From the “don’t trust but verify” department comes the revelation that the Obama administration went into COP15 negotiation with spy help.
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency monitored the communications of other governments ahead of and during the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the latest document from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document, with portions marked “top secret,” indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that
“Analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries’ preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies.”
“Second Party partners” refers to the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with which the U.S. has an intelligence-sharing relationship. “While the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference remains uncertain, signals intelligence will undoubtedly play a significant role in keeping our negotiators as well informed as possible throughout the 2-week event,” the document says.
The Huffington Post published the documents Wednesday night in coordination with the Danish daily newspaper Information, which worked with American journalist Laura Poitras.
Read the full document here.(PDF)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/snowden-nsa-surveillance-_n_4681362.html
h/t to WUWT reader MichaelWiseGuy
This sort of thing started quite some time ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty
What was unknown to the participants of the Conference was that the American “Black Chamber” (the Cypher Bureau, a US intelligence service), commanded by Herbert Yardley, was spying on the delegations’ communications with their home capitals. In particular, Japanese communications were penetrated thoroughly, and American negotiators were able to get the minimum possible deal the Japanese had indicated they would accept, less than which they would renounce the Conference. As this ratio value was unpopular with much of the Imperial Japanese Navy and with the increasingly active and important ultranationalist groups, the value the Japanese Government accepted was the cause of much suspicion and accusation among Japanese politicians and Naval officers
Some casual reading, for those who are interested, from December. Nice logo on this thinig eh?
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/12/atlas-v-launch-nrol-39-vandenberg/
I could have told you that the USA was spying electronically on foreigners in 2002.
It’s old news, it’s situation normal for America.
What’s surprising is how hoity toity America gets when people behave with similarly slapdash attitudes to Americans.,….
Minor editing:
In the heading (“Bombshell from the Snowden Docs: The U.S. Spied on Negotiators at 2009 Copehagen Climate Summit via the NSA”), please add another “n” to “Copenhagen”.
I have skipped to the end, so apologies I advance if I am duplicating another message.
Ian M
There are plans to monitor and control your electrical use.
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/01/stop-the-smart-grid/
Hypocrisy alert: the same people who consider the Climategate emails as illegal hacks won’t feel the same about this leak…
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 5:51 am
I once held a secret clearance. I assume I have been monitored ever since. 50 year. They are just catching up to everyone else.
While we don’t have spying of the kind conducted by the Stasi in East Germany as a means to manipulate and control the speech and behaviour of private citizens,
It is in the works: http://classicalvalues.com/2014/01/stop-the-smart-grid/
M Simon:
Thanks for your post at January 30, 2014 at 8:55 am.
I am not surprised. I noticed your post at January 30, 2014 at 8:25 am and considered reminding that Information Intercepts began much longer ago than that. But I decided not to because you would obviously know that but it would not be believed by those who seem ‘shocked! shocked!’ at the news about the Copennhagen CoP.
The only really pertinent on-topic comment in the thread which has specifically related to the CoP was by ferdberple at January 30, 2014 at 7:11 am here. All other mentions of espionage at the CoP seem to be expressions of naivete. Do most Americans really want their negotiators to be at a disadvantage against all others when every other government uses espionage?
As you imply, the new computer techniques enable the NSA and GCHQ to automatically search communications for key words, phrases and subjects. Clearly, there are insufficient staff to read every email and to hear every phone call, but if the equipment can – and does – record and indicate ‘suspicious’ communications then the chance of discerning potential security threats is greatly increased.
Public servants exist to serve the public and not to rule us. So, we need to trust and to verify agents of our governments. Distrust leads to lack of the verification which keeps government agents in check.
Richard
This was all inevitable. Check out the Maldives arm twisting, maybe that’s why they are building 5 new underwater airports as well as 30 new luxury hotels. It’s all that rising sea level thingey.
The Maldives people are a cunning lot.
Jimbo says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:24 am
“The Maldives people are a cunning lot.”
A cultural thing called Taqqiyah.
re: Canman says January 29, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Woo hoo! An excuse to post this awesome Remy video:
Funny … thanks for posting.
How is the snow man a traitor when he exposes what is illegal in your country and who is doing it.
That seems patriotic to me, no matter what he signed. In law an illegal contract is not a contract.
pat, I agree with you
“somehow, what the Snowden revelations are telling us – which includes the fact nearly all the tech giants/telecommunication companies have sold out our private communications to the NSA – is not sinking into people’s heads. oh well.”
If the peoples’ every words can be monitored then the people can be controlled” Practice free speech, NSA monitors, White House, IRS, FBI get the information and free speech is suppressed, or, if you are a conservative PAC, you are attacked by the IRS.
We have a constitution to protect our free speech, but in our current tyranny, the Constitution is just a piece of paper to be used when convenient to punish your enemies and ignored otherwise. How sad that so few understand or care that they are losing their freedom.
Anthony, is it not illegal to post the NSA logo without consent of said group? Just wondering?
REPLY: I guess I’ll find out – Anthony
Internal NSA inter-departmental ‘memos’ (AKA e-mails) advising ‘staff’ to avoid shopping at Target (as well as Neiman Marcus et al) over the holidays would be most damning …
Rob aka Flatlander:
These are genuine questions. I am not an American so I genuinely would like to know.
At January 30, 2014 at 9:38 am you write
What is “illegal”about spying on opponents in an international negotiation?
How can civil servants be controlled if they are not punished for breaking employment contracts?
How is an employment contract of an employee of a Security Service “illegal”?
Please note that I am not disputing your statements. The US system of government is very strange (especially its legislatively powerful judiciary appointed by elections) and I do not pretend to understand it; I don’t. But if your statements are true then I fail to understand how the US can function. Hence, I would appreciate answers to my questions.
Richard
‘Switch’ engineers and techs already have your ‘number’ in this regard; it’s is simplicity itself to tag any given mobile number for additional ‘data’ (including call status, cell presently registered in, hand-off data e.g. neighbor cells in view etc), in real-time as a matter of fact, if given access to the ‘switch’ (literally: the MTSO), using tools normally used in conjunction with company-phones for the optimization and/or troubleshooting of the mobile phone system, carrying out quality-control ops via test calls during (new) cell site commissioning (installation of equipment) and the like …
.
I fail to see any “bomb-shells” here, but I do agree with Shano.
Did they really think this treaty was about stopping global warming?
It’s really just an excuse to setup a World Government.
Remember this?
Of course then Climategate happened and the whole thing was derailed, thanks in part I think to Monckton’s speech.
crosspatch says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:56 pm
To me the real question is, why couldn’t the Germans, with all their technical expertise even provide their head of state with a secure phone?
She is provided with a secure phone and I am sure she assumes that everything she says on her unsecured private phone is being monitored by someone. This is NOT as big a deal as the media is making seem to be. The stories are relying on the fact that most people are ignorant.
Ok, here’s the deal with Snowden:
1. MONTHS before he took the job with Booze Allen & Hamilton he started shopping for journalists. This is not a case of someone who worked with NSA for a long time seeing something that bothered them and blew the whistle. Snowden decided he was going to go in to NSA and steal as much data as he could before he even took the job.
2. When he got there, he lied to co-workers saying he needed their login credentials to work on their computers. Then then used their credentials to log in as those people and steal copies of all the data they had access to.
3. He worked there for less than 90 days.
You fail to mention a few other points.
Snowden was working as a CIA technician and had access to NSA files BEFORE he went to Booze Allen & Hamilton, who are now running a huge campaign to avoid blame for employing him. So he was a whistleblower that needed (and got) more evidence in only 90 days in Hawaii.
The fact that he was able to get in so easily and extract so much says a lot for the total lack of security at technical levels in the NSA mainly because SysAdmins have broad access rights in any case. I doubt that this can be prevented as anyone who has been SysAdmin on a large system will tell you.
However much the NSA wriggles and tries to further blacken the name of Snowden, they were bending the rules and exceeding their authority, and trying an end-run around the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. They have now been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
If Snowden had attempted to raise the issues formally through normal channels nothing would have changed and he would probably have had an ‘accident’.
As insurance against such accidents I have no doubt that Snowden has even more ’embarassing’ information on individuals in positions of power somewhere in the cloud and this explains why he has not disappeared already.
LOL!! Looks like something a Bond villain would have hanging in his lair!
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:49 am
“What is “illegal”about spying on opponents in an international negotiation?
How can civil servants be controlled if they are not punished for breaking employment contracts?
How is an employment contract of an employee of a Security Service “illegal”?”
It was the spying on U S citizens by our own government that is illegal. Any portion of an employment contract pertaining to prohibiting disclosure of illegal activities is unenforceable.
can’t help wondering how many other intelligence agencies from other countries were monitoring the NSA’s Monitoring of other nations… afterall the NSA isn’t the only intelligence agency in the world and some i would guess are just as sophisticated or not as the case may be.