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Nuh-huh. What happens is something approximately like this: Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a

Nuh-huh. What happens is something approximately like this: Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a tap on some low-profile woman's phone, claiming it's necessary in pursuit of a counter-terrorism objective. This ends up with GCHQ rather than NSA (NSA spies on Brits, Brits spy on Americans, they work at adjacent desks and share info: this is the traditional work-around for laws banning domestic spying) who happily hand over the contents of a foreign POIs phone to an allied intel agency. Nobody at any senior level has a clue what's going on under cover of surveillance: stuff like this happens thousands of times a day. Meanwhile, the Saudi officer in charge of the kompromat on Bezos now has the dodgy photos off his girlfriend's phone ... If GCHQ doesn't work, route through some other allied SIGINT agency with cooperation via NSA, preferably in a country where the Khashoggi thing is just another "foreigners doing horrible things to each other" back page story and nobody has a clue about Jeff Bezos' divorce. TLDR: the global war on terror has given us a global hairball of inter-tangled intelligence sharing arrangements, and these can be manipulated for pleasure and profit by any sufficiently corrupt party who is plugged in to it.

sgt101 8y ago
No no no. The UK has laws that facilitate surveillance of its citizens. The UK spying on US citizens in the USA is something that I would put into a risk category two (more??) orders of magnitude above brexit or suez. I'm sorry, but it would be lunatic recklessness, and to what advantage?
- cstross 8y ago
  UKUSA treaty: goes back to 1945, GCHQ is used by the NSA as a convenient work-around for restrictions on domestic surveillance. This was all documented by James Bamford in his histories of the NSA, "Inside the Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets". (You're looking at the present-day for context, but these agencies run on protocols that have built up over many decades, dating back to the Cold War.)
  - ncmncm 8y ago
    Hi Charlie! It's getting increasing difficult for fiction to stay ahead of reality. I would welcome your conjectures on how the spooks controlled Obama. His enduring legacy may be heavy use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, and a radical expansion of "death from the sky", which seem incompatible with his personality, creating a mystery: What leverage did/do the spooks have on him?
    - cstross 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure they didn't need it. My read on BHO is that as a non-white guy super-achieving in a quietly racist political climate (we've subsequently had a refresher course in American racial politics: it never went away) he was at pains to avoid alienating factions that might work against him. He was also a lawyer: not just any lawyer, but a former editor of the Harvard Law Review (a plum niche reserved for star pupils at the #1 law school in the United States, often an early sign that the individual is on the road to the Supreme Court). Instead of heading for the bench Obama went into politics, but he is above all else a legalist (and a constitutional expert). As such, he worked only within the established legal frameworks, carefully trying to build a platform for incremental adjustments. The Espionage Age was already a feature of the system before he arrived in the Oval Office: he continued to use it as it was designed. He didn't rock the boat or try to impose a radical agenda on the DoJ. He wouldn't do anything that might give his enemies a lever against him. He was, in fact, a conservative politician: not "conservative" in the sense of Movement Conservativism (which is actually a very radical political platform), but a Burkean conservative. The spooks didn't need leverage on him: he was theirs from the outset.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  GP is saying the UK tells the US "Hey, we're gonna spy on your citizens", and the US says "Okidoki, just make sure to pass us the data you collect". And vice versa.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
No this is just a total fabrication of how things work. Please don't do this.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  That seems to be a plausible explanation. Can you refute the argument besides just calling it BS? Otherwise, it's an interesting theory.
  - lunchables 8y ago
    No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.
    - cstross 8y ago
      The Saudis are positioned as our allies in the war on terror. More accurately, they're regional enemies of Iran, and the western powers tend to run on the rubric "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" (even when a closer look at the situation would suggest that just ain't so). They are huge customers for British arms sales (look up the Al Yamamah deal — roughly US $100Bn in business). They're known to have bought surveillance and intelligence monitoring software from Israel. They're in everybody's back pockets, and in their wallets. As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ...
      - lunchables 8y ago
        >The Saudis are positioned as our allies in the war on terror. As are a lot of countries. Does not mean we will allow surveillance without any questions. >As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ... I never said or implied that. Read the comment again: >No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.
notfromhere 8y ago
They don't just give the Saudi's an unfiltered tap into five eyes surveillance. This is just spreading misinformation
gdubs 8y ago
Except Lauren Sanchez is a fairly well known news anchor, and not “some low profile woman”, unless I’m reading you wrong?

sgt101 8y ago

No no no. The UK has laws that facilitate surveillance of its citizens. The UK spying on US citizens in the USA is something that I would put into a risk category two (more??) orders of magnitude above brexit or suez. I'm sorry, but it would be lunatic recklessness, and to what advantage?

cstross 8y ago
UKUSA treaty: goes back to 1945, GCHQ is used by the NSA as a convenient work-around for restrictions on domestic surveillance. This was all documented by James Bamford in his histories of the NSA, "Inside the Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets". (You're looking at the present-day for context, but these agencies run on protocols that have built up over many decades, dating back to the Cold War.)
- ncmncm 8y ago
  Hi Charlie! It's getting increasing difficult for fiction to stay ahead of reality. I would welcome your conjectures on how the spooks controlled Obama. His enduring legacy may be heavy use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, and a radical expansion of "death from the sky", which seem incompatible with his personality, creating a mystery: What leverage did/do the spooks have on him?
  - cstross 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure they didn't need it. My read on BHO is that as a non-white guy super-achieving in a quietly racist political climate (we've subsequently had a refresher course in American racial politics: it never went away) he was at pains to avoid alienating factions that might work against him. He was also a lawyer: not just any lawyer, but a former editor of the Harvard Law Review (a plum niche reserved for star pupils at the #1 law school in the United States, often an early sign that the individual is on the road to the Supreme Court). Instead of heading for the bench Obama went into politics, but he is above all else a legalist (and a constitutional expert). As such, he worked only within the established legal frameworks, carefully trying to build a platform for incremental adjustments. The Espionage Age was already a feature of the system before he arrived in the Oval Office: he continued to use it as it was designed. He didn't rock the boat or try to impose a radical agenda on the DoJ. He wouldn't do anything that might give his enemies a lever against him. He was, in fact, a conservative politician: not "conservative" in the sense of Movement Conservativism (which is actually a very radical political platform), but a Burkean conservative. The spooks didn't need leverage on him: he was theirs from the outset.
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
GP is saying the UK tells the US "Hey, we're gonna spy on your citizens", and the US says "Okidoki, just make sure to pass us the data you collect". And vice versa.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

No this is just a total fabrication of how things work. Please don't do this.

creaghpatr 8y ago
That seems to be a plausible explanation. Can you refute the argument besides just calling it BS? Otherwise, it's an interesting theory.
- lunchables 8y ago
  No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.
  - cstross 8y ago
    The Saudis are positioned as our allies in the war on terror. More accurately, they're regional enemies of Iran, and the western powers tend to run on the rubric "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" (even when a closer look at the situation would suggest that just ain't so). They are huge customers for British arms sales (look up the Al Yamamah deal — roughly US $100Bn in business). They're known to have bought surveillance and intelligence monitoring software from Israel. They're in everybody's back pockets, and in their wallets. As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ...
    - lunchables 8y ago
      >The Saudis are positioned as our allies in the war on terror. As are a lot of countries. Does not mean we will allow surveillance without any questions. >As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ... I never said or implied that. Read the comment again: >No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.

notfromhere 8y ago

They don't just give the Saudi's an unfiltered tap into five eyes surveillance. This is just spreading misinformation

gdubs 8y ago

Except Lauren Sanchez is a fairly well known news anchor, and not “some low profile woman”, unless I’m reading you wrong?