Allies growing increasingly disenchanted with the USA

[David Guyatt]

The United States of Spying is coming under increasing international criticism from many of its closest allies because of its spying activities and also due to its rapprochement with Iran and Syria.

Obama left increasingly isolated as anger builds among key US allies

Merkel the latest to rebuke Washington over NSA spying while US relationships in the Middle East are also unravelling
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• Dan Roberts and Paul Lewis in Washington
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013 21.04 BST
  
• Jump to comments (219)
  

Obama met Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday to reassure him over anxieties around US drone attacks. Photograph: Rex Features

International anger over US government surveillance has combined with a backlash against its current Middle East policy to leave President Obama increasingly isolated from many of his key foreign allies, according to diplomats in Washington.
The furious call that German chancellor Angela Merkel made to the White House on Wednesday to ask if her phone had been tapped was the latest in a string of diplomatic rebukes by allies including France, Brazil andMexico, all of which have distanced themselves from the US following revelations of spying by the National Security Agency.
But the collapse in trust of the US among its European and South American partners has been matched by an equally rapid deterioration in its relationships with key allies in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia this week joined Israel, Jordan and United Arab Emirates in signalling a shift in its relations with the US over its unhappiness at a perceived policy of rapprochement toward Iran and Syria.
Though the issues are largely unrelated, they have led to a flurry of diplomatic activity from Washington, which is anxious to avoid a more permanent rift in the network of alliances that has been central to its foreign policy since the second world war.
Secretary of state John Kerry has been meeting with Saudi and Israeli leaders in an effort to keep them involved in Middle East peace talks about Palestine and Syria, Obama met Wednesday with Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif to reassure him over separate anxiety over US drone attacks, and the White House has been privately trying to mend fences with world leaders on the surveillance issue.
"The [NSA] revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels," said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Thursday.
"These are very important relations both economically and for our security, and we will work to maintain the closest possible ties."
But the Guardian has spoken with several diplomats and foreign government officials all of whom agreed to talk only on the condition of anonymity who say the White House is still underestimating the anger felt over recent disclosures.
They argue that US officials are being deliberately disingenuous when they claim that all countries engage in similar forms of espionage, even against allies. While it is widely accepted that the US, Britain, France, Russia and China engage in counter-espionage, other countries do not have the tools to conduct surveillance on the scale of the NSA.
Obama, Merkel and Hollande at the G20 summit in St Petersburg. Photograph: GettyA European diplomat said that the White House had presented a false comparison by claiming all countries were engaged in the same tactics.
"How would the US respond if it discovered a friendly country was covertly listening to the calls of thousands of US citizens including Obama?" the diplomat said.
France, Mexico, Brazil and Germany have all provided the White House with a list of detailed questions about the reports of surveillance, demanding explanations and assurances it will stop. None have so far received what they believe to be a satisfactory answer.
Some foreign officials posted in Washington have changed the way they conduct business since the revelations about US surveillance: not speaking about sensitive information over the phone, increasing the frequency of de-bugging inspections in embassies, and keeping some communications those deemed most secret out of secure cables, having now concluded that their encryption may have been compromised by the NSA.
In Brazil, thousands of federal workers are now being ordered to adopt a form of highly-encrypted email a program that was quickly accelerated after the Edward Snowden disclosures. And although the State Department insists that a planned bilateral meeting between Obama and Brazillian president Dilma Rousseff has merely been "postponed", it has not yet been rescheduled. Brazil is insisting the US come clean about the nature of the surveillance it has been conducting before it schedules another summit.
Speaking before Wednesday's revelation about Merkel's phone, a senior western diplomat speculated that the tenor of debate would be transformed if it emerged that an elected European politician had been targeted as occurred in Brazil and Mexico.
"If that happened, there would be a huge uproar," the diplomat said. "This is not an issue that will go away.
"The surveillance debate in the US is focused on the constitution and whether the privacy of US citizens is compromised. There seems to be minimal acknowledgement about the concern other countries have about the rights of their citizens."
One European official said the disclosures had prompted EU countries to review policies on internet governance, privacy and data-sharing, amid growing scepticism about whether the US can be trusted. Major transatlantic trade negotiations have also been jeopardised amid anxiety that the US' surveillance tools give it an advantage during talks.
"It has become clear we're not doing business on a level-playing field during negotiations," the official said.
A Brazilian official said that some top-level discussions with the US on energy matters had been suspended as a consequence of leaks, which suggested Canada may have spied on its energy and mines ministry. It would be "impossible" for discussions to proceed on that basis, the official added.
A Latin American diplomat said that if no satisfactory answer and apology was forthcoming, a scenario they thought unlikely, there would be enormous pressure for affected countries to react with more than just rhetoric.
"Countries that have close partnerships simply should not spy on each other to that kind of level," they said. "There has to be some kind of consequences."
The combination of diplomatic setbacks has led to particular scorn from Obama's critics on the American right, who compare his growing international unpopularity with his criticism of George W Bush for damaging America's reputation through the Iraq war.
"This is a perfect storm," said Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. "Countries are getting impatient with US foreign policy largely because they see it as one of disengagement, but the NSA scandal has given them fresh reason to mistrust us, too."
So far the official response in Washington has been muted, but there are signs of growing American frustration with the criticism it is receiving at the same time that it is expected to act as world leader.
On Wednesday, for example, Washington's outgoing ambassador toSaudi Arabia, James Smith, rebuked those calling for greater US involvement in the Middle East.
"Much criticism has been directed at the US and there is a mounting frustration at the perceived lack of a coherent foreign policy in the region but then we hear the same refrain that somehow only we can fix it," he told an Arab/US policy conference in Washington.

[Danny Jarman]

While this of course, could be the case, Sibel Edmonds taught us that what we generally see is mostly theatre. They condemn each other in public to save face but it's business as usual behind the scenes. I wouldn't be suprised if Merkel et al knew about the whole thing anyway,

[David Guyatt]

I suspect you're right Danny.

The Europeans are simply banging the of so righteous drum because they don't have the same technological edge

At the same time it does sort of seem that some sort of realignment going on in regard to the middle east. What this may turn out to be is still, clearly, uncertain, and it might be so much theatre here too, but there is a feel to it all that suggest otherwise.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...pying.html

Right in the middle of the New York Times' exhaustive account of National Security Agency activities (published on Saturday based on documents provided by Edward Snowden), there's a description of some of the agency's relationships with other countries' intelligence operations. And it would seem Germany, with whom the United States is trying to salvage a relationship damaged by allegations it spied on Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been secretly upset with us over spying for years. But it wasn't always for the same reason: According to a 2009 NSA document, Germany was insulted it wasn't asked to participate in a joint intelligence venture called 9-Eyes. "Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group," the document reads.

The 9-Eyes thing is just one of many intriguing details about the NSA laid out in the Times' story and a corresponding one in The Guardian, also based on Snowden's documents. It refers to a cadre of nine countries that collaborate on intelligence gathering, an extension of the more elite 5-Eyes, which includes the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway join in to make 9-Eyes. But Germany is relegated to the third-tier 14-Eyes. "Significantly, amid the German protestations of outrage over US eavesdropping on Merkel and other Germans, Berlin is using the controversy as leverage for an upgrade to 5-Eyes," The Guardian reports.

It's an interesting time, then, for Germany to be cultivating a relationship with Edward Snowden himself. The NSA whistle-blower wrote an open letter to the country, offering to help it with a parliamentary inquiry into the NSA's tapping of Merkel's phone. He handed the letter to German legislator Hans-Christian Stroebele when Stroebele went to meet Snowden in Moscow on Thursday. In the letter, Snowden also said he would like to eventually testify back in the United States. "I would rather go before the U.S. Congress, or a committee of the U.S. Congress and lay the facts on the table," he wrote.

But for now, Snowden can't leave Russia or he risks losing his refugee status. So he's back to working tech support and Germany must make its case to join 5-Eyes without him.

[Magda Hassan]

ENGLISH SUMMARY Belgian professor in cryptography hacked

01/02/2014 om 08:00 door Mark Eeckhaut and Nikolas Vanhecke








This is an English summary of an article published in today's edition of Belgian newspaper De Standaard. The article concerns the hacking of the computer of professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater, a renowned expert in cryptography. Suspicions arose that the hacking of Professor Quisquater was done by the U.S. National Security Agency or the British GCHQ. The case is under investigation by Belgian authorities.

A new Belgian episode in the NSA scandal: Belgian professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater, internationally renowned expert in data security was the victim of hacking. And, as was the case in the Belgacom hacking affair, there are indications the American secret service NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ might be involved.

There isn't a card with an electronic chip available, or it has some sort of security technology that UCL professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater (67) was involved in developing. If you are able to withdraw money from a cashpoint safely, for example, that is to some extent due to Quisquater's work on complicated mathematical algorithms. He was also involved in the development of the Proton payment system in Belgium. That very same Jean-Jacques Quisquater has now been the victim of a hacking attack, that has all the signs as was the case in the Belgacom affair - of 'state-sponsored espionage, De Standaard has discovered.

The authorities investigating the Belgacom hacking case confirm they have opened a case. Quisquater himself has lodged a formal complaint.

Earlier this week, whistle blower Edward Snowden gave an interview to German television channel ARD in which he claimed the NSA's espionage activities are not only aimed at protecting US national security in the so-called 'war on terror' but also at companies and private individuals. The Quisquater case seems to indicate the Belgian justice department might be able to demonstrate Snowden's claims are more than a mere figment of his imagination. As far as we are able to tell, this is the first instance in which a private person is seen as a victim in the NSA case.

According to our sources, the Quisquater hacking was discovered during an investigation into the Belgacom hacking case. Also according to our sources, that malware or techniques similar to those used in the Belgacom hacking were used to hack into Quisquater's computer.

It is not a big surprise the Belgian mathematician might have been targeted by the NSA: Jean-Jacques Quisquater is a a well-respected professor in cryptography at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve. He has no involvement in the 'war on terror' the US are waging, but there are many other reasons he is an interesting target. Quisquater is world-wide renowned because of his work in cryptography. Cryptographers enable systems, thanks to complicated sets of algorithms, to exchanges data in a secure way over, for example, the internet.

Quisquater has earned his reputation: he has 17 patents in his name, he headed the 'Crypto group' at the UCL and was awarded the RSA Conference Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics.

His computer was infected after clicking a (bogus) LinkedIn invitation of a non-existent employee of the European patent office. That allowed the intruders to follow all of the professor's digital movements, including his work for international conferences on security. Quisquater also had contact with NXP, a company based in Leuven and specialized in electronic equipment where security is an important issue, such as mobile phones.

Interesting fact: German chancellor Angela Merkel, also hacked by the NSA, has drie mobile phones. Only one of them is protected. According to our sources the protected mobile was protected by NXP technology and was not hacked by the NSA.

Needless to say, a secret service that can monitor Quisquater's computer, has a unique access point to the tightly-knit world of cryptography, that is crucial for the protection of any form of digital communication.
http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20140201_011