On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 3:50 PM, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/

AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe

On January 17, 2014, President Barack Obama gave a major address on the NSA spying scandal. “The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures,” he said.

adding that the agency’s work is conducted within a “strict legal and policy framework” ... The agency also said, “[T]he UK’s interception regime is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.” The NSA declined to offer any comment.

The monitoring of the lawful communications of employees of major international corporations shows that such statements by Obama, other U.S. officials and British leaders — that they only intercept and monitor the communications of known or suspected criminals or terrorists — were untrue. “The NSA and GCHQ view the private communications of people who work for these companies as fair game,” says the ACLU’s Soghoian. “These people were specifically hunted and targeted by intelligence agencies, not because they did anything wrong, but because they could be used as a means to an end.”

“It is governments massively engaging in illegal activities,” says Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. “If you are not a government and you are a student doing this, you will end up in jail for 30 years.” Veld, who chaired the European Parliament’s recent inquiry into mass surveillance exposed by Snowden, told The Intercept: “The secret services are just behaving like cowboys. Governments are behaving like cowboys and nobody is holding them to account.”

The U.S. represents Gemalto’s single largest market, accounting for some 15 percent of its total business. This raises the question of whether GCHQ, which was able to bypass encryption on mobile networks, has the ability to access private data protected by other Gemalto products created for banks and governments.

“It would mean that with a few antennas placed around Washington DC, the Chinese or Russian governments could sweep up and decrypt the communications of members of Congress, U.S. agency heads, reporters, lobbyists and everyone else involved in the policymaking process and decrypt their telephone conversations,” says Soghoian.

“I can only imagine how much money you could make if you had access to the calls made around Wall Street,”

You're all being raped and used... how does it feel?