US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Presland]

I just saw on RT breaking news that the US ambassador to Germany has been summoned to account for the claims of phone tapping. ::

Posted to the Cryptome mailing list this morning by John Young - a seasoned old salt whose opinions on this sort of stuff are always worth considering:

All these passionate reports refer to the hyped Der Spiegel piece, slathered with additional hype, padded with dated filler, mused wanderings across the Snowden veldt.

The key document that has set techies pushing "credible evidence" appears to be a two-page outline released by Le Monde titled "Close Access Sigads" which lists a batch of techie-like techniques used to intercept comms.

http://cryptome.org/2013/10/nsa-close-access-sigads.pdf

There has been discussion of these tricks around tech circles due to the sparsity of technical information in most of the Snowden releases in favor of generalities beloved tech-illiterate journalists and their readers.

It is likely some techies fed tips and luridities to the German spies (most of whom are also tech-illiterate and must rely on tech-aware recruits and contractors who are treated with disdain by old HUMINT-seasoned salts). Given a bit of goose by the techie informants, the German spies saw a great way to boost their tech budget, and leaped into action.

Same as in the US adminstration and Congress and their kind around the world. Devilish comsec techies are nothing if not opportunistic, MIT and Silicon Valley born and bred, and pray nightly many Mannings and Snowdens will continue to valorize their career of code and hack hoakum.

Mea culpa maxima. Have you seen our media campaign?

OTOH - it may well be that governments are looking for credible excuses to precipitate re-alignment of the present US-Centric geo-political order. Their obvious problem of course is that, when the chips are down they all struggle to field much credible military muscle at all - let alone summon the gonnads to tell uncle Sam to pack his bags and go home.