Malaysia has protested at the alleged spying, saying “such activities are not done among close friends”
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The Malaysian government has summoned the heads of the US and Australian diplomatic missions in Kuala Lumpur over a row about an alleged American-led spying network in Asia.

The Malaysian foreign ministry said the reports of spying could “severely damage” relations.

It said a protest note was handed over.

China and Indonesia have already protested at the claims that Australian embassies were being used to monitor phones and collect data for the US.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said “such activities are not done amongst close friends”.

Mr Anifah said his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, replied that it was not her government’s policy to comment on intelligence matters, but she accepted Malaysia’s concerns.

The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) has reported that Australian diplomatic posts in Asia were being used to intercept phone calls and data.

The reports were based on a US National Security Agency document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has declined to comment on the reports.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “Every Australian governmental agency, every Australian official… operates in accordance with the law.”

Find this story at 2 November 2013

BBC © 2013 The BBC

Unlike in Britain and the United States, Parliament is not involved in holding Canada’s intelligence gathering agency to account.

Creepy truth: American spies with access to everyone’s data do occasionally succumb to the urge to snoop illegally through their love lives, peering into the private communications of former paramours.
Creepier truth: if you’re Canadian, you have no way of knowing whether one of your own spies does it to you.
Hypothetically, they don’t. Legally, they can’t. But that’s the problem, say critics of the fast-growing Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the Ottawa agency that scours global telephone logs, email and Internet trails for worrisome patterns — with CSEC it’s all hypothetical because Canada’s electronic watchers enjoy a secrecy second to none.
Nearly six months after former computer specialist Edward Snowden began tearing back the curtain on America’s National Security Agency with a series of stunning disclosures about the true extent of U.S. mass surveillance, Canada’s CSEC remains a silent bystander.
Apart from a single report by journalist Glenn Greenwald accusing CSEC of eavesdropping on Brazil’s mining and energy ministry, Canada’s electronic spies have thus far escaped the brunt of Snowden’s cascading disclosures.
That’s good, right? Sure it is. But it also leaves Canadians, including Parliament, almost completely in the dark on what the underscrutinized CSEC actually does, even as outraged Americans and Britons shine a bright light on — and mobilize to change — the ways their own governments consume private data.
“Canadians who think they are in the clear on these ongoing scandals need to grasp that we are the ones who need the debate the most,” said Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
“The Canadian checks and balances just aren’t there. We have no parliamentary oversight of CSEC, no adequate independent entity to watch the watchers and act as a constraint on misbehaviour. It just doesn’t exist now.
“It’s not a question of people shrugging and saying, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing to hide.’ The real problem is oversight — and the potential for abuse if left unchecked.”
It’s an idea that even CSEC’s former chief, John Adams, concedes would be helpful.
Adams doesn’t think “oversight” is realistic, but supports the robust “review” of CSEC’s activities and sees the value in having a committee of security-cleared parliamentarians “fully briefed on what CSEC is doing.
“It would be an opportunity for them to provide feedback and observations and raise concerns perhaps about what CSEC is doing and CSEC could also use that forum as an opportunity to talk about what they might be doing or consider doing or to bounce off of them some thoughts,” said Adams.
“It would be an opportunity for (Parliament) to have some public debate but it would be a limited public debate because they’d have to be sworn to secrecy.”
This review does exist in the United States, though many argue the checks and balances have been abused and subverted in light of Snowden’s NSA disclosures.
Yet in the U.S., as the scandal grew, so too did Congressional scrutiny, with American politicians like Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon leading the pushback against secrecy.
A case in point came in August, when the leak of a top-secret document revealed the NSA broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year after 2008, when the agency was granted broad new powers by Congress.
Most of the violations were “unintentional,” but that sparked congressional queries for details on cases involving wilful misconduct by NSA spies. As pressure mounted, the NSA took the extraordinary measure of a public statement, acknowledging that a handful of its officers had used the agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on romantic interests.
Those instances, though rare, were common enough to warrant their own spycraft label — LOVEINT, or “love intelligence.” Most of the officials involved resigned, were dismissed or were demoted to a lower pay grade with limited security clearance, the agency said.
But that’s only one piece of a much broader debate taking place in Washington, as two competing pieces of legislation emerge with the intent to rein back NSA powers and place congressional checks and balances on a stronger footing. An important element of that debate is whether America’s massive metadata effort — the gathering up of the entire haystack of phone and Internet communications — is worth the cost.
These questions are hardly ever asked north of the border, even though Canada is a partner in the so-called Five Eyes, sharing intelligence-gathering chores alongside the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Little is known of what that entails, precisely, although the Globe and Mail penetrated one layer of the CSEC bubble in June. The newspaper disclosed that a secret Canadian metadata surveillance program first launched in 2005 under then-prime minister Paul Martin was frozen amid privacy concerns, only to be reinstated in 2011 under new rules.
Hundreds of pages of records on the program, obtained through Access to Information requests, came back with large passages blacked out on grounds of national security, the Globe reported.
The lone watchdog agency overseeing CSEC, the Office of the CSE Commissioner, has given its blessing to the metadata program. But critics say the office and its staff of eight, which until recently received its funding directly from the Department of National Defence, as does CSEC, remains too close to Canada’s security establishment to effectively safeguard privacy concerns.
Once a year CSEC’s watchdog reports to Canadians. But far more often, it reports secretly to the defence minister with recommendations for adjustments in how CSEC conducts its business. In his most recent public report, released in August, outgoing commissioner Robert Decary ended his three-year term proclaiming that all activities complied with Canadian law with the exception of “a small number of records (which) suggested the possibility that some activities may have been directed at Canadians, contrary to the law . . . I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion.”
Decary, in a final assessment of his time as CSEC watchdog, wrote that he saw little value in a confrontational relationship. “With my years of experience, I see the office more CSEC’s conscience than as a sword of Damocles,” he wrote.
But even Decary nudged Canada’s spymasters toward greater openness, writing that “I believe that the ice has been broken and that the security and intelligence agencies understand they can speak more openly about their work without betraying state secrets or compromising national security.
“The greater the transparency, the less skeptical and cynical the public will be.”
University of Ottawa scholar Wesley Wark, who specializes in national security and the history of intelligence agencies, says the CSEC watchdog is simply not enough.
Unlike Britain and the United States, Canadian oversight leaves a “gaping hole . . . a big gap” because Parliament is not involved in holding intelligence agencies to account as Adams suggested, Wark told The Star.
The issue has simmered for years, said Wark, with failed attempts, most recently in 2005, to create a British-style Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security.
But oversight actually grew worse in 2011, said Wark, when CSEC was deemed an independent agency within the Department of National Defence, effectively eliminating a requirement to report to the national security adviser and Privy Council office. “It took that away entirely,” said Wark, “and put it all within (DND), where it’s very easy for CSEC to disappear down its secret hole.
“There’s a question about who is really in charge and who’s deciding to apportion CSEC resources in terms of current operations,” he said.
Among the key questions Wark says remain unanswered is how much bang CSEC gets for its buck. And whether, in Canada’s haste to satisfy the obligations of its Five Eyes commitments, we sell Canadian interests short.
Deibert, who this year published Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, argues that while parliamentary oversight remains an admirable goal, the evolving issue of privacy-versus-surveillance warrants something more ambitious.
“I would go further: There needs to be somebody who is not part of Ottawa culture, who is adversarial, something with the authority and credibility of the Privacy Commission’s office,” said Deibert.
“Parliamentary oversight is necessary. But you also need oversight that doesn’t depend on favours or look through the lens of partisan politics.
“I just don’t think, as a society, Canada has caught up with the epochal scope of what has changed in the last 10 years. We’ve gone through the most profound transformation in how we communicate. Mobile and broadband technologies have turned us inside out — and at the same time these Cold War agencies are now turning their gaze inwards on us.
“It’s no longer spy-versus-spy and concern over foreign states with nuclear weapons. Now it’s about somebody blowing themselves up in a shopping mall. And so the threat model has turned toward all of society.”
Canada’s security agencies cannot do their jobs in total transparency, of course. Some degree of secrecy is crucial. But that is no hindrance, if a committee of Parliament were to be vetted and cleared — a commonplace practice in other jurisdictions — and thus able to absorb firsthand the full heft of CSEC activities.
But if CSEC’s critics and former bosses agree on at least some increased scrutiny, Adams doesn’t buy into all the Snowden hype. He shrugs, for example, at the furor that followed October’s disclosure of U.S. eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.
“Every leader in the world knows that people would love to know what they’re thinking, where they’re heading . . . anyone who doesn’t think that is happening is in never-never land,” Adams said.
“It’s not illegal but it’s embarrassing. There are 12 rules and 11 of them are, ‘Don’t get caught.’ ”

By: Mitch Potter Washington Bureau, Michelle Shephard National Security
Reporter, Published on Sat Nov 09 2013

Find this story at 9 November 2013

© Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. 1996-2013

A new leak suggests that Canada is using some of its embassies abroad for electronic-eavesdropping operations that work in concert with similar U.S. programs.

A U.S. National Security Agency document about a signals intelligence (SigInt) program codenamed “Stateroom” was published this week by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine. The document, a guide to the program, was among material obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“STATEROOM sites are covert SIGINT collection sites located in diplomatic facilities abroad,” the leaked document says. “SIGINT agencies hosting such sites include … Communication Security Establishments [sic] or CSE (at Canadian diplomatic facilities).”

The leaked document does not give the locations of the alleged listening posts. It says that, in general, such surveillance equipment is often concealed “in false architectural features or roof maintenance sheds” atop embassies. “Their true mission is not known by the majority of diplomatic staff at the facility,” it adds

A Parliamentarian who on Tuesday introduced a motion to increase scrutiny of federal intelligence agencies said the document shows Canadians do not know enough about the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).

“We really don’t know what they’re up to,” said Jack Harris, the NDP’s long-serving defence critic. “… We’re dealing with the secret work of spies and intelligence and whether what is being done is what ought to be done.”

Government representatives at CSEC and Foreign Affairs declined to comment directly on the leak. A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, who gives CSEC its direction, also declined to comment.

In 1995, former CSEC employee Mike Frost wrote in his memoir, Spyworld, that he set up “listening posts” at Canadian embassies. His book says CSEC signals intelligence technicians during the Cold War were funded and mentored by NSA counterparts who taught them how to conceal a piece of spy machinery inside what appeared to be an office safe.

One 1972 caper recounted in the book involved agents cutting a five-foot satellite dish into 12 wedges and smuggling the equipment into Moscow before reassembling it in the attic of the Canadian embassy there. Reports were then passed back to Canada in diplomatic bags, according to the book. It was a standard courtesy for CSEC to turn off its listening gear in Moscow when important British or U.S. allies visited, according to Spyworld.

Newly leaked material indicates that close partnerships still exist among the so-called “Five Eyes” – the alliance of intelligence agencies from English-speaking countries that agree not to spy on each other while collecting intelligence on just about everybody else.

The Five Eyes agencies may have teamed up to spy on BlackBerrys belonging to foreign diplomats at a 2009 meeting of the G20 in London, according to a previously published leak from Mr. Snowden, who now lives in Moscow as the United States seeks to arrest him on espionage charges.

According to the Stateroom document, Britain, Canada, the United States and Australia still run interrelated surveillance operations from their embassies. (New Zealand, the fifth “eye,” is not mentioned.)

“It’s not surprising, but it is certainly significant that it is disclosed,” said Wesley Wark, a Canadian professor who specializes in intelligence matters. “… There is still great value in having close access to telecommunications around the world, particularly if you are interested in cellphone communications.”

Mr. Wark’s point about “close” spying contrasts with a more far-reaching 21st century surveillance methodology highlighted earlier this month.

A leaked 2012 presentation showed that CSEC officers analyzed communications flow around Brazil’s energy ministry. This suggests CSEC has access to vast databases of previously logged global telecommunications traffic – giving the agency a very far reach in determining which telephones and computer servers in the world might yield the most intelligence for Canada.

COLIN FREEZE
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 29 2013, 11:59 AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 29 2013, 9:54 PM EDT

Find this story at 29 October 2013

© Copyright 2013 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Few things can get a government leader into hot water with important international partners faster than getting caught intercepting their mail, literally or electronically, as both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper can attest. Similarly, few things can be as seductive to government officials as intelligence, and few things more politically risky. What governments can do technologically should not dictate what they will do politically; capacity unbounded by a well-managed overarching political strategy can lead to errors in judgment with serious and far-reaching consequences.

The reality is that the value of intelligence can be, and frequently is, over-rated.

The revelations by Edward Snowden keep coming, undermining trust in the United States among its allies. The U.S. National Security Administration, one of reportedly 15 American intelligence agencies with an estimated cumulative budget of $75-billion, has been outed for gathering data from friend and foe alike. In France, the NSA apparently vacuumed up 70 million digital communications in a single month. In Spain, the number was reportedly 60 million electronic communications. The United Nations Secretary General has been a target as have Mexico’s current and former presidents and the German Chancellor. The Germans, who long endured the espionage predations of the old East German Stasi, and who considered themselves a steadfast ally of Washington, are particularly distressed that Chancellor Angela Merkel has been an NSA target.

What kind of ally would bug the German Chancellor’s mobile phone for a decade? In what respect exactly was Chancellor Merkel a security risk to the Americans? If Presidents Bush and Obama wanted to know what she thought, why did they not just pick up the phone and ask her, or meet with her at any of the numerous summits they attended together? The alleged bugging of the communications of 34 other leaders around the world that Mr. Snowden claims happened will doubtless produce more unhappy surprises. In Brazil the United States was revealed to be spying both on the communications of President Dilma Rouseff and on the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras. Meanwhile, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment was revealed to be spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Mining and Energy.

The repercussions are potentially very serious. The sheer scale of electronic eavesdropping and the impudence with which it is undertaken have hit nerves worldwide. Consumers in this digital age, who paradoxically are more ready to tolerate the pervasive incursions of foreign corporations into their lives than the snooping of foreign governments, are up in arms. Allied governments, whose outrage appears partly but not wholly tactical, are threatening a range of retaliations. The European Parliament has sent a delegation to Washington seeking explanations. The Germans, who want to be removed from the NSA targets list, as do others, have dispatched their intelligence chiefs to Washington this week to seek cooperation.

Meanwhile, the European Union parliament is threatening to delay U.S.-EU free trade negotiations and contemplating privacy legislation that would force American internet companies like Google and Yahoo on the pain of heavy fines to get EU approval before complying with U.S. warrants seeking e-mails and search histories of EU citizens. Germany and Brazil are promoting a resolution at the UN that would call on states to respect privacy rights under the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights particularly as regards the extraterritorial surveillance of private communications of citizens in foreign jurisdictions. Perhaps the most significant cost of the Snowden revelations is that American (and Canadian) policy to promote multi-stakeholder governance of the Internet and to limit its regulation by governments is in serious jeopardy. NSA meta-data dragnets around the world have made the case for greater national control of the Internet more persuasively than the Chinese, Russians and Iranians ever could. Meanwhile, Deutsche Telekom among others is launching a new encrypted service using only data centres located on German soil. The Balkanization of the Internet looms.

The gap between American words and American deeds has grown too wide for foreign governments and their publics to ignore. This week’s protestations by American leaders that American spying saves lives, including European lives, are seen as self-serving piffle. No lives were at stake in the German Chancellor’s office, nor were there any terrorists, as one Brazilian legislator observed, at the bottom of any Brazilian oil well. The excuse that ”they all do it” is equally unpersuasive. Although the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the German Nachtrichtendienst and the Brazilian Agência Brasileira de Inteligência do do it, the point is not who else is dissembling but how effective intelligence is and at what political, financial and moral costs it is purchased. In Washington, after initially blowing off others’ concerns, the Obama administration and Congress are having second thoughts about the wisdom of spying on allies.

Here are five lessons we can draw from all this for Canada.

First, secrets are hard to keep in the digital world. The intelligence leadership and their political masters should presume that they will see their decisions on The front page of the Globe and Mail one day.

Second, intelligence is a means not an end, and not all its purposes – national security, counter-terrorism, communications security, commercial secrets and economic advantage – are equally compelling. Mature judgment is a must if sound decisions are to be made about the risks that are worth running – or not. For example, at a time when our Governor-General, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade Minster and other ministers had visited Brazil to court the government, was it really worth spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Energy and Mines, as we are alleged to have done?

Third, membership in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which dates from the end of the Second World War, entails costs as well as benefits and needs to be kept under sober review. Rubbing shoulders with the American intelligence community can be intoxicating, a poor condition in which to make important judgments.

Fourth, intelligence can be and frequently is over-rated. Spending on intelligence and diplomacy needs to be re-balanced. While intelligence operates beyond the pale of international law, diplomacy is both legally sanctioned and uncontroversial, and effective, in its creation of trusting relationships, effective. It does not make sense at a time when intelligence expenditures have grown dramatically, and CSEC is erecting a billion-dollar building in Ottawa, that the Foreign Affairs department is selling off assets abroad to cover a shrinking budget.

Fifth, leadership matters. The key challenge is not so much to do things right as it is to do the right things. Oversight to ensure that Canadian laws are not being broken is important and needs reinforcement, but coherent, strategic policy leadership that ensures that the intelligence tail never wags the foreign policy dog is crucial. Technological capacity should never trump political judgment.

The Globe and Mail
Paul Heinbecker
Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Find this story at 30 October 2013

© Copyright 2013 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper responds to questions as German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on during a joint news conference on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Thursday August 16, 2012.
Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand
comment

Canadian embassies have been used to house equipment that collected signals intelligence as part of a U.S.-led spying effort, according to documents reportedly leaked by whisteblower Edward Snowden.

German news magazine Der Spiegel published a series of documents provided by Snowden, a former contractor of the National Security Agency (NSA), that detail a surveillance program codenamed “Stateroom.” According to Der Spiegel, the NSA together with the CIA placed secretive eavesdropping stations at diplomatic outposts to collect signals intelligence, also known as SigInt, on the host countries.

At U.S.-owned facilities, this was known as the “Special Collection Service,” according to the documents. However, one leaked page also indicates that Canadian diplomatic facilities were used and suggests that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) took part in the project.

The document also mentions the use of British and Australian diplomatic facilities. These monitoring stations, according to Der Spiegel, are concealed and typically placed on the upper floors or rooftops of embassies or consulates. The equipment is used to intercept communications, Der Spiegel reported.

“These sites are small in size and in number of personnel staffing them,” the document says. “They are covert, and their true mission is not know by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned.”

Der Spiegel notes: “The presence of these spying units ranks among the agency’s best-guarded secrets. After all, they are politically precarious: There are very few cases in which their use has been authorized by the local host countries.”

The documents were published along with stories looking at how the U.S. spies on European countries and specifically Germany. Last week, Der Spiegel reported they had documents showing the U.S. was monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

The report caused a diplomatic rift and Merkel’s government summoned the U.S. ambassador seeking answers. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he didn’t know the NSA was monitoring the communications of allied world leaders.

The document mentioning Canadian facilities is a glossary accompanying a Stateroom guide. Canada and CSEC are listed in the definition for “Stateroom sites,” which are “covert SIGINT collection sites located in diplomatic facilities abroad.”

Canada is part of Five Eyes, the name of a sort of allied club of Western countries that has pledged not to spy on one another. Australia and the U.K. — the two other countries named in the document — are also members along with the U.S. and New Zealand. There’s speculation that in the wake of Snowden’s leaks, some countries — like Germany — are going to want to join the club.

As Canadian intelligence blog Lux Ex Umbra points out, a book written by former CSEC employee Mike Frost in 1994 alleged that surveys were done in the 1980s by CSEC to find Canadian embassies suitable for monitoring stations. CSEC has never confirmed that allegation and according to the Canadian Press, will not comment on the latest report in Der Spiegel.

Lauren Strapagiel
Published: October 29, 2013, 4:16 pm
Updated: 2 weeks ago

Find this story at 29 October 2013

© 2013 Postmedia Network Inc.

New revelations indicate that Canada’s ultra-secretive spy agency CSEC may have taken part in U.S.-led efforts to spy on diplomats.

Canada has used diplomatic facilities abroad to house electronic eavesdropping operations allied with American global surveillance programs, according to a recently leaked U.S. document.

A slide presentation leaked to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine suggests that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) took part in a broader U.S.-led effort known as “Stateroom” that collect “SigInt” (signals intelligence) from secret installations inside embassies and consulates. Such spying often takes place without the knowledge of the diplomats posted to these missions, the document says.

CSEC could not immediately respond to questions about the leaked document, but generally says it does not break Canadian laws and that it cannot comment on the methods that it uses to collect foreign intelligence.

The document recording Canada’s participation in “Stateroom” was published this week by Der Spiegel magazine in a broader piece about U.S. spying in Germany. The report focused on evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone was targeted for surveillance. The disclosure has prompted German officials to openly mull expelling U.S. diplomats.

Relying “mostly” on leaked NSA documents from former U.S. contractor Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel published a leaked “Stateroom Guide” glossary that directly referenced CSEC. On Monday, Canadian blogger Bill Robinson drew attention to the passage on his “Lux Ex Umbra” intelligence blog.

“STATEROOM sites are covert SIGINT collection sites located in diplomatic facilities abroad,” the leaked document says. “SIGINT agencies hosting such sites include … Communication Security Establishments or CSE (at Canadian diplomatic facilities).”

No locations are given for the alleged CSEC outposts in embassies abroad.

The leaked U.S. document goes on to says that such surveillance equipment is concealed – “in false architectural features or roof maintenance sheds” –– and that such operations are highly compartmentalized. “They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned.”

Article by Colin Freeze for The Globe and Mail

Find this article at 29 October 2013

© Copyright 2013 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Une semaine après les manifestations d’indignation exprimées par les autorités politiques françaises après les révélations du Monde sur l’ampleur des interceptions électroniques réalisées, en France, par l’Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) américaine, de nouveaux éléments montrent que cette émotion pouvait être, en partie, feinte.

Mardi 29 octobre, devant la commission du renseignement de la Chambre des représentants, le chef de la NSA, le général Keith Alexander, a juré que les informations du Monde ainsi que celles d’El Mundo, en Espagne, et de L’Espresso, en Italie, sur l’interception de communications de citoyens européens par la NSA étaient « complètement fausses ». Il a précisé qu’il s’agissait de « données fournies à la NSA » par ces mêmes partenaires européens.

Quelques heures plus tôt, le quotidien américain The Wall Street Journal, s’appuyant sur des sources anonymes, affirmait que les 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques collectées en France, par la NSA, entre le 10 décembre 2012 et le 8 janvier 2013, ont été communiquées par les services français eux-mêmes. Ces éléments auraient été transmis, selon ce journal, conformément à un accord de coopération en matière de renseignement entre les Etats-Unis et la France.

UN ACCORD DE COOPÉRATION CONNU SOUS LE NOM DE « LUSTRE »

Ces informations, qui tendent à dédouaner la NSA de toute intrusion, ne permettent de progresser dans la compréhension de l’espionnage américain dans le monde qu’à condition de les mettre en résonance avec l’éclairage apporté, le 28 octobre, par la Süddeutsche Zeitung. La presse allemande a signalé, grâce à une note dévoilée par l’ex-consultant de la NSA Edward Snowden, l’existence d’un accord de coopération sur la surveillance entre la France et les Etats-Unis connu sous le nom de « Lustre ».

Selon nos informations, recueillies auprès d’un haut responsable de la communauté du renseignement en France, la direction des services extérieurs français, la DGSE, a, en effet, établi, à partir de la fin 2011 et début 2012, un protocole d’échange de données avec les Etats-Unis.

La France bénéficie d’un positionnement stratégique en matière de transport de données électroniques. Les câbles sous-marins par lesquels transitent la plupart des données provenant d’Afrique et d’Afghanistan atterrissent à Marseille et à Penmarc’h, en Bretagne. Ces zones stratégiques sont à la portée de la DGSE française, qui intercepte et stocke l’essentiel de ce flux entre l’étranger et la France.

“UN TROC ENTRE LA DIRECTION DE LA NSA ET CELLE DE LA DGSE”

« C’est un troc qui s’est institué entre la direction de la NSA et celle de la DGSE, explique la même source. On donne des blocs entiers sur ces zones et ils nous donnent, en contrepartie, des parties du monde où nous sommes absents, mais la négociation ne s’est pas effectuée en une fois, le périmètre du partage s’élargit au fil des discussions qui se prolongent encore aujourd’hui. »

Il paraît donc, a priori, en partie exact, qu’une partie des données téléphoniques transitant sur le sol français soit transmise, conformément aux accords de coopération, et sans tri préalable, par la DGSE à la NSA. Il s’agit donc de données concernant aussi bien des citoyens français recevant des communications de ces zones géographiques que d’étrangers utilisant ces canaux.

Il paraît peu probable que le gouvernement français, qui supervise le financement des infrastructures d’interception et de stockage de la DGSE, ne soit pas au courant de ces pratiques. Ce qui relativise la sincérité des récriminations françaises après l’annonce, par Le Monde, de ces interceptions américaines.

GÉOGRAPHIE SOUS-MARINE

L’absence de statut juridique clair des métadonnées en France et l’étrange discrétion de la Commission nationale de contrôle des interceptions de sécurité (CNCIS) paraissent, de plus, avoir facilité la transmission à la NSA par la DGSE de millions de données relevant de la vie privée de millions de Français.

Au regard de la quantité des interceptions réalisées en un seul mois, la justification avancée par les services de renseignement concernant des questions liées à la lutte contre le terrorisme peut également être sujette à caution.

D’après un responsable à Matignon, la France n’est pas la seule à « troquer » ainsi les données passant sur son territoire. Elle appartiendrait à « une amicale » qui comprend des pays tels qu’Israël, la Suède ou l’Italie, vers lesquels convergent également des câbles sous-marins stratégiques pour les Américains. Depuis 2011, une nouvelle redistribution des cartes de la coopération en matière de renseignement s’est ainsi réalisée sur le seul fondement de cette géographie sous-marine.

RESPONSABILITÉ DES AUTORITÉS POLITIQUES FRANÇAISES

Ces informations viennent donc préciser celles déjà publiées par Le Monde concernant la collecte, en un mois, par la NSA, de 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques concernant la France. Qu’une partie de ces informations soient transmises avec l’assentiment de la DGSE ne change en rien son caractère attentatoire aux libertés. Ce nouvel éclairage pose avant tout la responsabilité des autorités politiques françaises. Sollicitée sur cette coopération, la DGSE s’est refusée à tout commentaire.

Par ailleurs, Le Monde maintient, sur la base des documents dévoilés par Edward Snowden permettant de décrypter les tableaux d’interceptions de données téléphoniques et numériques à travers le monde, qu’il s’agit d’opérations « contre » un pays nommé. Dans ce cas précis, la France.

Un haut responsable du renseignement français, joint, mercredi matin, a admis, sous couvert d’anonymat, l’existence de « ces échanges de données ». Il a néanmoins démenti « catégoriquement » que la DGSE puisse transférer « 70,3 millions de données à la NSA ».

LE MONDE | 30.10.2013 à 12h51
Par Jacques Follorou

Find this story at 30 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Le général Keith Alexander, le chef de la NSA, a mis en cause, mardi 29 octobre lors d’une audition devant la Chambre des représentants, les informations publiées par plusieurs journaux européens, dont Le Monde, sur la surveillance exercée par l’agence de renseignement dans leurs pays respectifs.

Que disent les autorités américaines ?

Selon Keith Alexander, les informations publiées par plusieurs journaux européens sont fondées sur des documents qui n’ont pas été “compris”.

A l’instar du général américain, des sources anonymes ont affirmé au Wall Street Journal que ces documents, sur lesquels se sont appuyés les journaux européens, ne montrent pas des données interceptées par la NSA au sein de ces pays, mais des informations captées par les services de renseignement européens eux-mêmes, à l’extérieur de leurs frontières.

D’où vient ce document ?

DOCUMENT

Le document sur lequel Le Monde s’est appuyé pour ses révélations fait partie des documents exfiltrés de la NSA par l’ancien sous-traitant de l’agence Edward Snowden, auxquels nous a donné accès notre collaboration avec Glenn Greenwald.

Il est issu d’un logiciel, Boundless Informant, qui agrège et organise les données contenues dans les innombrables bases de données de la NSA et permet aux analystes de l’agence d’en avoir un aperçu en quelques clics. Son existence, ainsi que la carte du monde qui en est tirée et montre l’ampleur des données collectées pour chaque pays, a été révélée par le Guardian en juin.

Ce logiciel permet aussi d’afficher un récapitulatif par pays des données le concernant. C’est le cas du document reproduit par Le Monde, sur lequel nous nous sommes fondés pour évoquer le chiffre de près de 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques interceptées.

C’est également ce type de document que El Mundo en Espagne, L’Espresso en Italie et, avant eux, Der Spiegel en Allemagne ont utilisé pour étayer leurs révélations sur la surveillance.

Que montre-t-il ?

Le document montre clairement que 70 271 990 données téléphoniques concernant la France ont été incorporées dans les bases de données de l’agence entre le 10 décembre 2012 et le 8 janvier 2013.

Pour s’y retrouver dans les nombreux “tuyaux” qui lui fournissent les données, la NSA utilise une nomenclature spécifique. Ainsi, au bas du document que nous reproduisons, on apprend que le “canal” “US-985D” – celui qui fournit l’ensemble des 70 millions de données françaises – est alimenté via deux outils techniques : “DRTBOX” et “WHITEBOX”. Le premier se taille la part du lion en récoltant près de 89 % des données affichées sur le document.

Extratit du document obtenu par “Le Monde”

Qu’est-ce qui reste flou ?

Selon la version défendue par les sources anonymes du Wall Street Journal et par Keith Alexander, ce document ne montre pas des données de Français interceptées par la NSA, mais des informations collectées par la France et ses services, en dehors du territoire hexagonal et visant avant tout des cibles non françaises. Autrement dit, les données sont-elles fournies par la France, ou sont-elles issues d’une surveillance de la France ? L’intitulé du document – “France, 30 derniers jours” – ne permet pas de trancher.

Extrait d’un document obtenu par “Le Monde”

L’existence des deux techniques d’interception “DRTBOX” et “WHITEBOX” pourrait accréditer l’existence d’un partenariat avec les services français, dont les informations du Monde fournissent la preuve.

Mais un document d’aide destiné aux analystes de la NSA répondant à leurs questions sur Boundless Informant permet, sinon de contredire, au moins de fortement nuancer l’hypothèse de la NSA, accréditant les informations du Monde. Publié par le site du Guardian en juin, il précise à plusieurs reprises que les informations qui y sont affichées sont issues de collecte “contre” les pays spécifiés.

Le document explique par exemple qu'”un clic sur un pays [depuis la carte] montre la posture de collecte (…) contre ce pays en particulier”.

Extrait d’un document publié par le “Guardian”. Le surlignage a été effectué par le “Monde”.

Ailleurs, le document précise que “l’outil [Boundless Informant] permet à ses utilisateurs de selectionner un pays [ainsi que] les détails de la collecte contre ce pays”, est-il ainsi écrit. La question “combien de données sont collectées contre un pays en particulier ?” figure, elle, dans les exemples de requêtes que peuvent formuler les analystes dans le logiciel. Enfin, il est fait mention des “capacités de collecte de la NSA” que les analystes peuvent évaluer grâce à Boundless Informant.

Extrait d’un document publié par le “Guardian”. Le surlignage a été effectué par le “Monde”.

Comme Le Monde l’a écrit lors de ses révélations, les modalités techniques précises et le périmètre de cette surveillance sont inconnus.

Pourquoi les autorités américaines démentent-elles aujourd’hui ?
Il y a plusieurs semaines déjà, des médias partenaires de M. Greenwald ont utilisé des documents similaires à celui reproduit par Le Monde. Lorsque le Spiegel annonce que 500 millions de communications de citoyens allemands sont surveillées, il le fait en se fondant notamment sur un document issu de Boundless Informant. A l’époque, la NSA n’a ni commenté ni démenti ces informations.

De fait, ce démenti public formulé par Keith Alexander intervient alors que la pression politique, domestique et internationale, s’est considérablement accrue sur son agence.

Notons enfin que les informations concernant la surveillance d’intérêts économiques hexagonaux, tout comme celle d’importants diplomates, n’a pas été démentie par le chef de l’agence de renseignement américaine.

Le Monde.fr | 30.10.2013 à 18h39
Par Martin Untersinger

Find this story at 30 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Während Hollande den jüngsten Lauschangriff heftig kritisiert, arbeitet Frankreich längst mit amerikanischen und britischen Geheimdiensten zusammen. Unter dem Codenamen “Lustre” hat die Regierung vor einiger Zeit einen Kooperationsvertrag geschlossen – sie ist damit nicht alleine.

Hollande kritisiert den Lauschangriff der US-Dienste und rückt näher an Merkel. Doch der Geheimdienst seines Landes arbeitet indes unter dem Codenamen “Lustre” mit dem Geheimdienstbündnis “Five Eyes” zusammen, dem neben den USA und Großbritannien auch Neuseeland, Kanada und Australien angehören. Paris liefert ihnen systematisch Informationen.

Frankreich hat ein entsprechendes Kooperationsabkommen – ein sogenanntes Drittparteiabkommen – geschlossen, wie aus Dokumenten des Whistleblowers Edward Snowden hervorgeht, die der Norddeutsche Rundfunk und die Süddeutsche Zeitung einsehen konnten.

Demnach kooperieren auch Israel (Codename Ruffle), Schweden (Codename Sardine) und Italien mit dem britischen und amerikanischen Geheimdienst. Die “Five Eyes”-Mitglieder sollen sich versprochen haben, sich nicht gegenseitig auszuspionieren. Das italienische Magazin L’Espresso berichtete unterdessen, dass Italiens Regierung ebenfalls von der NSA ausgespäht worden sein soll.

Süddeutsche Zeitung
26. Oktober 2013
Von John Goetz und Frederik Obermaier

Find this story at 26 October 2013

© Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

On Monday, the news broke that the National Security Agency has been actively intercepting French telephone calls and email traffic — collecting over 70 million French calls in a single month, according to Le Monde.

Turns out this is only the latest surveillance operation in a long, long history of America spying on France. A newly declassified intelligence document reveals that the NSA and its antecedents have been intercepting French communications and breaking French codes and ciphers for more than 70 years.

Monday’s Le Monde report may have generated enormous controversy in France, leading the French foreign minister to call in the U.S. ambassador and read him the riot act. But it’s hardly a new development. American eavesdroppers began listening on France during World War II. They continued doing so during the Cold War. The NSA even spied on France during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A 1947 top-secret code-word NSA document, titled “The General Cryptanalytic Problems,” reveals that in April 1941, eight months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a small U.S. Army code-breaking unit, headed by French linguist Herrick F. Bearce, began trying to solve the diplomatic codes and ciphers of the Vichy French regime headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, which had actively collaborated with Nazi Germany since the fall of France in 1940. A few months earlier, in January 1941, U.S. Army and Navy listening posts had begun intercepting Vichy diplomatic radio traffic between France and its colonies in North and West Africa, Martinique, Madagascar, Indochina, French Guiana, Djibouti, and St. Pierre et Miquelon off the Canadian coast.

Success quickly followed, indicating that the French codes and ciphers were not particularly secure. The report shows that Bearce’s cryptanalysts broke their first Vichy French code, designated FBT, shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack in mid-December 1941. The size of Bearce’s section grew by leaps and bounds as his cryptanalysts, with considerable help from their counterparts in Britain and Canada, solved several dozen Vichy encryption systems with increasing ease. The Army continued to read all of the Vichy French codes and ciphers being used until Pétain’s regime collapsed following the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. Within a matter of weeks, Vichy communications traffic disappeared from the airwaves except for occasional cables to the sole French colony controlled by Vichy in French Indochina (in what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).

After Pétain’s Vichy government collapsed, in April 1943 the U.S. Army code breakers turned their attention to the diplomatic codes and ciphers then being used by America’s nominal ally, Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s Free French government in exile, which was based in London but maintained embassies in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The report shows that in October 1943, the U.S. Army’s French code-breaking specialists, then headed by Maj. William F. Edgerton, solved the first of de Gaulle’s most important diplomatic cipher systems, designated FMD. In the months that followed, a half dozen other Free French diplomatic ciphers were solved.

With the solutions of these systems, decrypted French diplomatic traffic became the single most important source of intelligence information being produced by the U.S. Army’s code-breaking unit after Germany and Japan. By the time Japan surrendered in August 1945, the U.S. Army’s code breakers had broken or were working on the solution to 60 French diplomatic or military code and cipher systems, including nearly all of the high-level encryption systems used by de Gaulle and his top ministers to communicate with French diplomats and generals around the world.

The amount of intelligence information produced from decrypted French diplomatic traffic was enormous and incredibly valuable. For example, the French FMT diplomatic code, which the U.S. Army broke in February 1945, proved to be an intelligence bonanza for the United States since the messages encrypted in the system contained all of the high-level diplomatic traffic between Paris and the French delegation at an April 1945 conference in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations. In other words, the State Department officials at the San Francisco conference knew everything about the French negotiating positions even before the conference began.

But that is not the extent of the surprises contained in the newly declassified report. Buried all the way at the back of the document is a nine-page chapter titled simply “Assistance From Espionage,” which describes in some detail how the FBI and the predecessor to the CIA, then known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), stole countless foreign code books and cipher materials in order to help the Army’s code breakers at their work.

It turns out that much of the success enjoyed by the Army’s code breakers against the French codes and ciphers during World War II was because FBI and OSS burglars repeatedly broke into French embassies in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere around the world to steal French cryptographic materials. These “black-bag jobs” proved to be enormously useful in allowing the Army to break French codes and ciphers. The report states (p. 302) that “The French Section has been the recipient of more compromised [stolen] material than any other language group [within the Army code-breaking organization],” with the document showing that FBI and OSS burglars surreptitiously copied at least nine French codes and ciphers between 1941 and 1945.

But this is only the beginning of a story that has yet to be told. It might surprise people to learn that the NSA and its partners in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have never stopped intercepting French diplomatic and military communications, or trying to break French codes and ciphers, since the day Japan surrendered on Aug. 14, 1945. The NSA’s intercept operators monitored French military communications in Indochina in the 1950s, as well as French military and diplomatic traffic during the Algerian insurgency in the 1960s. Much of what the U.S. intelligence community knew about the Israeli nuclear weapons program in the late 1950s and early 1960s came from intercepted French communications. And when the French government led the fight in the United Nations against the U.S. government’s plans to invade Iraq in 2002 and 2003, the NSA was listening then as well.

France may be a friend and ally of the United States, but that means very little in the U.S. intelligence community, where spying on America’s friends is as much a fact of life as spying on America’s enemies. As senior U.S. intelligence officials are fond of saying, “We have no friends, only targets.”

Matthew M. Aid is the author of Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror and The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency.

Posted By Matthew M. Aid
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 – 5:32 PM

Find this story at 22 October 2013

©2013 The Slate Group, LLC.

The US National Security Agency has spied on French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, according to the latest claims in Le Monde newspaper.

NSA internal memos obtained by Le Monde detailed the use of a sophisticated surveillance programme, known as Genie.

US spies allegedly hacked foreign networks, introducing the spyware into the software, routers and firewalls of millions of machines.

It comes a day after claims the NSA tapped millions of phones in France.

The details in the latest Le Monde article are based on leaks from ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, through Glen Greenwald, the outgoing Guardian journalist, who is feeding the material from Brazil, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.

It comes on the day the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is in London meeting foreign counterparts to discuss Syria.
‘Spy implants’

The Le Monde report sets out details of Genie, an NSA surveillance programme in which spyware implants were introduced remotely to overseas computers, including foreign embassies.

It claims bugs were introduced to the French Embassy in Washington (under a code name “Wabash”) and to the computers of the French delegation at the UN, codenamed “Blackfoot”.

The article suggests that in 2011, the US allocated $652m (£402m) in funding for the programme, which was spent on “spy implants”. Tens of millions of computers were reported to have been hacked that year.

A document dated August 2010 suggests intelligence stolen from foreign embassy computers ensured the US knew ahead of time the positions of other Security Council members, before a UN vote for a resolution imposing new sanctions on Iran.

The US was worried the French were drifting to the Brazilian side – who were opposed to implementing sanctions – when in truth they were always aligned to the US position, says our correspondent.

The intelligence agency quotes Susan Rice, then-US ambassador to the UN, who praises the work done by the NSA: “It helped me know… the truth, and reveal other [countries’] positions on sanctions, allowing us to keep one step ahead in the negotiations.”

On Monday, Le Monde alleged that the NSA spied on 70.3 million phone calls in France between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013.

At a breakfast meeting with the US secretary of state on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius demanded a full explanation.

Referring to a telephone call between the French and US presidents, Mr Fabius told reporters: “I said again to John Kerry what Francois Hollande told Barack Obama, that this kind of spying conducted on a large scale by the Americans on its allies is something that is unacceptable.”

Asked if France was considering reprisals against the US, government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem replied: “It is up to Foreign Minister Fabius to decide what line we take but I don’t think there is any need for an escalation.

“We have to have a respectful relationship between partners, between allies. Our confidence in that has been hit but it is after all a very close, individual relationship that we have.”

Both French officials made their comments before the latest revelations appeared in Le Monde.

Mr Snowden, a former NSA worker, went public with revelations about US spying operations in June.

The information he leaked led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale.

Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as well as allies like the EU and Brazil.

The NSA was also forced to admit it had captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.

Mr Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted a year-long visa after making an asylum application.

The US wants him extradited to face trial on criminal charges.

22 October 2013 Last updated at 13:36 ET

Find this story at 22 October 2013

© 2013 The BBC

Latest leaks from Edward Snowden say American agents recorded more than 70 million French phone calls in just 30 days – including those of politicians and businessmen

The French government has summoned the US ambassador in Paris to provide an explanation for fresh Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA.

According to reports this morning in Le Monde, the American National Security Agency recorded more than 70 million phone calls made France over the course of just 30 days.

If accurate, the reports are the latest indicator of the extraordinary reaching of US electronic spying, and come alongside the news that agents also hacked the email account of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, told reporters at an EU meet in Luxembourg: “I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d’Orsay [French Foreign Ministry].”

“Rules are obviously needed when it comes to new communication technologies, and that’s something that concerns every country,” he the Europe-1 radio station. “If a friendly country – an ally – spies on France or other European countries, that is completely unacceptable.”

Le Monde’s story, which included the byline of the outgoing Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, said that the communications of prominent businessmen and politicians were spied on alongside those of suspected security threats.

It said the NSA had targeted Orange and Alcatel-Lucent – two of the biggest network operators in France – and that it used keyword technology and lists of certain types of numbers to automatically pick up millions of records a day.

The 70.3 million pieces of data came from 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, and it was not made clear whether they included the full content of conversations or just the metadata – the information of who, when and where the call was made.

The programme of surveillance, codenamed US-985D, also reportedly stored millions of intercepted text messages.

The article followed reports in the German weekly Der Spiegel that the NSA accessed the email account of Felipe Calderon, the former Mexican president. Mexico said it would be seeking an explanation from US officials “as soon as possible”.

Mr Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA who first went public about US surveillance techniques in June, warned then that he had gigabytes of data full of other revelations, to be released over time.

He is currently a refugee at an unknown location in Russia, after he was granted one year’s asylum on the condition, president Vladimir Putin said, that he stop leaking US secrets.

It is not known whether today’s revelations come straight from Mr Snowden himself, or if they are part of a large stock of data given in bulk to journalists at an earlier date.

The US has, as with other Snowden stories, refused to comment on what it calls confidential information.

Officials nonetheless referred Le Monde to a statement made in June, in which US director of national intelligence James Clapper defended the NSA’s programmes.

“They are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorised by Congress,” he said. “Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber-attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Adam Withnall
Monday, 21 October 2013

Find this story at 21 October 2013

© independent.co.uk

The future will perhaps tell us one day why France has remained so discreet in comparison with Germany or Brazil, for example, after the first revelations about the extent of the American electronic espionage programmes in the world as revealed by Edward Snowden, the ex-employee of an NSA (National Security Agency) sub-contractor. France was also concerned and today has at its disposition tangible proof that its interests are targeted on a daily basis.
According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database by its ex-analyst, telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale. Le Monde has been able to obtain access to documents which describe the techniques used to violate the secrets or simply the private life of French people. Some elements of information about this espionage have been referred to by Der Speigel and The Guardian, but others are, to date, unpublished.

Amongst the thousands of documents extracted from the NSA by its ex-employee there is a graph which describes the extent of telephone monitoring and tapping (DNR – Dial Number Recognition) carried out in France. It can be seen that over a period of thirty days – from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70,3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data were made by the NSA. This agency has several methods of data collection. According to the elements obtained by Le Monde, when a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target – or the meta-data.

This espionage is listed under the programme US-985D. The precise explanation of this acronym has not been provided, to date, by the Snowden documents nor by the former members of the NSA. By way of comparison, the acronyms used by the NSA for the same type of interception targeting Germany are US-987LA and US-987LB. According to some sources, this series of numbers corresponds to the circle referred to by the United States as the ‘third party’, to which belong France, Germany but also Austria, Poland or again Belgium. ‘The second party’ concerns the English-speaking countries historically close to Washington: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – this group is known by the name the ‘five eyes’. ‘The first party’ concerns the sixteen American secret services of which today the NSA has become the most important, according to a senior official from the French Intelligence community.

The techniques used for these interceptions appear under the codenames ‘DRTBOX’ and ‘WHITEBOX’. Their characteristics are not known either. But we do know that, thanks to DRTBOX, 62.5 million data were collected in France and that WHITEBOX enables the recording of 7.8 million elements. The documents which Le Monde has been able to see have not enabled the provision of further details on these methods. But they give sufficient explanation to lead us to think that the NSA targets concerned both people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as people targeted simply because they belong to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration.

The NSA graph shows an average of 3 million data intercepts per day with peaks at almost 7 million on 24 December 2012 and 7 January 2013. But between 28 and 31 December no interception seems to have taken place. This apparent stoppage of activity could be explained, in particular, by the time required at the end of December 2012, for the American Congress to renew section 702 of the law dealing with electronic espionage abroad. Similarly nothing appears on the 3, 5 and 6 January 2013; this time we cannot suggest any plausible reason. Many questions are still posed by this diagram – to start with the precise identity of the targets and the justifications for such a large-scale collection of data in a foreign country which is both sovereign and an ally.

When questioned, the American authorities did not wish to comment on these documents which they considered to be ‘classified’. Nevertheless, they do refer to the statement made on 8 June 2013 by the Director of National Intelligence according to which, ‘the government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is an appropriate, and document foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.

France is not the country in which the NSA intercepts the most digital or telephone connections. The ‘Boundless Informant’ system, revealed in June by Edward Snowden to the British daily The Guardian, enabled an overall vision and in real time of the information gathered throughout the world, by means of the various NSA wire-tapping systems. This system gathers not only telephone data (DNR) but also digital data (DNI Digital Network Intelligence). One of the documents which Le Monde was able to consult notes that between 8 February and 8 March 2013, the NSA collected, throughout the world, 124,8 billion telephone data items and 97,1 billion computer data items. In Europe, only Germany and the United Kingdom exceed France in terms of numbers of interceptions.

Le Monde.fr
21.10.2013 à 06h08
Par Jacques Follorou et Glenn Greenwald (Journaliste)

Find this story at 21 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Agents said to have intercepted 70 million calls and text messages a month
France had previously blamed the United States of America
U.S. was first suspected of hacking into Nicolas Sarkozy’s phone in 2012
Americans insisted they have never been behind hacking in France
Comes after it emerged German officials are planning trip to U.S. to discuss allegations Angela Merkel’s phone was hack by the NSA
The German Chancellor said President Obama’s reputation has been shattered on an international scale because of espionage scandal

Israel and not America was behind the hacking of millions of French phones, it was claimed today.

In the latest extraordinary twist in the global eavesdropping scandal, Israeli agents are said to have intercepted more than 70 million calls and text messages a month.

Up until now the French have been blaming the U.S., even summoning the country’s Paris ambassador to provide an explanation.

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France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012

But today’s Le Monde newspaper provides evidence that it was in fact Israeli agents who were listening in.

France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012.

Intelligence officials Bernard Barbier and Patrick Pailloux travelled from Paris to Washington to demand an explanation, but the Americans hinted that the Israelis were to blame.

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The Americans insisted they have never been behind any hacking in France, and were always keen to get on with the French, whom they viewed as some of their closest allies.

They were so determined to be friends with the French, that U.S. briefing notes included details of how to pronounce the names of the Gallic officials.

A note published in Le Monde shows that the Americans refused to rule out Mossad, Israel’s notoriously uncompromising intelligence agency, or the ISNU, Israel’s cyber-intelligence unit.

Today’s newspaper report was co-written by Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (pictured)

Tailored Access Operations (TAO), the branch of the US National Security Agency (NSA) which deals with cyber-attacks, is referred to throughout the note.

It reads: ‘TAO intentionally did not ask either Mossad or ISNU whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.’

Le Monde’s article, co-authored by U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, however, hints that the Israelis were doing the spying.

Both US and French intelligence work closely with Mossad, but there is known to be a great deal of suspicion between all the agencies.

A 2008 NSA note says that the Israelis are ‘excellent partners in terms of sharing information’, but it also says that Mossad is ‘the third most aggressive intelligence service in the world against the United States’.

A spokesman for the Israeli government told Le Monde: ‘Israel is a country which is a friend, ally and partner of France and does not carry out any hostile activity which could pose a threat to its security.’

France has complained in the past about Mossad’s use of its soil to plan so called black operations including the 2010 assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh of the Palestinian movement Hamas.

The revelation comes after senior German officials said they would be travelling to the U.S. ‘shortly’ to talk about allegations the NSA bugged Angela Merkel’s phone.
Obama orders review of surveillance activities

Anger: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (right) have both voiced concerns over the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners

The heads of Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies will participate in high-level discussions with the White House and National Security Agency, government spokesman Georg Streiter said.

News of the talks signals an escalation in the diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and its allies after it was claimed the NSA had monitored the calls of 35 world leaders.

Brazil and Germany have joined forces in an attempt to pile pressure on the United Nations to rein in the snooping activities. They want a UN General Resolution that promotes the right to online privacy.

This step, the first major international response to the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners, comes after German Chancellor Merkel said the recent U.S. espionage scandal has shattered international trust in Barack Obama.

Angela Merkel said the recent espionage scandal has shattered international trust in President Obama

Not hacked: The White House has denied that David Cameron’s communications were ever monitored

A month earlier Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff branded the NSA’s clandestine activities ‘a breach of international law’ in a speech to the UN General Assembly and demanded steps be made to stop ‘cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war’.

Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York yesterday to thrash out a draft resolution demanding the strengthening of privacy rights in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights.

While the UN has no real power to reign in the NSA, there are fears among security experts that the effort alone could signal a growing consensus to freeze the US out of future international security dialogues.

By Nabila Ramdani

PUBLISHED: 16:32 GMT, 25 October 2013 | UPDATED: 20:46 GMT, 25 October 2013

Find this story at 25 October 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

AFP – France believed the United States attempted to hack into its president’s communications network, a leaked US intelligence document published on Friday suggests.

US agents denied having anything to do with a May 2012 cyber attack on the Elysee Palace, the official residence of French presidents, and appeared to hint at the possible involvement of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, a classified internal note from the US National Security Agency suggests.

Extracts from the document, the latest to emerge from the NSA via former contractor Edward Snowden, were published by Le Monde newspaper alongside an article jointly authored by Glenn Greenwald, the US journalist who has been principally responsible for a still-unravelling scandal over large-scale US snooping on individuals and political leaders all over the world.

The document is a briefing note prepared in April this year for NSA officials who were due to meet two senior figures from France’s external intelligence agency, the DGSE. The French agents had travelled to Washington to demand explanations over their discovery in May 2012 of attempts to compromise the Elysee’s communications systems.

The note says that the branch of the NSA which handles cyber attacks, Tailored Access Operations (TAO), had confirmed that it had not carried out the attack and says that most of its closest allies (Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand) had also denied involvement.

It goes on to note: “TAO intentionally did not ask either Mossad or (Israel’s cyber intelligence unit) ISNU whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.”

Le Monde interpreted this sentence as being an ironic reference to a strong likelihood that Mossad had been behind the attack.

The cyber attacks on the Elysee took place in the final weeks of Nicolas Sarkozy’s term, between the two rounds of the presidential election which he ended up losing to Francois Hollande.

The attacks had been previously reported by French media, who have described them as an attempt to insert monitoring devices into the system but it remains unclear whether the presidential networks were compromised for any time.

There was no immediate response from the Elysee on Friday when asked for comment by AFP.

Sarkozy enjoyed warmer relations with the United States than any French president of recent times, to the extent that the media sometimes referred to him as “Sarko the American.”

The revelations about the Elysee attacks followed damaging revelations that the US had tapped the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and spied on other allies.

“Spying between friends, that’s just not done,” Merkel said Thursday at the start of a summit of European Union leaders which has been overshadowed by the issue.

On a lighter note, the leaked document published by Le Monde on Friday underlines that NSA officials were anxious not to cause any further offence to their angry French counterparts.

Along with the technical details, the briefing note contains a phonetic guide to the pronunciation of the names of the French visitors.

They included DGSE technical director Bernard Barbier, who was to be addressed as bear-NAR bur-BYAY, and Patrick Pailloux, or pah-TREEK pie-YOO.

25 OCTOBER 2013 – 12H58

Find this story at 25 October 2013

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