NSA, British spy agency have secret access to Deutsche Telekom

[IDemo]

Source: The Economic Times

BERLIN: The US National Security Agency and British intelligence services are able to secretly access data from telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and several other German operators, according to Der Spiegel weekly.

An NSA programme called "Treasure Map" gives the US agency and Britain's electronic eavesdropping GCHQ near real-time information about the operators' networks, right through to end users on computers, smartphones or tablets, Der Spiegel said in a report to appear in its Sunday edition.

It is the latest in a string of revelations based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Spiegel said the tracking programme, which it dubbed "the Google Earth of the Internet", can be used to plan cyber attacks.



Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/nsa-british-spy-agency-have-secret-access-to-deutsche-telekom-report/articleshow/42406492.cms

[KeepItReal]

1. "Total Information Awareness" is alive and kicking

In March 2002, John M. Poindexter, a former national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, sat down with Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the National Security Agency. Mr. Poindexter sketched out a new Pentagon program called Total Information Awareness, that proposed to scan the world’s electronic information — including phone calls, e-mails and financial and travel records — looking for transactions associated with terrorist plots. The N.S.A., the government’s chief eavesdropper, routinely collected and analyzed such signals, so Mr. Poindexter thought the agency was an obvious place to test his ideas.

He never had much of a chance. When T.I.A.’s existence became public, it was denounced as the height of post-9/11 excess and ridiculed for its creepy name. Mr. Poindexter’s notorious role in the Iran-contra affair became a central focus of the debate. He resigned from government, and T.I.A. was dismantled in 2003.

But what Mr. Poindexter didn’t know was that the N.S.A. was already pursuing its own version of the program, and on a scale that he had only imagined. A decade later, the legacy of T.I.A. is quietly thriving at the N.S.A. It is more pervasive than most people think, and it operates with little accountability or restraint.

...

What’s missing, however, is a reliable way of keeping track of who sees what, and who watches whom. After T.I.A. was officially shut down in 2003, the N.S.A. adopted many of Mr. Poindexter’s ideas except for two: an application that would “anonymize” data, so that information could be linked to a person only through a court order; and a set of audit logs, which would keep track of whether innocent Americans’ communications were getting caught in a digital net.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html

[cstanleytech]

2. I wonder if the German government will deny involvement because

I really have a hard time believe that they were not in bed with the US and British on this in some form or other.

[JDPriestly]

5. The German government serves at the will of the German people.

This might affect how Germans vote. But there are other issues at stake. At any rate, whether the German government is complicit in the excessive surveillance or not, this will be a big deal for Germans. They lived under the NAZIs and then many of them including Angela Merkel lived in East German under the Communists and the STASI. They got their fill of surveillance and the repressive, lying regimes that resort to it.

Some surveillance is necessary for the defense of a country. But excessive surveillance actually undermines the domestic tranquility and defenses of the country. That is especially true when, as in the case of the NAZIs, the East German government and to a lesser but still problematic extent our country, the government lies repeatedly to the people.

It's very sad that our government resorted or is resorting (who knows?) to these extremes. It is unnecessary and will in the long run prove counterproductive.

[cstanleytech]

6. Agreed its a careful balance the governments of the world have to walk

especially if in their goal to protect us they end up going to far and violate our basic rights needlessly.

[JDPriestly]

8. It's really hared to find the balance, but one of the most essential tasks of a government that

purports to be democratic or to have a representative government is to find that balance and to sacrifice expediency to the maintenance of that balance. It is utterly imperative to find that balance. Very difficult, but losing that balance is dangerous. When I saw the Verizon order, I thought, "Uh. Oh. Our NSA has lost that balance." The Fourth Amendment makes it easy to find that balance.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. "Nothing is beyond our reach."

[JDPriestly]

4. Having lived in Germany, one of my first thoughts when the scope of the programs became

apparent after Snowden's revelations was that the German people would hate this.

They went through the Hitler era, and many of them including Angela Merkel lived in East Germany under the surveillance state of the Communists and the STASI.

This does not sit well with the German people. And any German government that does not react to it according to the will of the German people will, I would guess, lose a lot of respect if not the majority. There are a lot of political issues for people to think about when they vote, but this will be one of them.

[DFW]

7. I've known my phone here has been tapped for years. Let 'em.

I have some ex-Mossad friends who have devices that can detect whether or not a line is being tapped by a third party, and they ran a check on my phone. Sure enough, it's being tapped. As if I didn't suspect that already. I ALWAYS assume my conversations are being listened to, and speak on the phone accordingly.

I have a high phone bill and calls come from and go to a dozen countries a day, so I was a prime candidate to begin with. As long as I don't get a bill for translation services from some German, British, Russian or Chinese intelligence agency, I'm pretty much indifferent. If they want to listen to some conversation in Catalan about where a friend and I plan to have paella on my next visit to Barcelona, or where I plan to have lunch in the Gamla Stan and arrange it in Swedish with my friend up there, I don't care. The fact that they think it's worth their time to bother indicates to me that their status as "intelligence" agencies are highly questionable, but that's their problem.

[JDPriestly]

9. If my phone is being tapped, I hope those listening enjoy my conversations with my family.

That's almost the only people I talk to.

[DFW]

11. I talk to dozens pf people a day

(Day job, and all)

[randome]

10. Once again, no context is asked nor given.

Is any of this done without warrants? We have no idea, do we?

Spiegel said the tracking programme, which it dubbed "the Google Earth of the Internet", can be used to plan cyber attacks.

"...can be used..." Is it being used that way? Again, we have no idea because no one thought to pose these basic questions.
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