US government uses Swiss diplomatic network to communicate with Iran
A number of countries are connected to each other through bilateral hotlines in order to prevent misunderstandings and miscommunications in times of severe crisis. But what when there's a crisis...
View ArticleThe serial numbers of NSA reports
On January 14, the NSA disclosed a serious vulnerability in the CryptoAPI service of the Windows 10 operating system (vulnerability identifier: CVE-2020-0601) and in a rare public Cybersecurity...
View ArticleEdward Snowden and the STELLARWIND report
Last September, Edward Snowden published his memoir titled Permanent Record (see Part I and Part II of my extensive review). According to this book, he had one of his "atomic moments" when he read a...
View ArticleMaximator and other European SIGINT alliances
(Updated: May 19, 2020) One of the topics covered by this weblog is international cooperation among signals intelligence agencies. The Snowden-revelations already provided many details about the...
View ArticleBulk interception by Germany's BND and what the Constitutional Court said...
On May 19, the German Constitutional Court presented its decision in a case about the untargeted interception of foreign communications by the German foreign intelligence service BND.Unlike suggestive...
View ArticleNSA documents and cover names from the book Dark Mirror
On May 20, yet another book about the Snowden-revelations was published: Dark Mirror, Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State. It's written by Barton Gellman, who was in direct contact with...
View ArticleA unique note from the BND about European SIGINT alliances
(Updated: July 22, 2020) Last April, an academic article by the Dutch professor for computer security Bart Jacobs revealed the existence of Maximator, a hitherto unknown SIGINT-sharing alliance of five...
View ArticleHead of Danish military intelligence suspended after misleading the oversight...
The Danish military intelligence service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste or FE), which is also responsible for signals intelligence, has been accused of unlawful activities and deliberately...
View ArticleAbout the legality and constitutionality of the Section 215 metadata program
It was one of the NSA's most controversial activities: the bulk collection of domestic telephone records under the Section 215 program. On September 2, a court of appeal ruled that this violated the...
View ArticleDanish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in cooperation with...
Last August, it came out that a whistleblower accused the Danish military and signals intelligence service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste or FE) of unlawful activities and deliberately misleading...
View ArticleThe NSA tried to spy on Danish and other European targets via cable tapping...
(Updated: December 2, 2020) According to new revelations by the Danish broadcaster DR, the NSA tried to use its collaboration with the Danish military intelligence service FE to spy on targets in some...
View ArticleThe report of a Swiss investigation into the case of Crypto AG
Last month, the Swiss parliamentary intelligence oversight committee published a report about its investigation into the case of Crypto AG, the former Swiss manufacturer of encryption systems that was...
View ArticleThe phones in president Biden's Oval Office
On January 20, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. As such he has access to the presidential communications system, including secure and non-secure telephone...
View ArticleThe telephone contacts of president George W. Bush
Always wanted to know who are on the contact list of the President of the United States? In the George W. Bush Presidential Library one can see the telephone from the president's desk in the Oval...
View ArticleThe communications systems at the US Central Command headquarters
(Updated: April 9, 2021) Previously, this weblog provided a close look at the phones used by US president Biden. This time we turn to another end of the line and look at the communications equipment...
View ArticleWhat the NSA provides to its foreign partners, and vice versa
The cooperation between (signals) intelligence agencies of different countries is strictly quid pro quo, which means what you get is equivalent to what you give. This is perfectly illustrated by a...
View ArticleEdward Snowden and the targeted drone killing campaign
Two weeks ago, on October 22, a new document from the Snowden files was published for the first time in over two years. It's an entry from Intellipedia about the American drone killing campaign that...
View ArticleAbout Intellipedia and other intelligence wikis from the Snowden trove
For years, the NSA and other US intelligence agencies have their own internal versions of the collaboration tools that most of us are using day-to-day. Documents from some of these tools have been...
View ArticleFrom the Hotline to the first video call between presidents Biden and Putin
Among the most special telecommunication links are those between the presidents of the United States and Russia. The first and most famous one is the Hotline from 1963, but contrary to popular belief...
View ArticleHead of Danish military intelligence arrested but independent inquiry finds...
Unprecedented developments in Denmark: a former defense minister as well as the head of the military intelligence service FE have been charged for disclosing highly classified information, for which...
View ArticleThe phones of Ukrainian president Zelensky
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Ukrainian president Zelensky bravely leads his country in the fight against the Russian armed forces. As in any war, communications are of vital...
View ArticleThe highly classified documents found at Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago
This weblog is not only about signals intelligence, communications security and top level telecommunications equipment, but also about the US Classification System, which is equally fascinating in all...
View ArticleJareh Dalke arrested for offering NSA documents to the Russians
On September 28, the FBI arrested Jareh S. Dalke, who attempted to sell the Russians some highly classified documents which he exfiltrated within less than a month after he started working at the NSA....
View ArticleA new secure red telephone for German chancellor Scholz
(Updated: October 30, 2022) In December last year, Olaf Scholz succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany. Since about half a year ago, he has a remarkably large red telephone at his desk, which...
View ArticleAbout the legality of the NSA's testing and SIGINT Development projects
On November 1, 2022, Bloomberg published a remarkable story about an NSA analyst who in 2013 developed and tested a new collection method that resulted in the unauthorized collection of American...
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