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mrbluze writes:
"Edward Snowden's testimony to the European Parliament is online, in which he details how the NSA has pressured first world nations to make laws that allow mass surveillance:
One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition and lawmakers' insistence that legal limits be respected, effects the GCHQ internally described in its own documents as "damaging public debate." ...
Once the NSA has successfully subverted or helped repeal legal restrictions against unconstitutional mass surveillance in partner states, it encourages partners to perform 'access operations.' Access operations are efforts to gain access to the bulk communications of all major telecommunications providers in their jurisdictions, normally beginning with those that handle the greatest volume of communications. Sometimes the NSA provides consultation, technology, or even the physical hardware itself for partners to 'ingest' these massive amounts of data in a manner that allows processing, and it does not take long to access everything. Even in a country the size of the United States, gaining access to the circuits of as few as three companies can provide access to the majority of citizens' communications. In the UK, Verizon, British Telecommunications, Vodafone, Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel, and Interoute all cooperate with the GCHQ, to include cooperation beyond what is legally required.
Many other points were made, including that whistle-blowing has become more difficult since his revalations, that the espionage is largely economic, and that there are many more revelations yet to be made."
(Score: 2, Informative) by AnythingGoes on Monday March 10 2014, @01:06AM
At which point Malaysia asks - how do you know what my internal database shows about the passport on which a person is travelling?
The furore over finding out that Singapore and Australia were facilitating eavesdropping on Internet activity is still quite recent. I think USA saying anything would not be a good PR move, rather it would be a big vindication that the USA has been eavesdropping on those countries and causing diplomatic tension. Remember, this was one of the countries that the Sep 11 terrorists met together before they landed in the USA.
Note, I am not saying that NSA definitely knows, I am only saying that absence of any information does not mean that they are not aware and actively monitoring .
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday March 10 2014, @01:19AM
When the info is passed by diplomatic channels (which may be highly inefficient in terms of speed), one just doesn't ask "How do you know?". It's simply... un-diplomatic; do it and you are likely stem such useful "tips" for the future.
That is not news, we all know that (this is not to say that I understand or, even more, accept it).
But... take it this way: when they do spy on most of the world for the benefit of the very-very few (not even for the benefit of entire US population), one shouldn't wonder most of this planet don't accept those actions as "A good thing"™
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford