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Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation
- tormeh 6y ago> Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that dominated the global market, turns out to have been jointly owned by the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. They would sell rigged machines to friends and enemies alike, including several NATO countries.
- Psyladine 6y agoI enjoyed reading that the paranoia of the Soviets that it was a western plot was justified, but as their allies bought the technology it gave second hand information from Moscow anyways.
- billfruit 6y agoHow is this getting a free pass, while allegations about other countries prompt much consternation. I think it is ethically problematic to assist/work for any espionage/intelligence related work during peace time.
- corrupt_measure 6y agoBecause many of us come from the US and Germany and are what many consider the "good guys". Even if we don't come from the US or Germany our political and economic systems are more aligned with those countries than some other countries.
- Havoc 6y agoKinda hard to are that any one intentionally introducing broken security are "the good guys"
- chipperyman573 6y agoTo flip this on its head, would you argue that the people working to secure the Nazi's torture camp computers were being the good guys? Did they have any ethical obligations to make it easier for Ally powers to decipher the records after the war was won (or even before) to help people reunite with their families?
- khuey 6y agoBoosters would argue that espionage/intelligence work helps keep the peace.
- 101404 6y agoNot really. Spying among friendly nations is actually desired. Because it creates and improves trust. Of course, that excludes spying to steal intellectual property.
- tuco86 6y agoHow does distrust create trust exactly? I give out trust freely (within reason) until it's broken. Gaining back trust is hard. When I find out you went through my mails to find out if I'm trustworthy, you loose my trust. When I learned of the BND's Crypto AG involvement I felt a deep sense of shame. All the CIA's fuck ups in south america for example. Not only the CIA anymore, we where involved too. Which makes me loose some trust in my government to act on my/our behalf. There is a cost to it and the benefits are questionable at best.
- ciarannolan 6y ago>How does distrust create trust exactly? I think the idea is that it forces allies to interact with genuine intentions, lest one tries to deceive the other and is caught because of some intelligence that's been gathered. It's the backbone of a gentleman's agreement between allies to not act maliciously toward each other.
- zip1234 6y agoOne very prominent example is the Open Skies Treaty. Basically, signatories permit reconnaissance aircraft to fly over for the purposes of enforcing arms control. It is legalized spying.
- dathinab 6y agoYup like the time when the BND basically helps the US to do industrial espionage against Germany. And the when the government found out about it (through Snowden) and didn't really do anything. I mean even if giving asyl to Snowden wasn't possible permanently they could have given it to him for a short time to at least allow him to sadly speak in front of the German government. Or EU countries allowing extradition to countries which haven't signed the human rights charter (like the US, ironically Russia did sign it). Through then if we consider how the BND was founded it would be supposing if it's not at least partially undermined by some US intelligence agencies...
- blaser-waffle 6y agoThe Cold War was mostly a spy game and it kept the peace for decades. There was no gigantic WW3, no nuclear holocaust, and kept the regional conflicts limited to that specific region. Everyone plays the great game, even allies vs other allies (e.g. the French spying on US businesses, and the US NSA spying on Europeans during negotiations).
- vkou 6y agoThen why are so many people losing their minds, banging war drums every time someone blames China in some hack or other? Is it due to a poor public understanding of realpolitik?
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoIt's because China is becoming near peer and it unsettles people.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoSurely the threat of mass destruction had more to do with that so-called peace. And was it really peaceful? All that espionage essentially led to the proxy wars across the globe that cost countless number of lives.
- deathgrips 6y agoHow many people died in WW2 vs all wars after WW2?
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoWhy?
- deathgrips 6y agoProxy wars and spying kills less people than world wars. It's objectively better.
- zip1234 6y agoMost of intelligence that states sponsor is of the military variety. Things such as: - Where are all the SAM installations? - How many aircraft and tanks does such and such country have?
- markus_zhang 6y agoWell espionage is a closed circle and not many people knows how it's done. If you want more flavors just Google "operation gladio" and read all sort aof crazy things they did back in the CW.
- dathinab 6y agoFun part was that CIA was focused mainly on espionage purpose while the BND was mainly focused on earning money they can spend without supervision for other secret projects.
- secfirstmd 6y agoSuch as?
- dathinab 6y agoWe don't know, but we do know that during the investigation into it when it became publicly know a complain from the CIA surfaced that the BND acted to profit orientated. Through I would have to look up the exact details tbh. Just something which I found kinda amusing when I stumbled over it.
- nolok 6y agoIf you say espionage agency with ocult sources of money for even more ocult projects to finance, CIA is the name on anyone's mind though.
- winter_blue 6y agoHm, it makes one wonder: is ProtonMail (and ProtonVPN, etc) all a similar sort of thing?
- jacobush 6y agoIt might, but that makes it even more important to use as a "normal" person. (Until it's proven to be a honeypot, of course.) a) it befuddles the trite commercial spying done by google et al b) you decrease the signal to noise ratio for those operating the honeypot by adding your mundane activities and have them spend resources trying to figure out what you are really up to
- kleiba 6y agoSupposedly, they mean West-Germany when they say Germany?
- wyldfire 6y agoYes. BND originated as West German intelligence agency.
- sgift 6y agoSource article this is based on: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1... (Found it since I cannot read the full economist article)
- SiempreViernes 6y agoThis is much better than the very brief economist article, many thanks!
- ttul 6y agoThere is a German Wikipedia page on the topic. I created an English one that paraphrases the German one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Maximator_(Spying_Alliance) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Maximator_(Spying_Allian... .. but it's stuck in Wikipedia's review queue, which means it will be weeks before it goes live, if ever.
- cabalamat 6y ago> it's stuck in Wikipedia's review queue, which means it will be weeks before it goes live, if ever. Does that happen for all new articles on Wikipedia now? If so, I'm glad I no longer edit Wikipedia.
- cataphract 6y agoOnly if you're a new user or a user with very few edits or are editing without being logged in.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoSo can older users with more rep vouch for pages to pull them out of the queue?
- cataphract 6y agoNo, there are much more stringent requirement for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Participants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles...
- l1ghthouse 6y agohttp://archive.is/zmTgX http://archive.is/zmTgX
- vslira 6y ago"Maxinator", "Five Eyes" Imagine being in the brainstorming session to come up with name for intelligence agencies alliances. "It must sound dangerous, yes, but not evil. Like some kind of anti-villain"
- abledon 6y agoMaximator sounds pretty good with a french pronunciation
- nabla9 6y agoMaxinator was the name of the local beer they were drinking when they came out with the plan. https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/820/2864/ https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/820/2864/
- Hokusai 6y agoThey should have drink Corona. The conspiracy level of the ‘Corona pact’ would have been off the charts.
- DC-3 6y agoThere's no chance that they'd've been drinking Corona; if there's one thing that spies are known for it's a discerning taste in alcoholic beverages.
- clamprecht 6y agoOh you ain't heard of the Pabst Blue Ribbon alliance?
- dathinab 6y agoActually there are some variations of corona which are quite ok. But I don't know if they are sold EU/Worldwide. So it they had meet in Barcelona they might have ended up with that name (or more likely a tapas name ;)
- 6y ago
- SiempreViernes 6y agoFrom the source article: "Certain countries were deliberately not allowed to join because within the Maximator alliance they were considered as lacking relevant (signal-/crypto-analytical) expertise and/or experience. Allegedly, these countries include Norway, Spain and Italy." And "Belgium is a notable exception in north-western Europe; it had not been invited to join Maximator because of its lack of SIGINT (and COMSEC) capabilities." adding in a footnote that "Belgium’s cryptographic behaviour and discipline were problematic. For instance, at least once it compromised its own communications via a basic mistake in key management;" :D
- SiempreViernes 6y ago"The details of this algorithm were shared by the BND within Maximator with TIVC. This enabled the Dutch to read Argentinian naval and diplomatic communications before the war started. As reported by Aldrich and Wiebes, the British SIGINT organisation GCHQ had neglected Argentina. It was not able to read communications secured by Crypto AG devices. When the war started, it asked, under pressure, countries on the European continent for help. A directly involved Dutch source states that at that stage a specialist from TIVC travelled to GCHQ and explained how the HC500 Crypto AG devices for Argentinian naval and diplomatic communications worked; subsequent solution of the ciphers was left to GCHQ itself." Nice going GCHQ!
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoThis reads like GCHQ was the naughty kid, not paying attention, and they took pity on them when they asked for help ... but at least they asked. But to rub it in they did a "the solution is left as an exercise for the reader" deal. Kinda hilarious.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoThat was my read as well. That said, you could spin it another way: the UK had enough good will and political capital to lean on its European neighbors for a bare-minimum amount of help. "We can tell you how it works, but it's on you to figure the rest out". Naughty kid not paying attention is also relevant -- you've only got so many hours in the day and so many hours to map out threats. This was still the Cold War and nuclear holocaust was a bigger priority than distant Latin American dictatorship.
- selimthegrim 6y agoThey let the Turkish Army into NATO and hold nukes and it reuses OTPs?
- SiempreViernes 6y agoDon't worry, the US only lets them host Nukes, it won't let them buy secure communications equipment.
- nabla9 6y agoThey don't let Turkish Army hold nukes. They are just located in Turkey. Turkish Air force practises the delivery so that they can do it if necessary.
- jacobush 6y agoYeah, however there was talk that getting the nukes out of Turkey would not be easy, especially if Turkey would not cooperate.
- Hokusai 6y ago> to the considerable irritation of those who had kept it under wraps for decades On one side, so much secrecy worries me. On the other side kudos for keeping the secret pact secret for so long.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 6y agoI wonder what is behind the comment that french/german works better than french/UK
- frabbit 6y agoThe origins of the EEC were a French(agriculture + coal) and German (manufacturing) alliance. The other countries were just added on as export markets.
- DoingIsLearning 6y agoThose were probably powerful lobbies for an enlargement of an economic union. However, technically the concept of an european economic union originated with the treaty for the Benelux Economic Union (1958) (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)
- frabbit 6y agoGenerally treaties occur after interested parties have realized their interests and undertaken discussions for a great deal of time prior to the signing of anything.
- adaisadais 6y agoNothing on SPECTRE
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- heuruehe 6y agoYeah, it's worse for freedom than slavery. You fucking people are so put of touch.
- wooptoo 6y agoSans paywall https://outline.com/VKPeR4 https://outline.com/VKPeR4
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/FMsZM https://archive.md/FMsZM
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PatrolX 6y agoWhat's most interesting about this is what Professor Jacobs omitted, and the stuff he omitted happens to be related to his circle of friends. Set up a Google Alert for appropriate keywords, this could get really interesting in the coming months. That's all I can say, sorry.
- secfirstmd 6y agoIntriguing comment given what he has worked on and with who.
- disabled 6y agoAs both an American (culturally) and European (by citizenship, as in European Union citizen), this whole ordeal is going to be profoundly damaging to US-EU relations. But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before, unlike the US, and is more likely to recover from these bad times than the US—and it is really due to a multitude of reasons. My bet is that the US closed the operation once they knew they were certainly busted. Who knows, maybe even a European counter-operation of some sort occurred. The US probably has several other covert operations now based directly on intelligence from the devices with poor encryption. Sure, post World War 2, the US maybe had legitimate reasons to be spying on such activities in general in Europe. They also probably knew (practically guaranteed) over time from various patterns (from good data—whatever that data could possibly be) that a super coordinated secret intelligence operation was going on between European countries, while not knowing who exactly they were (as in not being able to put their finger on what was going on, but still being able to rely on intuition to just know and to justify the means). Swiss laws permitting ultra-confidentiality in banking do absolutely have a legitimate purpose, but they are problemsome too. Unless you have been living under a rock in recent years, everybody knows that there are plenty of oligarchs (Russian oligarchs in particular) funneling dirty money through the Swiss banking system. America also effectively has its own form of oligarchy too (by the way, guess who is listed top in the world for wealth inequality by Credit Suisse? Russia. Guess who is second? USA.), so it is not like this route seemed unnatural. Even if the Europeans knew for certain that somebody had some sort of substantial counterintelligence on them, it would still take a long time to figure out the source of failure. That is, unless the US messed up severely, which, I suspect, is probably what happened.
- microcolonel 6y ago> But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before... Populism is a creature of democracy, what you're talking about is a failure of the republic; which itself is debatable.
- Harvesterify 6y agoCan somebody explain why The Register and The Economist suddenly pick up the subject, while the original article from Jacobs was published a few months ago, and several newspaper already covered the topic ? Anything new happened ?