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"From time to time, SID is offered access to the personal contact databases of US officials," it states. "Such 'Rolodexes' may contain contact information for foreign political or military leaders, to include direct line, fax, residence and cellular numbers."
"This success leads S2 [signals intelligence] to wonder if there are NSA liaisons whose supported customers may be willing to share their 'Rolodexes' or phone lists with NSA as potential sources of intelligence," it states. "S2 welcomes such information!"
MrSpad
I know that this stuff in public requires a public response but, within goverments everybody knows everybody is spying on each other. Allies always spy on each other just when they get caught it is normally kept quite and the person sent back home. It happens at both goverment and corporate levels. I just find it funny how goverments have to publicly pretend to be suprised knowing that they are doing the exact same thing. In my time I knew of the UK, France, Canada, Cuba, Russia and China all getting caught at one time or another getting caught in with their nose in the cookie jar of whatever organization I was in at the time. Only one was ever made public. And you can bet it was not one of our allies.
The recent revelations about Edward Snowden and the extent of the NSA’s snooping have got more than a few people spooked. And the concerns extend far beyond the confines of the US population. The Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO), which is the agency in charge of the Kremlin’s and Russian president’s security, has decided it no longer trusts computers and is reverting to using typewriters instead.
No official reason has been given for an order placed this week for $15,000 worth of electric typewriters by the FSO. But amusingly, the reason why has leaked via Russian newspaper Izvestiya.
The FSO has decided to revert back to keeping paper records in light of recent leaks and details of how much monitoring is taking place by certain agencies. In particular, news that Edward Snowden was bugged during the G20 London summit back in 2009 seems to be a key reason for the decision. And in fact, this is just an extension of practices already used at the Kremlin. President Vladimir Putin regularly receives reports that have been produced on a typewriter, and secret notes are passed on paper, not via internal email or messaging services.
By relying on typewriters and paper records, it’s possible to link every single document back to an individual typewriter. Combine that with logs of who was using them and when, along with limiting access to the documents, and it becomes much more difficult to leak something without being found out. Anyone attempting to leak info will probably have to revert to classic spying methods and photograph documents rather than steal them.
I doubt this switch will be a practice followed by other governments simply due to the costs and storage needs involved.
... My hopes are slim now, but I think the crux of this is that we need to make the general public aware of the REAL situation, not just the spin and downplaying they hear on the tv....
QuantumCypher
reply to post by beezzer
Be careful Beez...be very suspect of any bacon you see seemingly lying around with no one guarding it...they know your weakness...
According to internal NSA information, which SPIEGEL has seen, the agency's European Cryptologic Center (ECC) is headquartered in Griesheim. A 2011 NSA report indicates that the ECC is responsible for the "largest analysis and productivity in Europe." According to the report, results from the secret installation find their way into the President's Daily Brief, the daily intelligence report given to US President Barack Obama, an average of twice a week.
Germany is a special place for the NSA, in many respects. Few other countries are the source of as much data for US intelligence agencies, much of which comes from the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency. At the same time Germany itself, despite all friendly assurances to the contrary, is also a target of the surveillance. According to a "secret" summary among the documents obtained by Snowden, which SPIEGEL was able to view, Germany is one of the targets of US espionage activity.
In the April 2013 summary, the NSA defines its "intelligence priorities" on a scale ranging from "1" (highest interest) to "5" (lowest interest). Not surprisingly, the top targets include China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to the list of spying priorities, the European Union is also one of the targets of American surveillance, specifically in six individual areas. The areas assigned a priority level of "3" are EU foreign policy goals, "international trade" and "economic stability." Lower-priority areas are new technologies, energy security and food security issues.
QuantumCypher
reply to post by MrSpad
First of all, how would we react if say we found out that the UK had tapped Obama's, Hillary Clinton, and Harry Reid's phone's? That's not even taking into account spying on millions of normal American citizens phones? It's one thing for us to spy on Iraq or Syria, but our own nation's allies is a completely different matter. Especially if we expect them to stay allies, as the fallout from this mess is proving.
Secondly, yes, there have always been spies, always will be spies, but this is on an unprecedented level. It's one thing to keep tabs on military, tech projects, and maybe even a few diplomats, it's a different matter entirely to bug the phones of another nations leaders, and again specifically our allies. How is Britain going to react if they find out we bugged the royal families phones? By a program whose only justification is "keeping America safe from terrorists"?