Embassies are routinely bugged by myriad parties so I would not read too much into this. It is the expected background noise of working in an embassy. It is the selection bias of people paying attention now because there is a story that people are interested in. There is a reason they constantly search embassies for bugs.
Also, most sophisticated buggings are usually difficult to detect even against a sophisticated adversary. All of which suggests to me that finding this bug in the Ecuador embassy is likely to be coincidence.
I sincerely doubt that this is all about selection bias. Rather, it sounds to me as public outrage is the only viable method in dealing with spying from a suspected NSA.
It used to be that when you found out that a country was using embassies for spying, there was diplomatic actions available to discourage it. You could deport diplomats from that country. You could refuse entering into political discussion with them. in worst case, you could close down diplomatic relations with them. All in all, such retaliation keeps the spying at a low key rather than public. It keeps it at a respectable level.
The big problem happens when its a large country like the U.S. doing the spying. The previous stories has all been about the NSA (which this one clearly relate to). As a country, the diplomatic relations against spying is quite limited. It is unlikely you want throw out the U.S. diplomats or close down their embassy. Its not very practical to close down diplomatic relations with the U.S.
You're attempting to justify these actions with placidity?
Yes, embassies are bugged, it happens, as does rape. Things are not "standard operating procedure" just because they happen, and the lack of outrage when crimes are committed only encourages their perpetration.
Your Hanlon's razor approach would make sense had the bug not just been found recently, suggesting it was put there recently and/or not well hidden, coincidentally in a location that happens to house someone wanted by the nation with the largest "defense" budget on the planet likely targeting someone who is known to communicate with arguably the most wanted man on the planet.
Trying to brush this off as a coincidence is a bit of a stretch, given the circumstances.
Geez. Comparing bugging with rape is a bit outlandish. This is more along the lines of, people agree on having speed limits, people violate them. Gov'ts set protocols on how they respect each other and then do things they've agreed not to.
Why don't you go after diplomatic immunity which allows all sorts of things to happen unpunished?
You're being idealistic. The world does not operate that way, if it did, we would have no need for lawyers as no one would ever take advantage of anyone nor would any one ever want to change the terms --wait, there wouldn't eve be terms of agreement, we'd just know 'the right thing to do'.
when was the last time when a country's foreign policy was actually influenced by its people in a democratic way? besides go / don't go to war or foreign investments policies, I doubt most people have any clue about their "democratic" country's fp ... I know I don't, and if I'd dig into it more, I'd probably get so disgusted by the international ass kissing networks that I'd wanna puke...
If anyone wants to read that FP article without registering at FP you can bypass the register screen by selecting "View -> Page Style -> No Page Style" in iceweasel. I apologize I do not know the equivalent function in chromium.
I used to enjoy reading Tom Ricks Best Defense blog at FP but I stopped reading it once they introduced that monstrosity.
Apparently blocking javascript also lets you read the article - in nicely formatted fashion too. I had not even realized FP had made such a change, I would have stopped reading it if I had run into that roadblock too.
Tecently there have been some misguided statements in the comments on HN that javascript is a requirement for the web and that it is reasonable for designers to always expect its presence. When those designers fail like this - the crap is gone but the important stuff still works great, I think to myself maybe it isn't so misguided. Maybe two wrongs do make a right.
They are supposed to do it for national security reasons (hence the name, one would presume). On actual enemies or potential enemies.
Spying on EU politicians, corporations, trade negotiations and such is not that. It's using spying to get a leverage and exploit/blackmail/bride/take advantage of other countries.
Except if you redefine "national security" to mean: each and every way a country can exploit and fuck with other countries.
The biggest difference between the spying in the past and the spying today is that most effective spying usually involved HUMINT. You had to get someone with access to a secure location to go in there and bug the place or you needed a mole on the inside leaking information to you.
Today we have an Internet infrastructure that for all intents and purposes is centralized in the US. Lots of network collections pass through the US and many commonly used service providers are in the US. HUMINT is now a lot less important because SIGINT became much much much easier.
However abusing the current system for the sake of SIGINT comes at the cost of trust in the current system and architecture. There will be an economic penalty paid by the US of this abuse of trust. At the very least, we're now in a much weaker position to negotiate with the rest of the world when internet governance issues (ICANN for example) come up for discussion.
That is not why the people are shocked. The general mass is shocked(especially foreigners, of course) or rather annoyed about the moral high ground US always seems to take("Chinese are hacking us, we're not hacking them") to which it doesn't own up to.
Cell phones can be turned on remotely, and used as listening devices as well. This is why Edward Snowden told his HK lawyers to place theirs in a refrigerator.
Given that it is technically feasible, I'd assume it's possible for a mobile phone base station to geofence something like an embassy, or park bench, and have all mobile phones entering the geofenced perimeter go into surveillance mode, and return to normal on exiting the perimeter. Given that phones have a precise GPS locked timebase, I'd even assume that it is possible to beamform the signal from multiple phones, allowing conversations to be picked out from background noise. Continuous monitoring, as long as there is a continuous stream of mobile phones passing by.
Every time the US, UK, or other 'western' governments announce a foiled terror attack or suspected plot, a significant portion of the HN community is vocally skeptical. I hope that skepticism persists even when it goes the other direction.
I think it's pretty likely that the bug came from the US or one of our allies but its absolutely possible that it didn't. Everyone has home grown political enemies and this would be an excellent time for a false flag to capitalize on a prominent news story.
What is the other direction to to skeptical in? And how does bugging that embassy relate to terrorism? A fair portion of terrorism comes from quite close US allies (Saudi, Pakistan arguably Israel depending on your politics), so I suppose bugging them may be helpful.
I suppose my original post was needlessly ambiguous. I was a bit apprehensive that the entire comment section would resemble the first few comments, where people would uncritically blame the US and insist that the government was out to get Snowden.
What is the other direction to to skeptical in?
Many on HN are very skeptical of the US/UK governments (generally for good reason), but seem to lack a similar level of skepticism for stories that make the governments look bad. That's the 'other direction' which I was implying.
If some percent of stories that make the government look good are misleading / planted / etc, then logically, some percent of those which make them look bad are likely wrong too.
And how does bugging that embassy relate to terrorism?
It doesn't really, the response to articles like "FBI busts terror cell" was just the first example of government mistrust that came to mind.
>If some percent of stories that make the government look good are misleading / planted / etc, then logically, some percent of those which make them look bad are likely wrong too.
That doesn't follow at all. If the government is actively trying to ensure stories make them look good, they certainly wouldn't want any to make them look bad. They certainly wouldn't be creating/planting/whatever stories to do that unless they were provably false and would be used to advantage later (e.g. "look at this bias reporting!").
Forgive my optimism, but perhaps things like this happen all the time and it's hardly ever newsworthy...?
Yeah, I can't really find a positive outlook to all this international intrigue and espionage. There isn't one, right?
This particular development, though, seems way more dramatic than the rest. I wonder what point there is in waiting until tomorrow to release the source of the bug.
Sure it does. The Soviets went as far as to embed some sort of passive microphones in cinder blocks used to build the US Embassy in Moscow. The US planted copier repairmen/spies to install cameras in xerox machines at the Russian embassy.
It wasn't a 'huge diplomatic incident' - it didn't really impact UK/Russian relations in any meaningful or long term way. It was nowhere on the scale of, say, Litvinenko, which did have diplomatic consequences.
Countries like to crow when they come across potentially rather inept attempts at espionage, but there's no real diplomatic issues raised since everyone expects espionage to be happening. It's PR more than anything else.
The US government appears to be absolutely terrified of this 29-year-old former NSA contractor.
No it doesn't, really. I believe this is wishful thinking on your part, but see no evidence of it. You believe the US somehow planted this bug in the Ecuadorian embassy just in case Snowden ended up there? America isn't the only country in the world that bugs embassies and even so, where's the proof this particular bug is that new?
How you could say "I see no evidence of this" is just so far beyond me I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You think that insisting the guy is barred from every ally or that we are grounding foreign president's planes because we are worried Snowden might be on them and somehow your brain takes all these inputs and spits out "no evidence". How does that happen? Does one train in some sort of ignorance academy?
You think that insisting the guy is barred from every ally
You're assuming that every other government is a puppet state of the US, incapable of making its own decisions or engaging in its own politics. No one else has to give Edward Snowden asylum if they don't want to. If you're talking about his passport being revoked, he was accused of a serious crime and was fleeing the country -- revoking someone's passport under those circumstances is not uncommon. None of this is evidence of the US being 'terrified' of anything.
we are grounding foreign president's planes because we are worried Snowden might be on them
WE did not ground anything, unless I missed the part where the United States runs the European Union. I suppose if there's a thunderstorm in Moscow, it's because the US controls the weather too? If Edward Snowden has a bad egg salad sandwich, the US must be poisoning everyone's chickens?
Consider this... the assumption that Edward Snowden has access to secrets so utterly damaging to the US that the government would be willing to do anything and everything possible to stop him... which brings with it the suggestion that the US is so evil that it would have such a secret still stowed away somewhere....
... and yet we let him leave the country at all. And yet, we appear (despite being 'absolutely terrified') to be working within the system. You think it would be impossible for the CIA to book a couple of flights to Moscow and maybe have Edward Snowden eat a bullet if they were that desperate?
Regardless of potential damage, he has made a lot of powerful people very angry. Simple retribution seems like it would suffice for the reaction to date.
Dirt on every single one of them personally? But I'd doubt that as Snowden actually seems like a person of high morals who wouldn't stoop to that even to save his life.
Anyhow, the sad thing is, I don't think the government really cares. This is about making a point, showing their power, and discouraging this from ever happening again.
That's a dangerously lax attitude to have. What threat to national security could or would the CIA curtail by bugging Ecuador's embassy in London?
I'd understand Chinese or Russian embassies, but expecting every embassy on Earth is an incredibly permissive stance to take, even as a safety-conscious citizen of the U.S.
It's not so much a matter of enmity (or lack thereof) as it is a matter of capability (or lack thereof). China and Russia are capable of causing serious harm to U.S. citizens and interests. Ecuador, not so much.
Of course, this view does not account for black swans, but I think the possibility of an entirely unprecedented method for a militarily and economically inferior nation to meaningfully harm U.S. citizens and/or interests being developed and put to use (not even accounting for alliances or motives) is sufficiently low that the risk is not worth surveilling the world to mitigate.
Ecuador's HUMINT operations and capabilities will be based out of the embassy. They may not be co-ordinated at the embassy but at some point they will make contact with them.
Even so, it's not about national security, it's about protecting interests, political and business. Interests that are an extension of US/FiveEyes policy. Policies which are largely influenced by big business.
Ending the Cold War was a formality to 'restore' public faith in cohesive global organizations. Free-trade agreements and other major economic blocs shatter borders as a matter of policy -- the fact that such tight unity, solidarity, and uniformity between nations has gone unnoticed is probably more disturbing than actual acts that verify this unity (ie: Snowden having nowhere to run to).
Multi-generational voter apathy has culminated to a point where most people are so disconnected from reality that they thought Snowden could escape the long arm of the US Government.
Of course it has never ended. The War part was about who gets to be the top dog (i.e not specifically about communism vs capitalism), and that never stops.
Before the cold war it was the colonial powers fighting it out, for the same reasons (when the US was still an emerging world player at the time). This gave us the 19th century wars, and WWI and WWII.
After France, UK, etc lost any chance to the "top dog" position, and Germany failed quite spectacularly, they stopped fighting altogether. (Not because of any "hard lessons" learned during WWII -- if it was that, they would have stopped at WWI and even earlier. There was just not much to fight about anymore).
Has anyone else tried reading that article on an iPhone? How many different sorts of bad is that experience? Banners, nav bar, non realizable, scrolls left to right and up and down.
Julian, now a year out, restless with cabin fever, wanders around the silent Ecuador Embassy at night in his `Sparky-the-Dog(tm)' pajamas, takes a chunk out of a smart phone, covers it with flat-black `Gaffer(tm)' fingernail polish, disgruntled with Ecuador President waffled then caved under US on Snowden asylum, glue-sticks his fake `bug' under an antique desk.
Also, most sophisticated buggings are usually difficult to detect even against a sophisticated adversary. All of which suggests to me that finding this bug in the Ecuador embassy is likely to be coincidence.