[Whonix-devel] A Greek Tragedy

Fri Oct 9 00:13:17 CEST 2015

For years its been known that shortly after the 2004 Olympic games in Athens a wiretapping operation against the Greek parliament was busted. There was no public information on who was behind it. Thanks to a recently published article based on the Snowden disclosures, the loose ends are finally tied.

Interesting points that jumped out from the story:

* Most of the international information accesses are under the guise of information sharing with "allies" or "friends". A state somewhere hopes to benefit from the NSA's equipment to spy on their own people and political targets in return for sharing data. They  believe these agreements exempt their own government from being a target but they don't realize the NSA has no friends, only targets - easy and hard ones.

* They invoked the terrorist meme to convince client states to cooperate. Nothing new here except one would think politicians would be a little smarter and see through this because they use it on people all the time. Apparently not.

* There is some serious rivalry between US Intelligence Agencies. Each acts as it's own independent fiefdom competing for influence and funding. The NSA considers themselves on the apex of information gathering unaccountable to no one, not even their CIA partners. 

* Global Telecom Corporations are a great umbrella for espionage activities. Even when it was clear what's going on, they covered up for them.

* If you are a custodian for a network they want to access, they will crack you or whack you and make it look like an accident.

* Lawful Intercept backdoors in communications is a massive hole that let's everyone in indiscriminately. It doesn't matter if we call it a golden key or platinum trapdoor.

* This is the first time an "allied" state issues an arrest warrant for an American intelligence operative, bucking the trend of their cuckolded European neighbors. 

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