[governance] FW: How America Spies on Europe and the UN - Spiegel Online

Wed Aug 28 06:02:57 EDT 2013

"In an internal presentation, the NSA sums up its vision, which is both
global and frighteningly ambitious: "information superiority." To achieve
this worldwide dominance

Essay question, "What role does Internet Governance play in the NSA's
ambitions towards global information dominance

For extra marks, "Discuss the recent "Internet Freedom" campaign in the
context of your answer..

For extra extra marks include an analysis of Multistakeholderism in your
discussion..

M

From: sid-l at googlegroups.com [mailto:sid-l at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Sid Shniad
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 1:48 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: How America Spies on Europe and the UN - Spiegel Online

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-nsa-documents-show-how-the-
us-spies-on-europe-and-the-un-a-918625.html

Spiegel Online   August 26, 2013

Codename 'Apalachee': 

How America Spies on Europe and the UN

By Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark

President Obama promised that NSA surveillance activities were aimed
exclusively at preventing terrorist attacks. But secret documents from the
intelligence agency show that the Americans spy on Europe, the UN and other
countries.

The European Union building on New York's Third Avenue is an office tower
with a glittering facade and an impressive view of the East River. Chris
Matthews, the press officer for the EU delegation to the United Nations,
opens the ambassadors' room on the 31st floor, gestures toward a long
conference table and says: "This is where all ambassadors from our 28
members meet every Tuesday at 9 a.m." It is the place where Europe seeks to
forge a common policy on the UN.

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To mark the official opening of the delegation's new offices in September
2012, EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and EU Council President
Herman Van Rompuy flew in from Brussels, and UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon was on hand as guest of honor. For "old" Europe -- which finances
over one-third of the regular UN budget -- this was a confirmation of its
geopolitical importance. 

For the National Security Agency (NSA), America's powerful intelligence
organization, the move was above all a technical challenge
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-documents-nsa-targeted-ger
many-and-eu-buildings-a-908609.html> . A new office means freshly painted
walls, untouched wiring and newly installed computer networks -- in other
words, loads of work for the agents. While the Europeans were still getting
used to their glittering new offices, NSA staff had already acquired the
building's floor plans. The drawings completed by New York real estate
company Tishman Speyer show precisely to scale how the offices are laid out.
Intelligence agents made enlarged copies of the areas where the data servers
are located. At the NSA, the European mission near the East River is
referred to by the codename "Apalachee".

The floor plans are part of the NSA's internal documents relating to its
operations targeting the EU. They come from whistleblower Edward Snowden,
and SPIEGEL has been able to view them. For the NSA, they formed the basis
for an intelligence-gathering operation -- but for US President Barack Obama
they have now become a political problem.

Just over two weeks ago, Obama made a promise to the world. "The main thing
I want to emphasize is that I don't have an interest and the people at the
NSA don't have an interest in doing anything other than making sure that
(...) we can prevent a terrorist attack," Obama said during a hastily
arranged press conference at the White House on August 9. He said the sole
purpose of the program was to "get information ahead of time (...) so we are
able to carry out that critical task," adding: "We do not have an interest
in doing anything other than that." Afterward, the president flew to the
Atlantic island of Martha's Vineyard for his summer vacation.

Wide Range of New Surveillance Programs 

Obama's appearance before the press was an attempt to morally justify the
work of the intelligence agencies; to declare it as a type of emergency
defense. His message was clear: Intelligence is only gathered because there
is terror -- and anything that saves people's lives can't be bad. Ever since
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, this logic has been the basis for a wide
range of new surveillance programs.

With his statement delivered in the White House briefing room, Obama hoped
to take the pressure off, primarily on the domestic political front. In
Washington the president is currently facing opposition from an unusual
alliance of left-wing Democrats and libertarian conservatives. They are
supported by veteran politicians like Republican Congressman Jim
Sensenbrenner, one of the architects of the Patriot Act, which was used to
massively expand surveillance in the wake of 9/11. On July 24, a bill that
would have curtailed the power of the NSA was only narrowly defeated by 217
to 205 votes in the House of Representatives.

Even stalwart Obama supporters like Democrat Nancy Pelosi, minority leader
in the House of Representatives, are now calling into question the work of
the intelligence agency. Pelosi says that what she reads in the newspapers
is "disturbing." It wasn't until late last week that news broke that the NSA
had illegally collected tens of thousands of emails over a number of years.

Obama's public appearance was aimed at reassuring his critics. At the same
time, he made a commitment. He gave assurances that the NSA is a clean
agency that isn't involved in any dirty work. Obama has given his word on
this matter. The only problem is that, if internal NSA documents are to be
believed, it isn't true.

The classified documents, which SPIEGEL has seen, demonstrate how
systematically the Americans target other countries and institutions like
the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the UN.
They show how the NSA infiltrated the Europeans' internal computer network
between New York and Washington, used US embassies abroad to intercept
communications and eavesdropped on video conferences of UN diplomats. The
surveillance is intensive and well-organized -- and it has little or nothing
to do with counter-terrorism.

Targeting Foreign Governments 

In an internal presentation, the NSA sums up its vision, which is both
global and frighteningly ambitious: "information superiority." To achieve
this worldwide dominance, the intelligence agency has launched diverse
programs with names like "Dancingoasis," "Oakstar" and "Prism." Some of them
aim to prevent terrorist attacks, while others target things like arms
deliveries, drug trafficking and organized crime. But there are other
programs, like "Blarney" and "Rampart-T," that serve a different purpose:
that of traditional espionage targeting foreign governments.

Blarney has existed since the 1970s and it falls under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, at least according to the NSA
documents, which state that it is based on the cooperation of at least one
US telecommunications company that provides services to the agency. The NSA
describes the program's main targets as "diplomatic establishment,
counter-terrorism, foreign government and economic." These documents also
say that Blarney is one of the "top sources" for the President's Daily
Brief, a top-secret document which briefs the US president every morning on
intelligence matters. Some 11,000 pieces of information reportedly come from
Blarney every year.

No less explosive is the program dubbed "Rampart-T" by the NSA and which, by
the agency's own accounts, has been running since 1991. It has to do with
"penetration of hard targets at or near the leadership level" -- in other
words: heads of state and their closest aides.

This information is intended for "the president and his national security
advisors." Rampart-T is directed against some 20 countries, including China
and Russia, but also Eastern European states.

The Americans recently drew up a secret chart that maps out what aspects of
which countries require intelligence. The 12-page overview, created in
April, has a scale of priorities ranging from red "1" (highest degree of
interest) to blue "5" (low interest). Countries like Iran, North Korea,
China and Russia are colored primarily red, meaning that additional
information is required on virtually all fronts.

But the UN and the EU are also listed as espionage targets, with issues of
economic stability as the primary concern. The focus, though, is also on
trade policy and foreign policy (each rated "3") as well as energy security,
food products and technological innovations (each rated "5").

Bugging the EU 

The espionage attack on the EU is not only a surprise for most European
diplomats, who until now assumed that they maintained friendly ties to the
US government. It is also remarkable because the NSA has rolled out the full
repertoire of intelligence-gathering tools -- and has apparently been taking
this approach for many years now. According to an operational overview from
September 2010 that is rated "secret," not only have the Americans
infiltrated the EU mission to the UN in New York, but also the EU embassy in
Washington, giving the building in the heart of the American capital the
code name "Magothy."

According to this secret document, the NSA has targeted the European
missions in three ways:

*	The embassies in Washington and New York are bugged.
*	At the embassy in New York, the hard disks have also been copied.
*	In Washington the agents have also tapped into the internal computer
cable network.

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The infiltration of both EU embassies gave the technicians from Fort Meade
an invaluable advantage: It guaranteed the Americans continuous access, even
if they temporarily lost contact with one of the systems -- due, for
instance, to a technical update or because an EU administrator thought that
he had discovered a virus. 

The embassies are linked via a so-called virtual private network (VPN). "If
we lose access to one site, we can immediately regain it by riding the VPN
to the other side and punching a whole (sic!) out," the NSA technicians said
during an internal presentation. "We have done this several times when we
got locked out of Magothy."

Of particular note, the data systems of the EU embassies in America are
maintained by technicians in Brussels; Washington and New York are connected
to the larger EU network. Whether the NSA has been able to penetrate as far
as Brussels remains unclear. What is certain, though, is that they had a
great deal of inside knowledge from Brussels, as demonstrated by a
classified report from the year 2005 concerning a visit by top American
diplomat Clayland Boyden Gray at Fort Meade.

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