The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call In the Bahamas 205
Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes "The National Security Agency is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country's cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the 'full-take audio' of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month."
the question is (Score:5, Interesting)
.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
Re:the question is (Score:5, Informative)
.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
In what court would they do this? You can't sue the US government in a US court without the permission of the US government, and the US will just ignore the ruling of just about any other court.
And yes, many (most?) other countries work the same way...
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Considering how quite a bit of money is stowed in the general area, and not from the poor people of this planet, turning off access to those accounts from the US just might cause a few owners of senators to prod their whores.
Re:the question is (Score:4, Interesting)
That worked once in Cuba. After the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada the track record of that kind of strategy looks like poking the wrong end of the 82nd Airborne.
Re:the question is (Score:4, Interesting)
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Meh, the US would just phone up the PM and something would get worked out - probably without firing a shot.
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The US would probably call the PM and tell him to be a good puppy and roll over.
This ain't Mrs. T you're talking about. The prime minister of the UK is today more like the first lady of the US.
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The prime minister of the UK is today more like the first lady of the US.
I wish. I would much rather look at Michelle Obama than David Cameron.
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They could try the WTO as well. Restitution for unfair commercial gain and costs associated with finding and removing NSA spying equipment. Since the US will never pay up they would most likely be allowed to extract the money in other ways, such as ignoring US copyright and patents for a while.
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Considering how quite a bit of money is stowed in the general area, and not from the poor people of this planet, turning off access to those accounts from the US just might cause a few owners of senators to prod their whores.
I guess the Bahamas could do some discrete 'lobbying'; "hey mr US Senator you wouldn't want this secret bank account coming out would you, what with elections coming up and all that?"
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In the International Court of Justice.
Hence my point about "the US will just ignore the ruling of just about any other court..."
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No, I'm saying that in most countries you need the permission of the government to sue the government.
I'm sure many countries try to record phone calls/etc, but I doubt any do so nearly as extensively as the NSA.
the question is (Score:2, Interesting)
I love how your response is "what will THOSE people do" not "what will WE do", like the NSA is significantly more careful with our rights, or like us and them are separate groups. Obviously military intelligence is completely out of control and doing whatever they have the means to regardless of morality or law. I guess people like you are waiting for some kind of referendum to vote against NSA power. IT'S NOT COMING. The people we've allowed the wrong people to make decisions for us. If one doesn't see tha
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I can't see that happening though because the British spooks probably already knew.
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Chances are the British spooks helped, and so could be sued themselves. It would be worth it just to bring attention to them.
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.. what will the Bahama government/people do - will they sue the US for the presumable crime of breaking into their phone system?
They could threaten to take away our rich people's money, or to help our rich people hide their money in offshore accounts so they don't have to pay taxes, or something along those lines.
On the Bahamas, TOO. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone who's anyone is using electronic eavesdropping to supplement their Country's intelligence agenda.
If the United States took the high ground and refused to engage this, it would be to the detriment of the West, likely including the Country you've posted from.
This technology is already out there for everyone to exploit.... Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get back in.
Re:On the Bahamas, TOO. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the United States took the high ground and refused to engage this, it would be to the detriment of the West, likely including the Country you've posted from.
And how exactly? Are the evil Internet terrorists going to hack us? Wait I know, maybe some evil foreign spy agency will steal trade secrets from our businesses... oh wait [cbsnews.com].
This technology is already out there for everyone to exploit
"But Johny also did it" is the kind of excuse I'd expect from a first grader. Just because someone else engages in something morally questionable doesn't make it ok for you to do it.
Just stop. This isn't about "defending" anything, but American financial interests. If you honestly believe there is some higher purpose behind the US spying efforts, then you are either extremely naive, or suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance.
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There is a difference between doing some limited, targeted spying against individuals whom a country has a legitimate security interest in. The US doesn't do that though, it spies on everyone in the entire country, records every single phone call and uses the intelligence for commercial gain.
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I'm going to stop short of assessing values such as good, bad, right, and wrong to the behavior of governments.
Information gathering is advantageous to each and every sovereign nation, and though the US is in the fire presently as the preeminent surveillance state, it would be difficult to imagine most other capable nations have passed on the opportunity to set up their own version of an American NSA. Akin to the MAD theory of the Cold War, I presume we exist in an era of mutually assured surveillance. All
Re:and the answer is (Score:5, Interesting)
As if a country like the Bahamas can do anything like that. The US is the only country they could hook into for internet infrastructure without running a cable to South America or Mexico.
The US also flies unmarked helos in Bahamas airspace - the DEA would do low level flights up and down the island of Eleuthera looking for crops and attempting to follow drug mules. The mules would drop the drugs off on the south end of the island, transfer from boat to a truck, drive up to the north end of the island and dump them on another boat to get around satellite surveillance. It's scary seeing an unmarked Apache 30 feet off the deck fly over as you're laying on the beach.
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That sounds awesome. Did you ever snorkel/dive off the cut south of Winding Bay? Brutal currents but I saw more species there in an hour than the rest of the six months I spent there. The reefs south of Windermere Island, off Glenelg, were also pretty spectacular.
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Re:and the answer is (Score:4, Informative)
First off, the incident took place prior to 2007 when the Army was supplying the many of aircraft for the DEA to use in the operations there. Prior to 2007 the DEA only had 3 Jayhawks and 1 other helicopter for it's OPBAT operations, everything else was supplied by the Army.
This is the helicopter I saw: http://www.forthoodsentinel.co... [forthoodsentinel.com] - in this configuration. Armaments were not equipped though. It's rather hard to mistake the thin/relatively small profile of an Apache compared to the Blackhawks.
As to the nature of the mission, I cannot say exactly what they were doing that day, all I know is that they were flying below the tree line directly over the beach, facing in-land and strafing north. For all I know they were cruising for boobs. I suspect though, knowing the local geography/topography, that because of the density of the forest/jungle they were trying to see under the canopy as much as possible to identify grow ops that were not visible via satellite. This would be particularly effective in Eleuthera because the island is one long strip for the most part with very little change in elevation. Between the density of the bush and the number of poison wood trees, grows would likely need to be near a road - in the area where I was when I saw it there is only 1 road, right near the beach for about a 30km stretch http://goo.gl/maps/FSM9G [goo.gl]
Re:and the answer is (Score:4, Informative)
There are a mess of cables in the area, http://www.submarinecablemap.c... [submarinecablemap.com] and I suppose they could but by "right by the bahamas" you're actually talking 1,000-2,000km of cable (depending on whether you went to Jamaica or directly to Caracas). The Bahamas largest project is around 3,500km which hooks up 20 islands and Haiti. Adding an extra 1/3rd to the length/cost just to avoid the US? Political/tourist implications aside, from a financial perspective it doesn't make sense. You have to remember that outside of Nassau/Freeport it's very much a 3rd world country - last I was there the entire island would lose power at least once every couple weeks.
Re:and the answer is (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't think they wont still manage. It'll just cost more.
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I bet they're more pissed off about AT&T buying up DirectTV.
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Wonder what the repercussions would be of that? Maybe a ban on US tourists visiting the Bahamas? Wonder how many dollars that'll cost?
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This.
Follow the money.
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How about an invasion of the Bahamas and the arrest and imprisonment of all those person involved in the tax evasion industry. That call monitoring is all about gathering data for corporate and political blackmail to do with hundreds of billions of tax evaded currency from all over the world. As for the Bahamians, you want to play tax haven and steal other countries social services and actively profiting from money handling for organised crime, well 'FUCK YOU' and I hope you get it hard and painful, really
Cayman Islands? (Score:5, Insightful)
Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals, and probably made the world a better/safer place.
congress (Score:5, Funny)
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Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals,
Uh, you mean like themselves?
Yea, funny how that never happened... natch.
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look up ARCOS-1
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Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals, and probably made the world a better/safer place.
Why exactly would have they gone after their own bosses? They know who butters their bread.
Re:Cayman Islands? (Score:5, Interesting)
2) What you say is indeed humorous, but what isn't funny is that we know that the purpose has never been to catch criminals, it is to catch people doing things contrary to the interests of the state, conduct corporate espionage, and/or gather useful blackmail-worthy information for use at a future time.
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we know that the purpose has never been to catch criminals, it is to catch people doing things contrary to the interests of the state, conduct corporate espionage, and/or gather useful blackmail-worthy information for use at a future time.
Cite?
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The NSA spied specifically on foreign corporations and the leaders of human rights organizations.
They didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers.
Do the math.
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The NSA spied specifically on foreign corporations and the leaders of human rights organizations.
They didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers.
Do the math.
That doesn't follow. They spied on foreign corporations, organizations, heads of state, etc., but that's not all they spied on. And they didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers, but that doesn't prove they weren't spying on people like that, just that they failed. But it doesn't prove Jahoda's claims that catching criminals (terrorists) isn't one of their purposes. At most it proves that they suck at it. Or that the goal is inherently infeasible(*).
So, I repeat: Cite?
(*) My take is that it is mostly infeasi
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Had they done this with Cayman Islands they could have possible nabbed some real criminals, and probably made the world a better/safer place.
The Bahamas host a lot of "Corporate America" themselves. This could could ignite a real stinkstorm.
To serve and protect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To serve and protect (Score:5, Funny)
Send in the drones... there ought to be drones....
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They'll drone you just like they said they would
They'll drone you when you're trying to go home
They'll drone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get droned.
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Gives an ominous note to
"I smoked two joints before I smoked two joints, then I smoked two more."
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I volunteer for the foot-search.
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Favoritism. (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet there were some pretty juicy tidbits swept up in that massive dragnet. I certainly believe that tax evaders are a lot more of an actual threat to the US than the terrorism "boogeyman". So where are our prosecutions on this crap?
The answer is that there never will be. All this mass-surveillance will never actually be used to our benefit, only as a means enforcing the status quo for the powers that be.
Re:Favoritism. (Score:5, Interesting)
The US has aggressively been targeting tax evaders since about 2008. They've collected billions in back taxes, penalties and interest. Most haven't gone to jail because they are using the government's amnesty program that grants amnesty from criminal charges and partial penalty relief (but still typically takes better than 50% of the value of the accounts often far more than the taxes and interest).
The interesting bit is each year you don't come forward the amount of penalties they reduce goes down. If you took them up in 2008 you got a pretty decent deal, not so in 2014. With the steady decrease in what they will forgive they are setting the stage for genuine criminal prosecutions once the amnesty programs winds down in a few more years. IIRC the IRS has estimated they've discovered and taxed better than 50% of the hidden accounts and the people coming forward goes up each year because of the agreements the US is striking with other nations is revealing the tax cheats. Fact is you either come forward using the amnesty program and take your lumps or in a few years you could be looking at jail time.
the NSA reply? (Score:2)
Foreign Signals Intelligence (Score:2, Troll)
The NSA's mandate...listening in on foreigners is why they were created back in the day.
In other words, this is a non-issue. Almost as silly as an article that accused the FBI of arresting kidnappers in Pennsylvania....
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Except that getting caught at it is a major embarrassment and is going to destroy the relationships with Bahamas and most likely erode even further that of other countries. And given the breach of trust involved in this specific instance, is going to have a negative effect in the war against terror and drug cooperation. Not to mention that indiscriminate eavesdropping in an entire population is both overkill an unnecessary for gathering relevant intelligence of any kind.
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All the major players do it, and all the major players know the other Countries do it.
Hell, Enemy of the State is a 1998 movie and the tinfoil hatters have been right about this one for years.
Since the time of Kings, he who spies best, has the attention of the rest.
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Right and there was not american to american phone calls from the Bahamas.
This doesn't matter, or so the courts say. You step off sovereign US territory and the legal assumption that you are a US citizen no longer applies. So, where they cannot TARGET you knowing you are a citizen (without a warrant), they can intercept your phone calls in their quest for intelligence information when you are on foreign soil. The rules are literally different OUTSIDE the country, and you need to get used to that because it's been this way for decades.
What's changed though is the *sharing* of
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Regression analysis.
It makes proving a suspect guilty so much easier when you work backward from a known outcome.
Correction (Score:2)
The National Security Agency is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio...
The National Security Agency was secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio...
FTFY.
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The National Security Agency was secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio...
FTFY.
A Bahamian jail cell (Score:2)
Is calling Eric and Barack.
Still less troubling than Sterling (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still much less troubled about NSA surveillance than about what what a forced sale of the clippers means for privacy. And what Brendan Eich's ousting means for free speech. I wish Hitchens were still alive, just to see what his take would be on the current trend of popular suppression.
It is certainly legal, and proper for popular opinion to move against unpopular ideas in the private arena, so long as government holds itself apart from this censure... but it does not feel good. it does not feel right.
The NSA can wire-tap the crap out of me, because I don't think they'd do something so capricious as out me to the public. And the public doesn't work through proper channels. Judge, jury, executioner through mob rule.
Orwell would weep, punishing people for what they think.
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Nobody's opinions are sacred.
Actions have consequences.
Deal with it.
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Well what would you propose doing to prevent people from choosing which products they consume? Because that's what it comes down to. People were free to stop using Firefox or stop watching NBA basketball. Mozilla and the NBA did not want this. So they removed the offending parties from their respective organizations, to remove the motivation for people to stop consuming their products.
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Are you saying Mozilla should have taken the damage that this guy's leaked donation information caused? What if he decided to support the cause in the future and publicly declare it himself, should Mozilla have just taken the losses in that case as well? If so, isn't it wrong that the other employees would have to suffer for Eich's actions?
I see something rather immoral and shameful about donating to a campaign supporting an effort to strip rights from a group of people. There's a lot of historical preceden
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Shunning sources of oppression and intolerance is a positive force in society, not something that deserves to be lumped in with "marginalizing parts of society that are different." We did that to South Africa, we do it to NK right now. Hand-waving them away as mere "contentious views" or "different" actively makes it easier for intolerance and oppression to spread. That's not just turning a blind eye to the problem, that's whitewashing it.
I wouldn't work for or buy from a CEO who I thought was likely to con
Reaction guestimations... (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on the number of proportional font memos with a blacked out second country name, it shouldn't be too hard to narrow down the other country (in addition to the Bahamas) for which "full retrieval" was possible.
I mean, it's not Laos, and it's not Nagorno-Karabakh, but with a known font, you could narrow it down pretty quickly based on the redacted images.
Here:
https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.first... [firstlook.org]
And here:
https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.first... [firstlook.org]
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Identify the font, write out every country of the planet, take measurements.
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How long does it take to cut-and-paste a list of countries in that font and see how many fit the width?
Then repeat the process against the other documents in other fonts?
Then compare the two lists? How many countries will be left?
[Leading or trailing whitespace is a non-issue, since you know where the next word starts.]
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Someone please write something to do this,
You don't need a program to do this. It would likely take less time to do by hand.
it wouldn't be too hard in python.
Do I need to call the ASPCA?
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10 lines and a billion parentheses later...
Enemy of the state... 1998... (Score:2)
They do this everywhere. (Score:2)
I don't know why it's taking people so long to realize this. The NSA records everything they can get their hands on. And thanks to the USS Jimmy Carter [wikipedia.org] they can get their hands on all terrestrial communications.
Uhm.. (Score:3)
The Bahamas already knew about it?
How else did the DEA have access?
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The Bahamas already knew about it?
How else did the DEA have access?
We sold them their equipment...
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The Bahamas gave the DEA full access to their network.
There's an app for that. (Score:2)
I guess we have to accept that we can't trust The Powers That Be to respect our right to privacy. Fortunately there are options.
I reckon more folks should be installing Open Whisper Systems RedPhone for encrypting their own calls. https://whispersystems.org/ [whispersystems.org]
Then there's always the Blackphone handset for more serious business too. https://www.blackphone.ch/phone/ [blackphone.ch]
I supposed if you were really paranoid you could run RedPhone on your Blackphone...
Fact-Checking (Score:2)
I'm asking in the spirit of diabloa advocatus. Snowden should get the same scrutiny as any other source. If he is as genuine as I think he is, he shouldn't be offended by this questioning of the source.
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Investigate, charge and try the people he has accused of crimes. For some reason nothing like that is happening.
endless opinion poll (Score:2)
I allows to evaluate effectiveness of different media, etc.
Re:Legally speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
Under what theory of international law? This behavior is clearly bad and is the sort of thing a country has a right to be pissed off about, but there's no coherent, conventional theory that makes this an act of war. The situation is bad enough without exaggerating.
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To be fair - an act of war is whatever somebody wants it to be.
If I'm a dictator of some country and you're the dictator of another country and you sneeze and I don't like it and I order my military to kill all your citizens, then you basically started a war with your sneeze. Or maybe I started it with my craziness. Either way there were some acts and a war, so figure it out however you like.
There are just some particular actions that people think of as crossing a line. The US never really went to war wi
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Under what theory of international law? This behavior is clearly bad and is the sort of thing a country has a right to be pissed off about, but there's no coherent, conventional theory that makes this an act of war.
Well, it's massive looting if you believe in imaginary property.
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Espionage is not an attack.
The IETF would disagree with you [ietf.org]
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Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
Slow down cowboy and holster that side arm... The Article is a bit conflicting on this.. It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversatio
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It says EVERY cell call, *then* it clarifies that it's only international calls, which is certainly NOT every cell call. So, this might not be what you suspect and before you start a shooting war we need to think about this.
Seems this is NOT an act of war, it's simply monitoring traffic coming over international trunks and that they simply have the ability to intercept the signaling, and both sides of the conversation. This requires no *in country* equipment or invasion of territory to do. This is NOT new information, we've know about this for years, even before Snowden did his document dump. Now if they set this tap up IN the Bahamas, you *might* have an argument, but I don't think that's what happened here.
Did you even read the article? It clearly says that they are intercepting every cell call in the Bahamas and that it was based on exploiting legal access arranged with the Bahamas police for a specific case in order to install a blanket tap of all calls. If it was about tapping international cables, why would it only be picking up cell phones? The article also discusses broader programs which involve more countries and in many of those the scope of interception is more limited, but in the Bahamas it is ever
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Actually, since it's interception of communications of a foreign country, this may be one of the few recently reported instances of the NSA actually doing their job.
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Getting caught spying on another nation is embarassing. It is not however an act of war. It is a crime but you have to be caught by the country you're spying on to get punished for it. Mostly spies just get held for trading to get back your own spies. I'd guess the Bahamas probably have a very limited espionage program though.
Re:Legally speaking... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone at NSA who is participating in this is committing an act of war against a sovereign nation without any declaration of war.
-jcr
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the united states does that like every other week. Noticed Ukraine lately? We started that. Everyone seems to forget there was a fucking US backed coup before Russia stepped in. It's not like they randomly decided to invade.
Re:Legally speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats every private call, legal documents as a fax or junk crypto, every electronic court document, banking records protected with international junk crypto, local contracts been discussed between gov departments before been offered, international contracts been discussed between gov departments, the expensive needs of education, science wrt to costly upgrades, mil and police needs, health, energy policy, food exports, trade with other nations.... Any nation thats opened itself up to that kind of constant "intercepting" is really sinking into colony status with every act, law, deal, contract been seen and fully understood by a few other nations (5++ other nations).
International tenders become a costly joke with a full understanding of the gov position, needs and price range.
A digital banana republic, as Argentina had the the English Octopus over rail. Once another nation is in your domestic infrastructure they get to understand and shape policy.
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It is a serious question. I'm beginning to think that collectively the NSA (and CIA too for that matter) is just ... dumb. At best, a bunch of careerists milking the govt gravy train.
Unlike all their activities... the good they're doing is top secret!
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The NSA is a lot like government in general. A necessary evil. It's handy to have an idea what your enemies are up to. The problem is that they try to do too much so they get stretched too thin. Instead of concentrating on real threats they just watch everyone then filter it. They've substituted technology for spycraft and we suffer for it.
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They also tried to help with complex flight paths around layers SAM.
They did great work tracking Soviet weapons tests and digging under embassy foundations to get near telco equipment.
re "milking the govt gravy train", think of it as a leadership table and a set number can vote.
You want to be at the table voting and setting policy with the budget that reflects that role.
You do not want to be cal
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If you're really interested, check what technology the named countries used for phone calls, check who maintains them, check who audits them, check who operates them, look for a connection between them...
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If the person uses a webcam you keep a few select frames showing - useful for facial recognition.
Every call is sorted in realtime, the small portions of unique data kept and the 'hops' sorted.
Classically you had the above based on spoken words by known people or known people to new people or the use of spoken words or digital data.
Now you just keep every cal
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So, the NSA must have like a shitload of hard drives.
They sure do! You might be able to see their storage array from space:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"2000, 95% of intra-German Internet communications was routed via the DE-CIX Internet exchange point in Frankfurt, Germany"