American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.
The Americans and British hacking into a Dutch company’s private network to steal information so they can spy on pretty much everyone. And we call them our “allies”. This is way, way worse than whatever the North-Koreans supposedly did to Sony.
In a just world, the people responsible for this act of aggression would be dragged to The Hague to face justice. Alas – we do not live in a just world. My own Dutch government will sweep this under the rug after some fake posturing for the electorate, and that’s that.
What an immensely oversimplified world view. I find U.S and UK surveillance tasteless, but the world needs a world police at this point in history, and that’s that.
Live with it.
I’ve implemented real PKI systems and I can tell you that no matter how much you try, you can’t get in without inside help. In most cases the administrators should be divided in two groups, to ensure compliance with dual control requirements. In this scenario you need two admins, one from each group (information that is privileged anyway) to play along and to hope that they aren’t caught by the security audits. If you want to go for the root certificate, it’s very complicated as you need a majority of the shared secret cards.
All these requirements mean that they had serious inside help. Even identifying the persons that carry the cards in a real PKI environment is difficult as the information is classified as Secret (not in a military sense, but similar).
Building and running such a PKI for 3 years costs €20-30M and it’s security is not taken for granted.
Regarding the policing action, I don’t agree. Everywhere the brits went, there were problems (Kashmir, Gibraltar, Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, South Africa, The Falklands). Same can be said about the Americans. They went to Irak, destabilized it, left and now we are left with the threat of ISIS/ISIL.
Edited 2015-02-19 21:10 UTC
What problem is that? Are the sheep particularly upset?
America fuck ya!
No, we don’t need a World Police
That’s why we have the Chinese. Oh save us from ourselves oh great fire wall!
What a bullshit neocon argument. It was no better when Prick Cheney was pushing it. Try again, sir.
Yes, and entirely coincidentally, it should be whichever country or countries I happen to have been born in! Obviously if this was Iran or China trying to act this way, it would be completely unacceptable, but luckily it’s countries I like, so that’s okay then! Yay us!
I happen to like the democratic, western way of living, and you should realize that most the youth in Iran, which you used as an example, live secret western “party lifes” at night and DREAM about a democratic future.
Get a clue.
A proper, functioning democracy would not need to spy on its own citizens and the citizens of its proper, functioning democratic allies.
Logic dictates that the US, the UK, and other countries engaged in this behaviour are, therefore, not proper, functioning democracies.
Aha, start with a baseless assertion.
Now that we’ve got the evidence of the original argument out of the way we can lean on logic! Can’t argue with that.
How’s this argument for validity. “Everyone that rides their bike to work is a full on genius. I ride my bike to work, so logic dictates I am a genius.”
In actual fact, I’m willing to bet all democracies in history have made it a habit to spy on their allies and some of their citizens. The difference now is that they can do it much more effectively, and because the US is one of the most powerful countries they can do it better than anyone else. This is a problem, but the assertion that democracies don’t spy on their allies is laughable.
Edited 2015-02-20 15:11 UTC
I agree about the nations not needing to spy on it’s citizens, for the most part. There should be transparent checks and balances, and law enforcement should have to justify it.
The argument about not needing to spy on allies is off base. Our allies are sovereign countries, and as such, they don’t show all of their cards, so to speak. Information is power, and more information is more power. It’s just smart geopolitics to get as much information about other countries as possible, and unfiltered information at that.
Plus, just because two countries are allied now, that doesn’t mean they will be allies in the future. It’s important to maintain capabilities from an operational standpoint.
If a country isn’t spying on every other country in the world, it’s behind in the game.
I truly hope you, after reevaluating what you wrote once or twice, see how this logic is fundamentally flawed.
Wrong. You’re a patriotic bigot who thinks that whatever your country is doing is great. As a democracy, the U.S. is thoroughly corrupt.
It’s actually not.
If it wasn’t, there would be some sort of separation of state powers, and some accountability even for the executive branch, like when you ‘torture some folks’.
This deserves another movie quote
“Why are you guys so anti dictators?
Imagine if America was a dictatorship.
You could let 1% of the people have all the nation’s wealth.
You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes and bailing them out when they gamble and lose.
You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education.
Your media would appear free but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family.
You could wiretap phones, you could torture foreign prisoners, You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war.
You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group and no one would complain!
You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests.
I know this is hard for you Americans to imagine, but please try.”
What movie?
As an Iranian on OSNews, I should say this is absolutely bullshit. There are some guys who have nightlife, but those are not ordinary Iranian youth. Those are usually from parents who loot their own people and have bank accounts in Switzerland, and DREAM about a western style life in future.
Get a clue.
Well, if your world police had minded their own business and not installed their own puppet governments the youth in Iran might already have lived in a democracy.
I thought GSM encryption was broken years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1
Maybe I’m missing something?
But 3G and 4G still hold, and hopefully will for much longer than GSM did
3G has been proven to be broken by design
i don’t have much hope for 4G
surely, the encryption of the cellular data for all of GSM, 3g, 4g.. etc
..for both voice & data we are only talking about “in the open” / plaintext communications so to speak ??
i.e. if Skype/Viber or whatever VOIP apps or text/VPN data communications etc are employing their own Encryption then that’s still “secure” right – if we trust it course.
and therefore maybe we just need to accept that the pipes are all compromised, basebands processors are all hackable probably.. and just (ideally) go with Free Software Encrypted communications apps for everything… with all the code out there in the open?? I don’t wear a tin foil hat, but RMS is still largely being proved right. left. and center..
Thom’s right, we may have Democracy on the paper, but not in the ideal! *sadface*
Any VoIP communications software and backed by infrastructure (servers, switches, etc.) provided by a US company will have a LE tap to meet the needs of CALEA. If you use VoIP from a non-US provider to call a PSTN subscriber your calls can be intercepted there, even if there is no LE tap and communications are encrypted to the gateway.
In short, VoIP is not a secure solution if you do not want the intelligence and LE community to listen to you.
yeah i sort of knew (something like) that would be the case.
was more thinking of a current?/future open source, perhaps fully decentralise p2p based encrypted VOIP platform..
“one we’ll all be free” they cried.
How much of this spying, stealing, and surveillance would be stopped if corporations/governments/organizations simply stopped storing their data on servers that are connected to the internet?
For instance you have a server that contains video copies of all of your upcoming premier movie releases, and you allow this server to be accessible by internet-connected computers. Or you’re a government agency with personnel files of every employee on an internet-accessible server. WHY???
Go and read about advanced persistent threat. This is not about amateurish hacking. It is a well orchestrate and oiled operation by very qualified teams that try to compromise things on a level really hard do detect (firmware, certificates and all). Their goal is to make it impossible to evade their traps.
Do these well-orchestrated teams include physically breaking into a server room and connecting with patch cables? If that’s the case then no, having totally isolated servers wouldn’t solve the problem. But if they’re using things like firmware exploits and various other techniques to execute code and gain access remotely then having the network totally isolated will offer absolute protection.
The reality is though that companies like the convenience and cost-saving effects of having everything networked, so they don’t have to send paper memos around, so they can maintain their servers around the world from their headquarters instead of having employees doing everything in person. And this is the reason all these fileservers are accessible – cost saving and convenience.
You need to get data in and out of your servers, don’t you?
Read about mapping air gaps on networks (I think this is the term they use). They will try to compromise some computers on your network that have access to Internet and from this one, they will try to extend the reach by infecting USB devices or other media that can be used to spread the “infection”.
So, even if there is no cable running from one computer to another, they may try to get to it. Of course, all the effort is not worth the expense on our regular computers but may be invaluable on special targets.
That’s my point. Hackers couldn’t do that if the internal network was not connected to the internet. Not only would it be more difficult (not impossible) to infect, if it were compromised a wholesale remote retrieval of multiple-terabytes of data by someone on the other side of the planet would be nearly impossible (without inside help).
Photography is a hobby of mine, and the primary computer I use for file storage and photo editing is not connected to the internet, and with no negative impact on function or productivity. Obviously a large corporate network would need more capability than a single-user PC, but it’s still possible to imagine such a thing.
Think of the old-school system of mainframes and dummy terminals…
Edited 2015-02-20 19:06 UTC
“And we call them our “allies”. This is way, way worse than whatever the North-Koreans supposedly did to Sony.”
If Dutch companies want to do business in North Korea, they can expect to be watched.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/20/world/fg-nukes20
http://www.rnw.org/archive/doing-business-north-korea-ethical
http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?nseq=175577
Doesn’t Gemalto manufacture the chips used in the National ID cards?
If yes, then I wonder if digitally signing anything with said ID card or using it for identification online is safe.
It seems like it’s not the only instance of the NSA snooping on Dutch networks:
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa-infected-50000-computer-net…
Somehow I forgot to include this in my earlier post about Dutch agency snooping.
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/netherlands-nsa-prism-d66/
I worked as a consultant to a billing software company in the ’90’s, and visited then Gemplus in Gemenos in France. They were paranoid about security back then. We knew the holes in on-air authentication and registration, and we did everything to safeguard them leaking.
The First Look article contains several significant technical inaccuracies but the attack is feasible. For example, security of communications is built into the system but encryption of voice traffic was never enabled for a variety of reasons. It is probably just as well as it would just be a false sense of security as the encryption key was ridiculously short (due to lack of processing power back then).
I wonder what happened along the way that Gemplus, now Gemalto, lost that security paranoia, and allowed themselves to be hacked. It is a real shame.
Wake me up when you people find out concrete information about UFO’s and things of this nature. You know, something of truly earth-shattering news (the truth behind Area 51, possibility of multiple alien races, even established top secret contact between humans and other entities like the Nordic Blondes etc.)
This hacking thing is so common it’s not even news anymore. Oh, and all you of expecting privacy, get it through your heads: THERE IS NO PRIVACY on the Internet or anywhere else. Get used to it, or don’t use anything technology-related and log out.
Edited 2015-02-20 05:39 UTC
We are talking about spies you know… Did you expect them to ask nicely for the keys they are not supposed to have?
I’m not apologizing for them, but this is exactly what spies do – its their job. They lie, cheat, and connive to obtain information they are not supposed to have. That is their purpose. This exact kind of thing has been done to hundreds of companies by various governments over the years.
People seem to have this idea that all of a sudden spying has become a real problem. There is nothing at all new here – its just that until Snoden it was a problem you didn’t know you had…
If these documents would not have surfaced, no one would have ever known this happened. This didn’t affect the finances of the company targeted, didn’t affect its business, didn’t affect anything really. Not a single person was remotely affected by this in any way they would be aware of. Do you think the US or British government would ever reveal they had this kind of information or use it in a manner that would reveal they did? You don’t waste this kind of information on petty sh*t.
This is how real spies spy. If not for Snoden no one would have ever known about this at all…
North Korea? Bulls in a china shop. Wrecking things, causing havoc, calling attention to themselves. It wasn’t spying, it was childish petulance.
These two things are not even remotely comparable. One is espionage, the other is an infant having a tantrum.
Anyway, I’m a realist. Governments spy on each other. Always have and always will. The US spies on everyone. Britain spies on everyone. Russia, France, etc., etc. I don’t know about the Netherlands, but honestly I would be surprised if they didn’t do a bit of it as well. Either way, if they do or don’t, you wouldn’t know about it. If you did they would be doing it wrong…
Snoden gave the world a tiny glimpse of reality, that’s all. What’s funny to me is that once all the outrage dies down the one and only real change that will come of it will be the drastic measures taken to make damn sure another Snoden doesn’t happen again…
I’ve read that whats been released publicly from the Snowden leak is only the tip of the iceberg. Apparently there’s a lot more that he got his hands on that hasn’t been made public yet, and that’s far more damaging for the US.
Sadly more people aren’t unified and making their voices heard. Many people here are completely disgusted with how our politicians behave, constantly backstabbing us in favor of lobbyists and corporate circle-jerks. The same is true for the almost unimaginable amount of spying govt agencies have been doing on our citizens, and “allies” around the world. Most people seem to despise what they’re doing but nobody actually believes you can change it.
There, fixed the typo for you.
Haha… But seriously, how was anything I typed construed by you as apologizing? A rationalization certainly, but it isn’t an apology.
The point is the only thing the US government is sorry about is Snoden (i.e. getting caught).
Edited 2015-02-20 06:39 UTC
Well, IMO your post was a long winded way of implying these sort of things are a given, which is in itself a justification, which in turn is another synonym for apology. 🙂
I was just pointing out the dissonance with a poor attempt at humor.
Cheers.
No, but in the past spying had to be directed towards a specific group or threat. The technology and infrastructure to spy on a massive scale simply wasn’t there. In the past, ordinary people weren’t really affected unless specifically targeted. Nowadays, everyone is a target.
There is going to be a day of reckoning coming for US computing industry and trade if this sort of thing continues to be permitted.
The leaders we have are shadowy, are not elected and answer to no one. This too is going to end badly and unless this course is changed there will be war.
I think it is becoming increasingly self evident that GCHQ and the NSA are completely out of control and the becoming increasingly Orwellian both in scope and ambition. I believe the US constitution recognises that the state is one of the greatest threats to a citizens liberty and freedom, I think we need to recognise it too.
Undoubtedly these increased powers of surveillance will need for the war on terrorism, the war on ISIS or the war on drugs. Whilst I don’t deny that some of these are real problems, the general ineptitude in dealing with these problems, is being artfully used as leverage to treat everyone as the enemy of the state (both at home and abroad) and justify a totalitarian surveillance and the inevitable abolition of privacy. Whilst at the same time encouraging all other states to do the same thing.
I’m sure this will come handy for the Danish government, now we can expect increased monitoring of the populace for the sake of our safety.
EDIT: In case it isn’t clear, there’s a dash of sarcasm here, related to standard security measures
Edited 2015-02-20 10:28 UTC
Don’t forget, Denmark now also need to monitor the population of other countries like the US and UK for threats. Since Denmark is one of the good guys I don’t see why this should meet any resistance. You know, war on terror and all that.
Well, we don’t have the resources for that kind of surveillance so we will just rely on USA for giving us truthful and accurate information in timely manner.
Also, I seem to be incapable of getting rid of my innate sarcasm…
Perhaps, it is a good time to investigate if the claim by the original developers of Truecrypt that it was not secure anymore is linked to the “firmware” compromise revealed by Kaspersky labs.
If this (conspiration theory) proves true, it would shed some light on the way the cited trap works.
Unluckily, even though technology can empower the regular citizen, it can also further and consolidate the power of those on privileged positions disproportionally.
Edited 2015-02-20 12:42 UTC
I suggest that many of the most ‘sophisticated’ hacking attempts probably involve nothing more complex than bribing or blackmailing system administrators.
Or you know, political pressure.
A favor for a favor between governments, a call is made, and the keys are obtained.
The problem is that we’ve got sociopathic fundamentalists who’d love to disseminate the bloody, blown-out pulp of your brains using the very technology (and education) they revile. I mean, God forbid their cellphone be compromised by the NSA. That might ruin the dissemination of your blown-out brains — worse than North Korea.
I don’t know what the solution is, but presently the NSA worries me far, far less than a lot of other actors in the world. It’s not a perfect world. We wouldn’t need governments, spy agencies, etc… if some asshole down the road weren’t always trying to kill us. But then maybe it’s utopic in the Netherlands?
You’re far more likely to be killed by a family member than by an Islamic terrorist. First get a sense of proportions. Then consider the fact that to Middle-Eastern medievalists, the Middle East is the centre of the world, not Europe, and certainly not America.
Speaking of “sociopathic,” you do realize there were at least ~100,000 civilian deaths from the US invasion of Iraq, right? And that’s a very low estimate. Like, the lowest you could reasonably arrive at.
Yes, yes, I know – Intent, It’s Fucking Magic. Well, when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, intent stops being such a big deal.
The guys marching around with AK-47s aren’t the only fanatics. You can also find them in Congress… and in voting booths. Think about it.
“The guys marching around with AK-47s aren’t the only fanatics. You can also find them in Congress… and in voting booths…”
And your point would be… ?
… the projection is always strong with the average suburbanite fundamentalist. LOL.
Edited 2015-02-20 17:25 UTC
“… well yeah, that’s kind of why suburbanite fundamentalists like yourself are scary:
These are the folks who are not particularly well educated, don’t know much about technology past marketing, and have no problem turning whatever part of the world they have little interest in (read: most of it) into a cinder in exchange for that false sense of “security” they so crave.”
Or do you want to back to your first one?
“…but enough about yourself already…”
Or are you finally sticking with this one?
“… the projection is always strong with the average suburbanite fundamentalist. LOL”
Just let me know when it’s perfect. I get it. Trolling is an art form.
Yeah, and LOL!
All the versions say the same thing: I simply refined it to get it into a more concise form. I.e. Suburbanite fundamentalists like you, in the end, are not that different than those scary overseas fundamentalists you seem to find under every other mental rock.
I’m actually honored that you kept up with my edits during the 5 minute window. LOL.
Well, first, LOL!
And congratulations on your fifth stab at this! LOL!
However, to quote some others on this forum:
“This hacking thing is so common it’s not even news anymore. Oh, and all you of expecting privacy, get it through your heads: THERE IS NO PRIVACY on the Internet or anywhere else. Get used to it, or don’t use anything technology-related and log out. ”
“Anyway, I’m a realist. Governments spy on each other. Always have and always will. The US spies on everyone. Britain spies on everyone. Russia, France, etc., etc. I don’t know about the Netherlands, but honestly I would be surprised if they didn’t do a bit of it as well. Either way, if they do or don’t, you wouldn’t know about it. If you did they would be doing it wrong… ”
“The argument about not needing to spy on allies is off base. Our allies are sovereign countries, and as such, they don’t show all of their cards, so to speak. Information is power, and more information is more power. It’s just smart geopolitics to get as much information about other countries as possible, and unfiltered information at that. ”
Whether the US’s Iraq War was justified (it wasn’t in my opinion) or whether the US political system is institutionally corrupt (it is) is irrelevant to the need for intelligence. There’s no reason to think (and the Twin Towers, the attacks in France, etc.. prove otherwise) that sociopaths in Middle East wouldn’t like to spread the conflict as far and wide as possible. But I’m also in favor of privacy and, above all, freedom of speech. (Neither of which exist in North Korea by the way.) Like I wrote, it’s not a perfect world and I don’t know what the solution is.
In the meantime, let me know when you get past trolling and actually have something intelligent to say. Maybe you should get your Mom to make you lunch while you’re in the basement? LOL!
Well, you can count with the fingers of your hand. So you have that going for you… which is nice.
Oh no worries. Not like I was really expecting you to be able to come up with your own argument(s) given the “critical” train of though you already presented.
Well that’s convenient, isn’t it? The things that can clearly undermine/obliterate your point become “irrelevant” just because.
Sure, the invasion of Iraq, using supposedly faulty “intelligence” no less, led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people and over a million refugees. And yes, the US government is being shown to be increasingly corrupt and not trusty of the vast amounts of “intelligence” it’s gathering indiscriminately, even on matters in which it has no business meddling. But, apparently, that’s neither here nor there when it comes to matters of the “intelligence” being gathered by that same corrupt and warmongering government. Wow.
Such level of dissonance is epic really.
I spoke too soon, the dissonance got even higher in the next paragraph. LOL.
So if you don’t know what the solution is, then why are you already assuming how it must look like? (indiscriminate espionage and relinquishing the expectation of privacy, for example)
I guess this is the time were I’m supposed to thank you for going out of your way to prove my earlier point regarding projection. Thanks I guess.
Cheers, have a wonderful day.
You didn’t offer a single idea of your own. You got nothing.
“So if you don’t know what the solution is, then why are you already assuming how it must look like? (indiscriminate espionage and relinquishing the expectation of privacy, for example) ”
So what’s your plan? Or are you just going to keep posturing?
LMAO. Originality and self awareness are obviously not your things.
See, this is why your projection is so hilarious. You already acknowledged you don’t have a solution either. Using your own “logic” you’re basically implying you’re just posturing then. LOL.
FWIW, I simply don’t agree that people should be forced to subsume their privacy, just so that some random chickenshit can have their entitlement to a false sense of security fulfilled. Furthermore, any governmental agencies, that break the law, should be held to the same penalties and standards as any private/criminal party would if they had been caught committing the same crime/deed.
Anyone remotely familiar with the concept of the rule of law should have no problem grasping those two simple concepts really.
Cheers.
Thom, that’s so f-ing terrible in so many ways, I almost don’t know where to start. So I won’t. I’ll just leave it at this:
In a just world, many things would be different.
Also, I’m not so sure you don’t actually live in Portland.
“LMAO. Originality and self awareness are obviously not your things.”
Coming from Mr. LOL, I’m not too worried. You seem to find yourself extremely amusing.
“See, this is why your projection is so hilarious. You already acknowledged you don’t have a solution either. Using your own “logic” you’re basically implying you’re just posturing then. LOL.”
Yeah, that’s not an idea. That’s more posturing.
“FWIW, I simply don’t agree that people should be forced to subsume their privacy, just so that some random chickenshit can have their entitlement to a false sense of security fulfilled.”
Okay, more posturing. Nothing I disagree with, by the way.
“Furthermore, any governmental agencies, that break the law, should be held to the same penalties and standards as any private/criminal party would if they had been caught committing the same crime/deed.”
Like what? Governments *make* the laws, by the way; or were you unaware of this?
“Anyone remotely familiar with the concept of the rule of law should have no problem grasping those two simple concepts really.”
Blah, blah, blah… Do you think you can stop throwing juvenile insults around long enough to make an actual argument? You think it’s hilarious that I admit I don’t have a solution? Yeah, okay; but what have you got? Nothing. Are you a Thom fanboy? Is this what’s got you all worked up?
LOL Well, of course you’re not too worried, that’s the gift of ignorance. You have no clue what either of the terms I used actually mean, or that you were the actual joke. 🙂
…
Basically; you don’t have an actual counter argument. Noted.
Sigh… Re-read what I wrote, this time try to actually parse and understand the words. Your reading and comprehension skills are only “surpassed” by your ability to post a reply properly, apparently.
Oh, I see. You still don’t have a counter argument.
No, I found it sad that you were not able to grasp the fact that you clearly failed to meet the very same arbitrary standard you were trying to push on me. See, I was not using the whole “lack of self awareness” as an insult, but as a statement of fact in your case.
What it’s amusing is the fact that you seem to be unaware that which each reply, you kind of prove and reinforce the earlier point(s) I made. For example:
Well, you’re the one obsessively keeping track of my edits and acting all butt hurt. Sooo… once again, thanks for reinforcing my point.
In any case, this discussion has wandered off the actual topic of this thread. And I’m really not that interested in wasting any more time or bandwidth.
Cheers.
“In any case, this discussion has wandered off the actual topic of this thread.”
Yeah, I noticed. Not once in the entire thread did you address Thom’s original comment. In fact, you spent all your LOL-time, every single post, obsessing over me and psychoanalyzing me. Frankly, you’re infantile (and of course you’ll find it awfully clever and LOL-ish to call that projection, but so be it.)
In the meantime, since you didn’t address my actual position or Thom’s, I’ll guess I’ll just reprise my own feelings on this:
Governments collect intelligence. It’s what they do. Spies don’t ask for permission. They spy, and they break the laws of other countries. I used to be viscerally opposed to the NSA; but seeing what other countries are doing, and seeing how some very bad actors (out and out psychopaths) are using modern technology to murder, I get the need and purpose of the NSA. However, governments should be held responsible when they stop over the line; and the only way to do that is through free speech and open government.
As to your own comments:
“Sure, the invasion of Iraq, using supposedly faulty “intelligence” no less…”
The intelligence was good. The Bush administration manipulated and lied to the American public.
“And yes, the US government is being shown to be increasingly corrupt…”
Were you born yesterday? Institutional corruption is older than the Roman Empire. The problems with the US government may be news to you, but to the grown-up world, it’s been going on since 1776. It’s not “increasingly” corrupt. The effort to keep government in check is ongoing and never-ending.
“But, apparently, that’s neither here nor there when it comes to matters of the “intelligence” being gathered by that same corrupt and warmongering government. Wow.”
This is just blather and posturing.
And then you said I should go back and parse this passage:
“Furthermore, any governmental agencies, that break the law, should be held to the same penalties and standards as any private/criminal party would if they had been caught committing the same crime/deed. ”
What you don’t get and seem to be willfully ignorant of is this: Governments make the laws. You can throw your temper tantrum and jump up and down, but as soon as any “government agency” breaks the law, the laws will change. Example: Diane Feinstein. As soon as some of the NSA’s practices were brought into legal question, she introduced a bill to legalize those same practices.
In the meantime, the world awaits your solution for the gathering of actionable intelligence.
Edited 2015-02-21 19:45 UTC