Western spies forced to pullout : Snowden to blame

[BruceVC]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11673533/British-spies-removed-from-operations-after-Russia-and-China-crack-codes-to-leaked-Snowden-files.html

 

So this is the result of the Assange and Snowden type attacks on the West...I hope all the people supporting Snowden are happy, this is irrefutable proof that Snowden has weakened certain Western countries and there intelligence gathering abilities 

 

In summary Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull back spies in Russia and China as some of Snowdens leaked encrypted documents have been cracked. This is a disaster as the Russians and Chinese are actively spying on Western countries, as is normal for most countries,  so now the West is at a major intelligence gather disadvantage..hopefully this is restored in the future 

 

I hope this puts to rest finally the spurious view that  " what Snowden did hasn't really hurt the USA "   

[Elerond]

I would say that Snowden did service for NSA, CIA and GCHQ, by showing clear weaknesses in their ways to operate, ways their operations were ineffective, but same time cause public distrust, by exposing only data that those agencies know was leaked, how they were depended only one or couple ways to get information from certain targets and showing where their weaknesses were. Of course needing to close active operations is inconvenience, but it also makes them actually better their operations and procedures and information handling in future, as there was clearly problems in those in all said organizations as Snowden was able to stole that much information in first place in format that Russia and China were able to crack in couple years. 

[Meshugger]

https://archive.is/NsJVt

 

It seems like it wasn't that difficult to hack when you do not even encrypt people's social security number. Here i thought that after Snowden they would've put things like this as top priority, but apparently not.

 

 

The Social Security numbers were not encrypted, the American Federation of Government Employees said, calling that "an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce."

 

"Unencrypted information of this kind this is disgraceful -- it really is disgraceful," Brenner said. "We've had wakeup calls now for 20 years or more, and we keep hitting the snooze button."

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Bruce, you're to the US as tankies are to the Soviet Union.

[Zoraptor]

That report is bollocks. Breaking the encryption on Snowden's files requires breaking aes256- if that's broken then there are Major Problems since it is used very extensively by a wide range of internet applications and services for encryption- and, crucially, by the NSA itself. And a brute force penetration is statistically impossible.

 

That Bruce takes something said by an 'anonymous source' to Rupert Murdoch as gospel is unsurprising, as is the usual acritical repetition by the media; but the story, as a whole, isn't credible in the slightest. I can perfectly well believe that they're moving agents, but it's far more likely that one of the latest security breaches included something monumentally stupid like a list of active agents in plain text, or a list of crypto keys in plain text, or both. Oddly enough, one of Snowden's bigger but more ignored (well, by the NSA parrot choir) points was how much information is collected and how widely available and insecure it is. Which is pretty obvious, given the two breaches we know about came from someone not even employed by the NSA at the time but by a contractor, and a soldier with the lowest (?) regular rank possible. Frankly, China or Russia could just do it the old fashioned way and pay an equivalent person to get information surreptitiously if they need it, it would be up to date, easier and the person could do it multiple times.

 

Reminds me how it was leaked that David Miranda was carrying a password around on him when he got detained at Heathrow and all the tutting about how that was terrible and a security risk. Of course, GCHQ then went to court to try and hold his stuff longer, because they couldn't crack the encryption on his hard drive even with him supposedly carrying a password... Slander and misinformation, and still you get hapless drones without an independent thought in their minds saying how we should all trust the gummint, trust the NSA/ GCSB/ GCHQ etc and they have our best interests at heart. Yeah, they only lie to protect us, they only listen to everything they can for the same reason. Meh, all terrorists can do is kill you, those 'patriots' and their shills would make you a slave and not even let you know until they need to force your hand for something.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Zoraptor

[Walsingham]

Query, Zor: why did Snowden have to hand over everything he took? What did all the technical detail add to the debate, exactly?

[Vaeliorin]

Darn that Snowden, stealing the spy condom fund.  How are they supposed to spy properly if they have to worry about impregnating their targets?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zoraptor]

Query, Zor: why did Snowden have to hand over everything he took? What did all the technical detail add to the debate, exactly?

 

He didn't. I've actually looked at stuff released by Greenwalt et al and it has redactions up the wazoo; you may be thinking of Assange/ Wikileaks who started out with redactions then basically went 'oh asterisk it' and dumped all the low value stuff sans redactions. He does have a, er, 'continued good health promotion' file which gets released should he 'accidentally' get hit by a JDAM aimed at Al-Jazeera the Chinese Embassy a known terrorist; but that obviously hasn't happened, yet at least.

 

The answer as to why detail was released is obvious, it makes it impossible to refute when you have the documentation and can read it yourself; you cannot just claim it's paranoid delusion/ made up or misunderstood. That's why apologists have moved from labelling anyone who dislikes governmental monitoring as tinfoil hat conspiracists- can hardly use that label when it's obvious they were right- to saying that they trust the government and thus everyone should, or the even more cretinous "I don't care, therefore nobody else should", or totalitarianisms favourite "if you have nothing to hide..."

 

Thing is, he didn't have the files on him when he went to either HK or Moscow, they don't even have physical access to the files- and GCHQ couldn't crack them even with physical access.

[Volourn]

"So this is the result of the Assange and Snowden type attacks on the West...I hope all the people supporting Snowden are happy, this is irrefutable proof that Snowden has weakened certain Western countries and there intelligence gathering abilities"

 

That's what Snowden and his supporters want. They are pro Russian and ME tyrants. More importantly, they  are full of self hatred which is why they are anti Amerika.

[Orogun01]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11673533/British-spies-removed-from-operations-after-Russia-and-China-crack-codes-to-leaked-Snowden-files.html

 

So this is the result of the Assange and Snowden type attacks on the West...I hope all the people supporting Snowden are happy, this is irrefutable proof that Snowden has weakened certain Western countries and there intelligence gathering abilities 

 

In summary Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull back spies in Russia and China as some of Snowdens leaked encrypted documents have been cracked. This is a disaster as the Russians and Chinese are actively spying on Western countries, as is normal for most countries,  so now the West is at a major intelligence gather disadvantage..hopefully this is restored in the future 

 

I hope this puts to rest finally the spurious view that  " what Snowden did hasn't really hurt the USA "

This is ultimately the fault of the same government that spout all those ideals that they fail to live up to. Is it such a surprise that people are disillusioned with the state of the West? Also, this is politics there are no clear black and white and it seems like the West is the darker shade of grey.

[BruceVC]

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11673533/British-spies-removed-from-operations-after-Russia-and-China-crack-codes-to-leaked-Snowden-files.html

 

So this is the result of the Assange and Snowden type attacks on the West...I hope all the people supporting Snowden are happy, this is irrefutable proof that Snowden has weakened certain Western countries and there intelligence gathering abilities 

 

In summary Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull back spies in Russia and China as some of Snowdens leaked encrypted documents have been cracked. This is a disaster as the Russians and Chinese are actively spying on Western countries, as is normal for most countries,  so now the West is at a major intelligence gather disadvantage..hopefully this is restored in the future 

 

I hope this puts to rest finally the spurious view that  " what Snowden did hasn't really hurt the USA "

This is ultimately the fault of the same government that spout all those ideals that they fail to live up to. Is it such a surprise that people are disillusioned with the state of the West? Also, this is politics there are no clear black and white and it seems like the West is the darker shade of grey.

 

I hear you but frankly I don't really care if people are disillusioned with the state of West. That isn't really the point I am raising. I have always maintained that Assange and Snowden have attempted to  damage the national security of the West, this was denied by some.

 

We now have a reality where spies have been recalled from China and Russia. These spies could have been in operation for years and now that information gathering has to start again. This clearly has a negative impact to the Wests information gathering ability, this really should concern all of us as it does undermine the West's overall security 

[cirdanx]

Thats probably more loud noise and finger pointing than anything else. They all will continue to spy on each other one way or another, if anything it forced them to come up with better or more creative ways than before.

 

Not to mention what Zoraptor said. 

[Gorth]

Those agencies are like children without parental guidance. Sometimes they need a bloody nose to teach them to watch where they go.

 

Besides, I would be surprised if both the Russians and Americans didn't know exactly who is currently members of each others spy networks. Would be even less surprised if the info was another attempt at discrediting Snowden (especially if it's just hearsay without reliable sources).

 

As for Assange... well, he can rot in his embassy building. No sympathy for authoritarian figures trying to build a cult of personality around themselves.

[HoonDing]

I doubt whether James Bond ever pulls out.

[Bartimaeus]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/claims-edward-snowdens-whistleblower-files-5882142

[rjshae]

I would say that Snowden did service for NSA, CIA and GCHQ, by showing clear weaknesses in their ways to operate, ways their operations were ineffective, but same time cause public distrust, by exposing only data that those agencies know was leaked, how they were depended only one or couple ways to get information from certain targets and showing where their weaknesses were. Of course needing to close active operations is inconvenience, but it also makes them actually better their operations and procedures and information handling in future, as there was clearly problems in those in all said organizations as Snowden was able to stole that much information in first place in format that Russia and China were able to crack in couple years. 

 

That's like shooting yourself in the foot and so discovering that your gun still doesn't have enough hitting power because your foot didn't come off.    The primary benefit of Snowden's activities went directly to states with low standards for personal liberty. He's an intelligent fool.

[Zoraptor]

His leaks didn't benefit Russia or China at all, practically- plenty of perfectly normal people had a good idea of what the NSA et al were doing, you can guarantee that the FSB/ SVR and equivalent Chinese agencies especially knew what was up. The famous example is Putin, ex FSB, who is known to be almost impossible to monitor because he avoids electronic communications as much as possible on principle, and always has. The only benefit to them was people knowing their governments were a bunch of privacy invading panty sniffers and the resulting drop in regard for those countries- it's suddenly not mass monitoring but mass collection, because they aren't going to look at it, promise; using the absolute classic pedophile defence technique.

 

If there's any practical benefit to Russia/ China it is from the pretty terrible security of the agencies collecting all the data that the NSA uses to monitor people, and there's nothing Snowden can do about that, indeed it's been one of his major points that they weren't using proper security and had very lax monitoring, per the stories of contractors passing around nudes and spying on their partners or exes with impunity.

 

And again, they haven't cracked aes256, it's as definite as anything can be. The anonymous source is clearly lying about the source of any leak. Frankly, if they'd broken aes256 and had a list of spies (monumentally stupid if there even was one) then it would be too late to move them anyway. Cracking aes256 would go a long way to bringing down the financial system even without evidence of an active breach, the necessity of security and the appearance of security is that serious.

 

In general though, they are relying on people being gullible with these sorts of stories. Same as the Miranda "we found his password written down!!!- actually we can't crack his file" and the Assange/ Manning "people are dying because of this!!!- actually nobody has died" they're perfectly willing to lie in the knowledge most people will just accept whatever they say. But still, I know it makes me feel secure, knowing the same people who lie blatantly for their own benefit and protection have access to everything everyone has said online, clearly they'd never abuse it...

[cirdanx]

And again, they haven't cracked aes256, it's as definite as anything can be. The anonymous source is clearly lying about the source of any leak.

 

Just to clear up for some people who might be interested what AES256 is and why this is more than unlikely.

 

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279619

 

There is a reason why goverments and in particular intelligence agencies are not very happy with privat persons using encryption.

[majestic]

 

And again, they haven't cracked aes256, it's as definite as anything can be. The anonymous source is clearly lying about the source of any leak.

 

Just to clear up for some people who might be interested what AES256 is and why this is more than unlikely.

 

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279619

 

There is a reason why goverments and in particular intelligence agencies are not very happy with privat persons using encryption.

 

 

There are a number of attacks that can break any encryption, but they have a few things in common, mostly requiring hardware access at encryption or decryption time - a very interesting one analyzes the sounds made by the CPU during key generation and encryption*, but if that is the case and such an attack was used to break the encrypted files than the fault cannot lie with Snowden at all and would have happened anyway.

 

*Which means, whenever you encrypt something, listen to heavy metal amped to max for increased security.

 

So yeah, that story has a real whiff of eau de merde and propagated by someone who cleared watched too much NCIS. 'Twas probably a russian and a chinese guy hacking at the same keyboard at the same time easily breaking into heavily encrypted files. Like on TV.

Edited June 15, 2015 by majestic

[WDeranged]

Yep, sounds like BS to me.

[WDeranged]

Bull**** sensors confirmed accurate.

 

Reporter Who Wrote Sunday Times 'Snowden' Propaganda Admits That He's Just Writing What UK Gov't Told Him

 

Video

Edited June 16, 2015 by WDeranged

[Bartimaeus]

That's definitely a better counter article than the one I linked earlier.

[Zoraptor]

Well, it is at least somewhat refreshing to hear a 'journalist' admit he's just a glorified governmental PR person even if it is simultaneously rather depressing that he basically just wrote what he was told as tritely as someone from 1938 Pravda denouncing an unperson would. Indeed, the lack of threat of receving a 7.62x25 to the skull from Beria if you refused makes it considerably worse.

[BruceVC]

Bull**** sensors confirmed accurate.

 

Reporter Who Wrote Sunday Times 'Snowden' Propaganda Admits That He's Just Writing What UK Gov't Told Him

 

Video

 

Well that is a huge relief ...but it doens't make sense that the government would want to him to print such a unbelievable story knowing it would be questioned ?

 

What would be the purpose? I should have scrutinized the facts more closely because looking back it does seem unlikely 

[FlintlockJazz]

 

Bull**** sensors confirmed accurate.

 

Reporter Who Wrote Sunday Times 'Snowden' Propaganda Admits That He's Just Writing What UK Gov't Told Him

 

Video

 

Well that is a huge relief ...but it doens't make sense that the government would want to him to print such a unbelievable story knowing it would be questioned ?

 

What would be the purpose? I should have scrutinized the facts more closely because looking back it does seem unlikely 

 

Because it muddies the water.  Because many people may see the first report but not the reveal that it's bollocks.  The Daily Mail here often publishes 'apologies' for headlines it has done that were utter lies yet most people don't see them, so while the truth 'gets out' not everyone will hear it.