game.
And the irony is that the more we play non-cooperative, the more reasons we give to each other to play non-cooperative.
I don't believe anybody's surveillance is good. This is the opposite of free and open society, and is a creeping tyranny. I discourage any such devotion in my peers - its all too easy to just submit to the overwhelming might of the wests' military industrial complex.
I guess the best thing to do is to continue to fight covert manipulation at all costs, using any means necessary beyond violence. This seems to not be so much of a zero-sum game as capitulation.
True, but American forces later manufactured and utilized their findings. That was quite certainly surveillance. And, by my book, it was quite certainly good.
Exactly. If we spent half as much making peace as we do funding war and terror, we'd all be multilingual and a lot more tolerant of cultures not our own...
The Dutch are a part of 9-eyes, which indeed reports to the 5-eyes coalition. They are, therefore, a second-rate member of this extra-sovereign entity.
You're dramatizing an intelligence-sharing agreement. Something allies have always done. The entities, the spy agencies, are decidedly of sovereign creation.
I have absolutely zero democratic involvement in the USA's intelligence apparatus, although I am liable to be a subject of its attention. This violates my participation in my own country's sovereign legislation designed to protect my rights - therefore, it is no longer substantively valid.
Argentina did not have air refueling nor night vision equipment. They sent conscripts to fight gurkhas. Their exocet missiles where sabotaged by the military contractors servicing them. Their neighbors monitored them via radar and notified movements the British.
Many countries were helping with intelligence. Norway helped by stealing Soviet satellite imagery.
And by attacking first they could not invoke the Rio Pact.
Argentina did have an air to air refuelling capability, and its availability or not was crucial in a number of instances. Likewise, the Gurkhas went out at battalion strength near the end of the war. The exocets weren't so much sabotaged as much as all the French simply returning home leaving the kit unfitted and unconfigured. The stuff that had been set up already was used to great effect.
You're right though that they did not set themselves up for success when they did not make the most of their first mover advantage and build up the island with supplies, equipment, and well trained soldiers rather than conscripts.
At the time, they hoped that domestic events meant that the UK simply wouldn't care is all. They didn't come for a fight.
Indeed, I think they just assumed that the UK hadn't the strength nor the will to start a war on the other side of the world just to fight over a barren island.
Ironically, if they had not attacked the Falklands might be Argentinian or under joint sovereignty now because, indeed, no-one really cared about the Falklands.
But their actions ended up guaranteeing that the UK would never even discuss the issue for at least a century...
> The stuff that had been set up already was used to great effect.
The stuff that had not been set up still worked too. The exocet that hit HMS Glamorgan was fired from an improvised platform that had been built by the Argentinian Navy.
It was stupid on many levels. It would have been a lot smarter to invest in better relations with the islands: pay for people to study in Buenos Aires, subsidize vacations on the mainland, etc.
"a) revolution to uncover and dissolve the control networks that have been covertly put in place, or
b) sedition - leaving the state, and not contributing (taxes) to its continued economic development."
Many have enough power to leverage a) or b), but very few choose to do so. Why?
Because if you somehow manage to disolve the current status quo, you'd need to rebuild a similar status quo, probably with your group deeply plugged into the newest surveillance / society control system.
> ultimatelly you would probably have accomplished very few changes, though you could obtain more power / money, but
If you're capable / resourceful enough to make happen a) or b), you probably already have lots of power / money.
Therefore, the current status quo works quite well for you, and there are easier ways to change some things (not all of them though), than going right to a revolution.
That's something you can see in most empires through history: very few were intentionally brough down by internal players. Most players just wanted to get in charge (by any means), but they were not fundamentally changing anything in the current social order.
Going against the state was (and it is), almost certainly not the best path of action.
Would it have been possible for Argentina to use public encryption algorithms back then, instead of crypto machines weakened by US intelligence? No idea what was available back in the 80s.
Take into account that Ultra (breaking of enigma) was only made public in 1970s (or 1960s if you count information about Polish intelligence breaking enigma before WWII). NSA only stopped using similar rotor-based designs in 1980s.
In 2014 AIVD hacked the office network of Russia's APT29, and maintained access at least through the 2016 DNC hack. The best part was they also had access to the security cameras and were able to watch the attacks in real time.