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This is a great use of the NSA/GCHQ. From a global security perspective, we absolutely want to know if Israel is about to bomb Iran. If we can't trust their wo

• ForHackernews 11y ago
  Agreed. This is exactly what the NSA should be doing. This leak has no value to the public.
  • revelation 11y ago
    I'm sure the Israelis care that their fighter jets and drones use crypto that can be trivially broken with current computing power? It also of course plays into the whole fix vs exploit debate. Should the NSA inform on weak crypto or subvert it for their own purposes? What if its crypto used by a military partner? Where lies the greater public value?
    • tptacek 11y ago
      The IDF absolutely knows that their old drone video feeds were insecure. They didn't need The Intercept to tell them that. As for your second question, there is no actual debate about whether NSA should hoard/exploit or "fix" vulnerabilities in foreign signals intelligence. Their charter is to exploit. That's what SIGINT is. The debate is whether NSA should be required to fix vulnerable infrastructure when that infrastructure is used by US commercial infrastructure. That's not what's happening here.
      • revelation 11y ago
        So since they knew, there is no harm? Your second point seems to miss that whatever the foreigners are using may be a popular choice for naturals as well. (Notice the US selling F-16 abroad only to then having to break their video stream. At least the British don't sell missiles that they can't deactivate when coming their way)
  • dogma1138 11y ago
    Nope but great value for people who want to drive political agenda's - mainly to increase the so called "rift" between US and Israel (which always spied on each other mainly because US interests in the middle east almost always directly oppose the ones of Israel) and to "embarrass" the US even further which is something that a large portion of the Intercept's readership wants as it seems.
    • 13thLetter 11y ago
      "which always spied on each other mainly because US interests in the middle east almost always directly oppose the ones of Israel" True. And it's rather sad that they do, given that Israel's interests in the middle east are generally about not having their citizens murdered in the street.
      • mkaziz 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure that's in the interest if every government everywhere. Israel, presumably like the Arabs, hsd other interests less noble than that.
      • wavefunction 11y ago
        I suppose I could mention things that they could do differently to achieve that goal, but what would be the use?
        • 13thLetter 11y ago
          I dunno. What's the use of anything, really?
      • jjoonathan 11y ago
        > Israel's interests in the middle east are generally about not having their citizens murdered in the street. That's what they say, but when I read stories about them demolishing Palestinian neighborhoods, billing them for it, and building real-estate developments over the "confiscated" land the whole "we just want peace" line starts to smell like a rationalization at best and more probably a flat-out excuse.
  • markdown 11y ago
    > This leak has no value to the public. US taxpayers give the Israeli government billions of dollars every year. Then Israel turns around and publicly disrespects the US president. US taxpayers need to know that their government is willing to stand up to Israel when necessary. This is an actual concern because: 1. US politicians are almost all for sale. 2. The Israeli lobbying group AIPAC has bought and paid for a great number of those politicians.
    • 13of40 11y ago
      I think I worked out once that the average working American spends as much on Israel as they do on their phone bill. (Back when we had phones tethered to the wall, so YMMV.)
    • dtornabene 11y ago
      A specific political party who happen to be in power (barely in power, literally by a single seat in the knesset) disrespected the president, a significant proportion of the Israeli population, including the defense establishment were horrified and embarrassed.
    • gozur88 11y ago
      >Then Israel turns around and publicly disrespects the US president. Yeah... so what? The president isn't the United States. He's just a manager, temporarily. Besides, there was plenty of disrespect flowing the other way, too. When Obama went out of his way to snub Netanyahu, did it bother you, or do you think somehow the office of the American president is worthy of more respect than that of the Israeli PM?
      • markdown 11y ago
        > did it bother you, or do you think somehow the office of the American president is worthy of more respect than that of the Israeli PM? Much more worthy, obviously. If you come with me hat in hand accept my aid, you damn well better be nice to me. If Israel wants to crap on the US president, that's fine, but don't then accept handouts from them. At least the beggars in my town only swear at you if you don't give them money.
• toomanybeersies 11y ago
  It's what these agencies were originally formed and tasked to do.
  • tajen 11y ago
    By whom? Secret agencies were originally formed in secret, without knowledge from the citizen.
    • tmptmp 11y ago
      Exactly how do you propose the citizens should be informed and yet keep it secret from the enemies? Most people in USA (mostly the relatively younger generation) don't have an idea how the real tyrants (e.g. Russian communists, Mao in China etc) oppress their own people. It was because of USA, that the tyrant communism didn't come to harass them. I am not saying US hasn't made mistakes/blunders. But it is orders of magnitude better than Islamists/communists. It is sad these people now criticize US almost unilaterally due to propaganda by so called leftists. PS: I am NOT an US citizen, but I do envy the ones who are. You have to get some experience of real tyrannical systems to realize this.
• throwaway3483 11y ago
  I vehemently disagree with you. So, firstly, let's talk about the status quo briefly. At the moment Israel's own forces are very immoral in how they treat the members of the NSA/GCHQ. What I mean is that Israeli intelligence drugs these people, in a way that I consider highly illegal and highly immoral. The NSA and GCHQ doesn't do the same, they haven't infiltrated Israeli intelligence the same way. You can read Israel's general approach in the most famous book on this subject. Now, let's talk about something very important. Around here I'm the only one to express these principles so you can likely link this to my usual account. --> What is the moral imperative for the existence of spy agencies? Why should they exist? They should exist for the simple reason that someone can literally be a bitcoin troll and literally pay a Russian general for a nuclear weapon in untraceable currency, and literally, as a trolololo action, set it off in New York. This isn't an exaggeration. It's within the realm of both bored online Internet troll's capability, and also inclination and interests. So we have a reason for these agencies to exist. Now, let's make an analogy. In the Fiscal year 2015, how much do you think California, where Cal Tech and Silicon Valley is located, spent defending itself against spies from the state of Massachusetts, where MIT and Harvard are located, where Mark Zuckerberg went to school? How much did the two states spend on espionage and counterespionage? The very obvious answer is $0. That is exactly the way it should be. It would be sooooo totallly stupid for California to start hacking Massachusetts. This is the kind of stuff the European Union was doing internally, waging internal war, until it was unified in the second half of the twentieth century. It is totally obvious to any 9 year old with an open mind that that this is a better state of affairs. Literally anyone who says otherwise is obviously pointing to a naked emperor and saying how cool his new clothes are. Only people over 30 who have deeply indoctrinated stupid bigotted beliefs would ever say that it's good for European countries to spend their budgets waging war on each other, or spying on each other. It's totally obvious to me that international espionage is exactly the same. It's obvious to me that the amount of budget that the NSA/GCHQ should be spending on spying on Israel is exactly the same as what the CIA's budget should be for "spying on" the NSA: (these are both american departments, just different agencies) obviously $0. They shouldn't be spending a penny on spying on other agencies. Agencies literally have better reasons for existing, which are real. In summary I couldn't disagree with you more that this is a great use for the NSA/GCHQ. It's a terrible, atrocious use. The world's spy agencies need to act in total unison to keep honest citizens honest, without in any way impacting their freedoms unless and until they use those freedoms to blow up New York (or Tel Aviv) with a suitcase-sized tactical nuclear missile. The only people the civilized world needs to wage war on are trolls, and if they stop existing, this money shoudl be spent on exploring space, fusion, telomeres, deep distributed learning, cancer therapy, quantum computing, and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on. No: the world's agencies shouldn't be spending a dime committing war on each other. By the way a lot of HN's readers can be part of the solution. if you're a reader, simply commit to a world government. it's the modern equivalent of a microkernel. it doesn't really matter what that government is - obviously it's not going to let its states make war on each other. Just ask yourself "Would a just world government microkernel do this?" and if not, then resist, disobey, don't do what you're told. Good luck. This has been a very dense post and I'm happy to field follow-up questions on philosophy or application. I can talk in some length about the status quo and my objections to it, my experience extends to several countries' programs.
• Spooky23 11y ago
  It's probably a purposeful leak.
• leohutson 11y ago
  > This type of leaking gives credence to the national security concerns Gives credence to what/whose concerns? What do think Israel would have learnt from this leak? If Israel were spying on US drone video transmissions, and a "traitor" in the Israeli security apparatus leaked that info to the press, would it still be harmful for the "public" to know? It really weirds me out the degree to which people seem to moralize these brain-dead spy games. It's like we're already in state of paranoid pre-war. It's OK to spy on another country, and it's OK for our allies to spy on us, but its not OK for citizens to spy on their own government, it's OK for foreign governments to spy on our citizens, but we're only allowed to spy on our own citizens in foreign countries or foreign servers. If it's of no interest to the public, then surely the secret was not a secret at all, and there was no harm in leaking it.
  • drawnwren 11y ago
    This gives credence to the concern that having all knowledge in the public domain is not the most beneficial way for a government to operate. The point is that perhaps Israel did not know that their feeds were compromised and the West was able to have a better understanding of the situation in that part of the world because of it. If an Israeli leaked it, it would have been beneficial to the US because that might have indicated the Israelis knew something that the US did not. It is of no significant interest to the public, but it _is_ of significant interest to the Israeli government. This is almost a textbook scenario of how nation states justify the need to keep secrets from the public.
    • aburan28 11y ago
      Then why did the US publically admit to spying on Israel during the Iran talks? Why did Israel deploy Duqu 2 to spy on the Iran talks?
      • drawnwren 11y ago
        International politics is not engineering. We aren't dealing with immutable truths. Each of the moves should be taken in the larger picture of the subtle web of politics. Sometimes nations are allies and sometimes they are enemies. Admittedly, the US/Middle East dynamic is much more fluid than many parts of the world but it's not hard to generate a narrative that would explain your questions.
• nitrogen 11y ago
  Really just a "how the sausage is made" look into military intelligence, interesting because we're curious moreso than because the government is acting unethically. What's so wrong with that? "Business as usual" press pieces usually seem to come from organizations' PR departments, so (speaking in general, not necessarily about this article) it's useful to the public to have independent information about what they are doing.
• junto 11y ago
  This is a great use of the NSA/GCHQ. From a global security perspective, we absolutely want to know if Germany is about to deal with Russia. If we can't trust their word (and Merkel's public statements can change from one month to the next) then this doesn't feel like a bad thing. Therefore, even though she is an ally, we should bug her mobile phone. I'm not saying you're wrong btw, but there was a large backlash concerning the bugging of Merkel's mobile phone. I doubt we'll see a similar backlash here. I find the discrepancy interesting.
• progman 11y ago
  > From a global security perspective, we absolutely want to know if Israel is about to bomb Iran. Israel may have no other choice in face of the reality that the U.S. has ceased from its long-term support of Israel. when Israel realizes that it is left alone than it won't care about security concerns of other nations. I can understand that, even more in face of the irrational behavior of radical Islam. > If we can't trust their word (and Netanyahu's public statements are rather bellicose) then this doesn't feel like a bad thing. That real question is, can we trust Iran? I consider the western appeasement politics incredibly stupid. They haven't learned from Chamberlain and Hitler. Of course Iran will continue to develop its nuclear program secretly. The real problem is not between Iran and Israel but between the islamic Sunni and Shia tribes. They hate each other. The conflict originates in the death of their prophet Mohamed, and it will likely be "solved" in a hot warfare. I think that is the actual purpose of Iran's nuclear program. The stupid western appeasement politics has made a new war in the Middle East much more likely than ever before. The world should pay attention to ISIS and Syria, not to Israel. Israel doesn't want war. It just wants to survive. We should support Israel, not Iran (which is radical Islam). CBN: A New War in the Middle East? http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2016/January/Roundtable-A-New-War-in-the-Middle-East/ http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2016/January/Roundtable-A-... Shia–Sunni relations (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
• fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  It's an okay use of NSA/GCHQ. Certainly more useful and preferable to spying on citizens and politicians. I remain unconvinced that it's necessary, or even always beneficial. We don't really need to know every detail about everything that every country does. I can't say that the specific capability here is never needed, but I do think it ought to be held very closely and used sparingly. >what's the public need to know here? If you don't think the public ought to know, then perhaps you'd consider the notion that the more spying we do, the more likely it is for leaks like this to happen. One potential good thing, the public gets to know how bad we are at counterintel; that's a good thing if the public can figure out what to do about it.