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U.S. government spied on Brazil's Petrobras oil firm
- Vivtek 13y agoI like how Reuters shies away from acknowledging Greenwald is a journalist. Apparently reporting on the US government makes you an activist these days.
- redcap 13y agoThey go on to call him "a blogger and civil liberties activist who lives in Rio de Janeiro". In comparison, Wikipedia lists him as an "American political commentator, lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI smell an edit war. I wonder how many times it has been changed. edit: I checked, looks like none, someone go change it and let's watch the fireworks.
- marcosdumay 13y agoA newspaper won't acknowledge somebody that does not work for a newspaper as journalist.
- pekk 13y agoWhether he is a journalist or not, Greenwald is unquestionably an activist. Or is Reuters required to take sides with Greenwald on pains of becoming an Enemy Of the People?
- Vivtek 13y agoOh, nice rhetoric. But yes, I am in fact saying that by classifying Greenwald as less than a full journalist (an activist, a blogger - anything but a professional who earns his living as a credentialed journalist), Reuters is tacitly supporting the government in their surveillance state normalcy and is, as you so colorfully put it, an enemy of the people in a very literal and immediate sense. I particularly like how you kind of strawman me and ad-hominem me in the same phrase there. Are you aware that the phrase "enemy of the people" is associated with Stalinist propaganda and therefore has overtones of Red Scare and McCarthyism, and in later years a certain dilettante unseriousness on the part of the acusee? Or is that just unconscious for you? Either way, thanks for contributing. I'm always happy to see people who are unclear about what I'm saying to ask for greater clarity.
- pekk 13y agoReuters isn't tacitly saying anything. Reuters is not required to take a particular, positive POV toward Greenwald in order to be objective. That isn't objectivity.
- Vivtek 13y agoReally? By identifying Greenwald as an activist and a "blogger" (which is shorthand for "amateur") and not identifying him as a journalist, Reuters most definitely is making a tacit statement of his role in society, whether that makes you uncomfortable or not. By identifying his role using words that indicate amateur status, they are supporting the government's desired point of view. I honestly can't tell if you're just naive or if you disagree with me politically, but if it's naivete I encourage you to start thinking about these issues.
- GauntletWizard 13y agoThis isn't news. If anything, it's news that the NSA is doing something right: Looking into the large, nearly-state-run enterprises of not-so-friendly foreign powers.
- bratao 13y agoWhy you consider Brazil "not-so-friendly" ? As a Brazilian I believe we are as friendly and peaceful as a soberany can get.
- s_q_b 13y agoBrazil's a rising regional power, so the United States inherent interest is to reduce its influence. Brazil's not so much an antagonist, but the ruling party under Lula da Silva is traditionally associated with workers parties in Cuba and Venezuela. Brazil has also moved toward increased cooperation with China and Russia in defense and industrial manufacturing, as well as considered aligning its considerable influence on the oil market with OPEC, and is under constant lobbying from Venezuela to do so. Most importantly, the United States would very much prefer that no power centers of comparable strength arise in the Western Hemisphere, and Brazil's GDP is closing in on France. Powers in relative decline are always suspicious of rising powers, especially if they could potentially one day exert significant influence in a nearby region. Foreign policy's a zero-sum game in the IC and defense world.
- mayanksinghal 13y agoThat describes why Brazil could have been a threat, if it were not so friendly, not why it should be described not-so-friendly now. Unless you want to say that any government with even the remotest socialistic roots, that trades with China and Russia more than the USA is being classified as Not-So-Friendly. While I have my doubts that it might actually be how USA administration classifies things, I hope it isn't true.
- s_q_b 13y agoIn international relations, on some level every nation is considered a threat. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the world in which we live.
- Aloisius 13y agoSpy agency spies. News at 11. It is in the NSA's mandate to engage in any espionage that will give the US an advantage. I just don't understand how us spying on a state-controlled Brazilian company is somehow a revelation. It would shock me if we didn't spy on every major foreign company in the world.
- nitrogen 13y agoObviously complaints about spying are questioning whether the agency's purpose itself is just. Fulfilling one's purpose is still unethical if that purpose is unethical. Nobody excuses murder when the story is "Murderer commits murder. News at 11."
- Aloisius 13y agoThe agency's purpose is espionage. Espionage, last I checked, was illegal everywhere. Yet every country has spies. Being just or unethical doesn't factor into it. We know spying is unfair, but it is also something people have been doing since the dawn of civilization in order to get a leg up on the competition.
- CamperBob2 13y agoTechnically, the 'S' stands for 'Security,' not 'Spying.'
- mpyne 13y agoYou don't really think that an entire agency's remit can be specifically summed up within three generic words, do you? Hell, the Navy used to run their personnel management out of the "Bureau of Navigation".
- jlgreco 13y agoWhat the hell are you talking about, of course ethics factors into it! We, as a society, tolerate espionage so long as it is a necessary evil. One of the terms in the assessment of "necessary evil" is the ethics of what they are doing, the other term is how necessary it is. If your evil:necessary ratio goes to high then it program stops being something that any reasonable person can support. As an extreme example to demonstrate the point, if the CIA were installing cameras in the showers of randomly chosen UK citizens, that would be wildly unethical and have next to no benefit, thus making it wildly unacceptable. You can't just dismiss ethical criticism of a spy agency by saying "well they operate illegally anyway". Excluding the ethical term would be giving them a license to do anything they please.
- coldcode 13y agoI'm sure they spy on just about everything. Someday the US will pay just about everything. Even mighty Rome got sacked in the end.
- beedogs 13y agoIt's pretty clear at this point that the only thing propping the hollow US economy up is this massive spying apparatus. You can only front-run the market for so long, though, before the whole thing comes crashing down in a heap.
- ianstallings 13y agoIn fairness to the US intelligence agencies, this might have been a verification of their claims since they are looking fairly aggressively for oil sources outside of the middle east. The President or higher ups in the DoD would seek this information for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately people are distrustful because our country has taken so much unscrupulous action for energy in the past.
- knowaveragejoe 13y agoIn 2012, the US imported 40% of their oil. Of that, 13% is from the middle east. The middle east hasn't had the lions share of US oil consumption for quite some time. http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-g...
- ianstallings 13y agoYes that's actually the reason I mentioned this. When GWB was in office they started looking for other sources outside of the ME and we get most of our imported oil from Africa now AFAIK. Brazil could be part of that push.
- zorked 13y agoI just watched the TV report. It's interesting. The slides mention as targets: Petrobrás, French diplomacy, SWIFT and Google. Everything pointed towards MITM attacks against VPNs and SSL. There was no reference to what data was stolen. The NSA actually called the program and said that none of their spying was used to give unfair advantages to American companies but they wouldn't comment further. There were slides showing that they perform MITM against Google, as well as a slide that listed diplomatic and economic espionage as NSA goals.
- kefs 13y agoHere's the report, in English, that aired on Globo tonight. It details most everything you've mentioned. http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-states-spied-brazilian-oil-giant.html http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents...
- rst 13y agoAlso of note there: claims that NSA does routine MITM attacks on SSL/TLS. The relevant programs are "Hush Puppy" and "Flying Pig", mentioned around the middle of the article; the description is a little garbled (I suspect translation artifacts), but the basics are clear enough.
- JumpCrisscross 13y ago"The NSA actually called the program and said that none of their spying was used to give unfair advantages to American companies but they wouldn't comment further." Nobody goes to the NSA and submits an RFP for insider information. Such information flows through informal, undocumented channels, e.g. an agent moonlighting at a bank or speaking freely to a friend. Given (a) the value of the information and (b) the level of integration between information industries and the NSA, I think it improbable that this information hasn't leaked. Presuming the prior, it would be expected to dis-proportionately benefit firms who are closer to the leaky source, i.e. U.S. firms, a benefit which increases proportional to how quickly said information goes "stale". One may argue that Brasilian firms similarly benefit by being closer to the ultimate source, the Brasilian government. But that, in turn, is similar to the old Deutsch logic that bribes paid to foreign governments should be tax deductible to German firms - it's fighting fire with fire.
- dictum 13y agoDNI James Clapper has issued an official statement: http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/60712026846/statement-by-director-of-national-intelligence http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/60712026846/statement-b... or http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/926-statement-by-director-of-national-intelligence-james-r-clapper-on-allegations-of-economic-espionage http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-pre... He manages to twist it into a matter of defense against terrorism: > Our collection of information regarding terrorist financing saves lives. Since 9/11, the Intelligence Community has found success in disrupting terror networks by following their money as it moves around the globe. International criminal organizations, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, illicit arms dealers, or nations that attempt to avoid international sanctions can also be targeted in an effort to aid America’s and our allies’ interests. > As we have said previously, the United States collects foreign intelligence - just as many other governments do - to enhance the security of our citizens and protect our interests and those of our allies around the world. The intelligence Community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies and monitor anomalous economic activities is critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security.
- devx 13y agoIt boggles my mind that this guy thinks he has more than 0 percent credibility at this point. How is he not in prison, or at least fired yet?
- frank_boyd 13y agoAnd that question is valid for a lot of people in the administration and Congress.
- hnha 13y agoI love the pun in that domain: I con the record.
- jacquesm 13y agoWhat's the Levenshtein distance between 'Clapper' and 'Mitchell'? In every scandal like this there are roles to play, surprising how uniform these things are.
- guelo 13y agoNow imagine every IT purchase decision in Brazil from now on, "We need a few million dollars of network or computer systems, should we buy it from Cisco or HP or IBM or Microsoft? Hell no! It'll probably have an NSA bug in it." Repeat for every other country and you have the beginning of the end for the dominance of the American computer industry.
- devx 13y agoSounds good to me. That's what you get when you become a sleazy company willing to do anything for money (in the short term) without thinking of the consequences. Plus, it's also quite ironic considering US started this whole trend of banning companies because of fear of bugs in their hardware. Reap what you sow.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 13y agoWould any company from any country want the NSA to spy on them? If the NSA is passing data about foreign companies to us domestic companies, what says it would pass data on domestic companies to it's "favorites"? That data would be a big bargaining chip and the NSA is aiming for cooperation everywhere. One would assume that any company anywhere that wasn't beholden to the intelligence community would be presently looking for a secure, open source, open-hardware-if-possible, end-to-end solution for networking their data.
- pekk 13y agoExcept that isn't happening in Brazil, let alone every other country. Instead we will have more hot air and stoking of jingoism from politicians. At the end of the day everyone including the US is always buying huge piles of electronics from China, which is also big and scary - and yet their industry does not magically go belly up. Usually meeting requirements at a decent price is a higher priority than whatever elicits extreme angst from Hacker News.
- 13y ago
- frank_boyd 13y agoNSA doing industrial espionage now. How can the international community accept that? Also: > Obama said he would investigate the allegations. How can he still have the guts to play the surprised and innocent one?
- pekk 13y agoHow did the international community accept it when it was done by other countries?
- dtf 13y ago“The Department of Defense does engage” in computer network exploitation, according to an e-mailed statement from an NSA spokesman, whose agency is part of the Defense Department. “The department does NOT engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-30/world/41620705_1_computer-worm-former-u-s-officials-obama-administration http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-30/world/41620705...
- joe_the_user 13y agoWe take your stuff and won't tell you how, when or why. But don't worry, we wouldn't do that with it.
- houk 13y agothe strange danger generation is all grown up. now they're scared of everyone.
- Sagat 13y agoIt amazes me that many people still think the US are somehow the "good guys" or "the leader of the free world". Americans believe themselves to be the chosen few favored by God. Their manifest destiny leaves no place for the rights of other peoples. With such an ideology, it is not surprising that they hold foreigners in contempt and show a severe lack of interest for the fates of others. Americans are far more dangerous than any bearded fanatic.
- 67726e 13y agos/Americans/US Government/ Don't toss us all in the same group.
- Sagat 13y agoThe government is put into place by the Americans. They elect their own masters. Most of what the U.S. government does is the result of the demands and constant pressure stemming from the electorate. The aggressive foreign policy is a direct consequence of the semi-religious jingoism and fundamentalism that affects the majority of citizens. I'm met both online and offline a ton of Americans with aggrandizing and myopic views. Like you I used to think they were victims of the state that time is past. They share the blame.
- Mordor 13y agoWell, at least we can all understand the "war on terror". It was really about securing US dominance via a secret system of courts, government agencies and secret deals between US corporations. All this due to the ending of the cold war. Now, with the Arab Spring, the US has sought to twist events into a new war. Syria being just the beginning...
- drhowarddrfine 13y agoBREAKING NEWS! Russia and China are spying on Brazil, too. Russia and China are spying on the USA. In case you didn't know.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoBut ... They have spied on everyone. Every politician, every mistresses, every CXO looking to move, every VC talking to a new equity partner. Everyone. This is not one scandal - this is the same scandal played out over a mlion times, but there are just not a million front pages of newspapers. Many years ago Schneier said that our data trails were like the pollution of our age - and it seems we have just noticed the NSA are the Dark Satanic Mills. This is a fast turnaround - will we be as fast in creating an EPA or a Clean Air Act?
- neves 13y agoIt shows that the espionage isn't just for terrorists.