<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Find me another country that does not engage in espionage, will you?<br><br>--srs (iPad)</div><div><br>On 28-Jan-2014, at 18:15, Guru गुरु <<a href="mailto:Guru@ITforChange.net">Guru@ITforChange.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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Specially for those who believe (or rather, who would like others to
believe) that the status quo is to be preserved...<br>
<br>
Excerpt<br>
<b><br>
Mr Snowden did you sleep well the last couple of nights because I
was </b><b><br>
</b><b>reading that you asked for a kind of police protection. Are
there any </b><b><br>
</b><b>threats? </b><b><br>
</b><br>
There are significant threats but I sleep very well. There was an <br>
article that came out in an online outlet called Buzz Feed where
they <br>
interviewed officials from the Pentagon, from the National Security
<br>
Agency and they gave them anonymity to be able to say what they want
and <br>
what they told the reporter was that they wanted to murder me. These
<br>
individuals - and these are acting government officials. They said
they <br>
would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to
poison me <br>
as I was returning from the grocery store and have me die in the
shower<br>
<br>
<b>*But fortunately you are still alive with us.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Right but I'm still alive and I don't lose sleep because I've done
what <br>
I feel I needed to do. It was the right thing to do and I'm not
going to <br>
be afraid.<br>
<br>
<b>*Does the NSA spy on Siemens, on Mercedes, on other successful
German </b><b><br>
</b><b>companies for example, to prevail, to have the advantage of
knowing what </b><b><br>
</b><b>is going on in a scientific and economic world.*</b><br>
<br>
I don't want to pre-empt the editorial decisions of journalists but
what <br>
I will say is there's no question that the US is engaged in economic
<br>
spying.<br>
<br>
<br>
End excerpt<br>
<br>
Gurumurthy Kasinathan<br>
Director, IT for Change<br>
In Special Consultative Status with the United Nations ECOSOC<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ITforChange.Net">www.ITforChange.Net</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Source - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277_page-1.html">http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277_page-1.html</a><br>
<br>
Snowden-Interview in English<br>
- 26.01.2014 23:05 Uhr - Autor/in: Hubert Seipel<br>
<br>
Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the documents about US mass <br>
surveillance. He spoke about his disclosures and his life to NDR <br>
journalist Seipel in Moscow. <br>
<br>
*"The greatest fear I have", and I quote you, "regarding the
disclosures <br>
is nothing will change." That was one of your greatest concerns at
the <br>
time but in the meantime there is a vivid discussion about the
situation <br>
with the NSA; not only in America but also in Germany and in Brazil
and <br>
President Obama was forced to go public and to justify what the NSA
was <br>
doing on legal grounds.*<br>
<br>
What we saw initially in response to the revelations was sort of a <br>
circling of the wagons of government around the National Security <br>
Agency. Instead of circling around the public and protecting their <br>
rights the political class circled around the security state and <br>
protected their rights. What's interesting is though that was the <br>
initially response, since then we've seen a softening. We've seen
the <br>
President acknowledge that when he first said "we've drawn the right
<br>
balance, there are no abuses", we've seen him and his officials
admit <br>
that there have been abuses. There have been thousands of violations
of <br>
the National Security Agency and other agencies and authorities
every <br>
single year.<br>
<br>
<b>*Is the speech of Obama the beginning of a serious regulation?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
It was clear from the President's speech that he wanted to make
minor <br>
changes to preserve authorities that we don't need. The President <br>
created a review board from officials that were personal friends,
from <br>
national security insiders, former Deputy of the CIA, people who had
<br>
every incentive to be soft on these programs and to see them in the
best <br>
possible light. But what they found was that these programs have no
<br>
value, they've never stopped a terrorist attack in the United States
and <br>
they have marginal utility at best for other things. The only thing
that <br>
the Section 215 phone metadata program, actually it's a broader
metadata <br>
programme of bulk collection -- bulk collection means mass
surveillance <br>
-- program was in stopping or detecting $ 8.500 wire transfer from a
cab <br>
driver in California and it's this kind of review where insiders go
we <br>
don't need these programs, these programs don't make us safe. They
take <br>
a tremendous amount of resources to run and they offer us no value.
They <br>
go "we can modify these". The National Security agency operates
under <br>
the President's executive authority alone. He can end of modify or <br>
direct a change of their policies at any time.<br>
<br>
<b>*For the first time President Obama did concede that the NSA
collects </b><b><br>
</b><b>and stores trillions of data.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email,
make a <br>
purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card <br>
somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that
it's a <br>
good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you've never been <br>
suspected of any crime. Traditionally the government would identify
a <br>
suspect, they would go to a judge, they would say we suspect he's <br>
committed this crime, they would get a warrant and then they would
be <br>
able to use the totality of their powers in pursuit of the <br>
investigation. Nowadays what we see is they want to apply the
totality <br>
of their powers in advance - prior to an investigation.<br>
<br>
<b>*You started this debate, Edward Snowden is in the meantime a
household </b><b><br>
</b><b>name for the whistleblower in the age of the internet. You
were working </b><b><br>
</b><b>until last summer for the NSA and during this time you
secretly </b><b><br>
</b><b>collected thousands of confidential documents. What was the
decisive </b><b><br>
</b><b>moment or was there a long period of time or something
happening, why </b><b><br>
</b><b>did you do this?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
<font color="#cc0000"><i>I would say sort of the breaking point is
seeing the Director of </i><i><br>
</i><i>National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under
oath to </i><i><br>
</i><i>Congress. There's no saving an intelligence community that
believes it </i><i><br>
</i><i>can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be
able to trust </i><i><br>
</i><i>it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for
me there was </i><i><br>
</i><i>no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realisation
that no one </i><i><br>
</i><i>else was going to do this. The public had a right to know
about these </i><i><br>
</i><i>programs. The public had a right to know that which the
government is </i><i><br>
</i><i>doing in its name, and that which the government is doing
against the </i><i><br>
</i><i>public, but neither of these things we were allowed to
discuss, we were </i><i><br>
</i><i>allowed no, even the wider body of our elected
representatives were </i><i><br>
</i><i>prohibited from knowing or discussing these programmes and
that's a </i><i><br>
</i><i>dangerous thing. The only review we had was from a secret
court, the </i><i><br>
</i><i>FISA Court, which is a sort of rubber stamp authority</i><i><br>
</i><i><br>
</i></font>When you are on the inside and you go into work
everyday and you sit <br>
down at the desk and you realise the power you have - you can wire
tap <br>
the President of the United States, you can wire tap a Federal Judge
and <br>
if you do it carefully no one will ever know because the only way
the <br>
NSA discovers abuses are from self reporting.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>*We're not talking only of the NSA as far as this is
concerned, there is </b><b><br>
</b><b>a multilateral agreement for co-operation among the services
and this </b><b><br>
</b><b>alliance of intelligence operations is known as the Five
Eyes. What </b><b><br>
</b><b>agencies and countries belong to this alliance and what is
its purpose?</b>*<br>
<br>
The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War
II <br>
era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded
together <br>
to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering
<br>
infrastructure.<br>
<br>
So we have the UK's GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada's
C-Sec, we <br>
have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New
<br>
Zealand's DSD. What the result of this was over decades and decades
what <br>
sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't
answer <br>
to the laws of its own countries.<br>
<br>
<b>*In many countries, as in America too the agencies like the NSA
are not </b><b><br>
</b><b>allowed to spy within their own borders on their own people.
So the </b><b><br>
</b><b>Brits for example they can spy on everybody but the Brits but
the NSA </b><b><br>
</b><b>can conduct surveillance in England so in the very end they
could </b><b><br>
</b><b>exchange their data and they would be strictly following the
law.*</b><b><br>
</b><b><br>
</b>If you ask the governments about this directly they would deny
it and <br>
point to policy agreements between the members of the Five Eyes
saying <br>
that they won't spy on each other's citizens but there are a couple
of <br>
key points there. One is that the way they define spying is not the
<br>
collection of data. The GCHQ is collecting an incredible amount of
data <br>
on British Citizens just as the National Security Agency is
gathering <br>
enormous amounts of data on US citizens. What they are saying is
that <br>
they will not then target people within that data. They won't look
for <br>
UK citizens or British citizens. In addition the policy agreements <br>
between them that say British won't target US citizens, US won't
target <br>
British citizens are not legally binding. The actual memorandums of
<br>
agreement state specifically on that that they are not intended to
put <br>
legal restriction on any government. They are policy agreements that
can <br>
be deviated from or broken at any time. So if they want to on a
British <br>
citizen they can spy on a British citizen and then they can even
share <br>
that data with the British government that is itself forbidden from
<br>
spying on UK citizens. So there is a sort of a trading dynamic there
but <br>
it's not, it's not open, it's more of a nudge and wink and beyond
that <br>
the key is to remember the surveillance and the abuse doesn't occur
when <br>
people look at the data it occurs when people gather the data in the
<br>
first place.<br>
<br>
<b>*How narrow is the co-operation of the German Secret Service BND
with </b><b><br>
</b><b>the NSA and with the Five Eyes?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
I would describe it as intimate. As a matter of fact the first way I
<br>
described it in our written interview was that the German Services
and <br>
the US Services are in bed together. They not only share
information, <br>
the reporting of results from intelligence, but they actually share
the <br>
tools and the infrastructure they work together against joint
targets in <br>
services and there's a lot of danger in this. One of the major <br>
programmes that faces abuse in the National Security Agency is
what's <br>
called "XKeyscore". It's a front end search engine that allows them
to <br>
look through all of the records they collect worldwide every day.<br>
<br>
<b>*What could you do if you would sit so to speak in their place
with this </b><b><br>
</b><b>kind of instrument?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
You could read anyone's email in the world. Anybody you've got email
<br>
address for, any website you can watch traffic to and from it, any <br>
computer that an individual sits at you can watch it, any laptop
that <br>
you're tracking you can follow it as it moves from place to place <br>
throughout the world. It's a one stop shop for access to the NSA's <br>
information. And what's more you can tag individuals using
"XKeyscore". <br>
Let's say I saw you once and I thought what you were doing was <br>
interesting or you just have access that's interesting to me, let's
say <br>
you work at a major German corporation and I want access to that <br>
network, I can track your username on a website on a form somewhere,
I <br>
can track your real name, I can track associations with your friends
and <br>
I can build what's called a fingerprint which is network activity
unique <br>
to you which means anywhere you go in the world anywhere you try to
sort <br>
of hide your online presence hide your identity, the NSA can find
you <br>
and anyone who's allowed to use this or who the NSA shares their <br>
software with can do the same thing. Germany is one of the countries
<br>
that have access to "XKeyscore".<br>
<br>
<b>*This sounds rather frightening. The question is: does the BND
deliver </b><b><br>
</b><b>data of Germans to the NSA?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Whether the BND does it directly or knowingly the NSA gets German
data. <br>
Whether it's provided I can't speak to until it's been reported
because <br>
it would be classified and I prefer that journalists make the <br>
distinctions and the decisions about what is public interest and
what <br>
should be published. However, it's no secret that every country in
the <br>
world has the data of their citizens in the NSA. Millions and
millions <br>
and millions of data connections from Germans going about their
daily <br>
lives, talking on their cell phones, sending SMS messages, visiting
<br>
websites, buying things online, all of this ends up at the NSA and
it's <br>
reasonable to suspect that the BND may be aware of it in some
capacity. <br>
Now whether or not they actively provide the information I should
not say.<br>
<br>
<b>*The BND basically argues if we do this, we do this accidentally
</b><b><br>
</b><b>actually and our filter didn't work.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Right so the kind of things that they're discussing there are two <br>
things. They're talking about filtering of ingest which means when
the <br>
NSA puts a secret server in a German telecommunications provider </div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>____________________________________________________________</span><br><span>You received this message as a subscriber on the list:</span><br><span> <a href="mailto:governance@lists.igcaucus.org">governance@lists.igcaucus.org</a></span><br><span>To be removed from the list, visit:</span><br><span> <a href="http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing">http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>For all other list information and functions, see:</span><br><span> <a href="http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance">http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance</a></span><br><span>To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:</span><br><span> <a href="http://www.igcaucus.org/">http://www.igcaucus.org/</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>Translate this email: <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate_t">http://translate.google.com/translate_t</a></span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>