Israeli drones and jet signals slurped by UK and US SIGINT teams The NSA and Britain’s GCHQ have access to the video feeds of Israel’s fleet of drones and aircraft, according to new documents. The spy agencies have intercepted data streams containing videos, pictures and GPS data from Israeli jets and drones since at least 2008, according to Snowden-supplied documents seen by The Intercept …
More seriously, this is the kind of thing I would LIKE to see our sigint agencies doing. Penetrating the comms and data infrastructure of actual countries to get intelligence or better understand their capabilities. Instead, they spend too much time gathering data on their own citizens.
Amen. That is what the NSA was set up for long ago. The "war" on terror has become a honeypot for agencies interested in expanding their mission, power, and budget. Plus, it is no more definable or winnable than previous wars on things (rather than countries). Mass surveillance, whether by the US and UK or China and Iran, is wrong and unjustifiable, assuming you remember that justifiability requires justice.
If you're going to come up with snappy project names, they should also have stuff like "success criteria"
Define what winning the "war on terror" actually would be, come up with a plan and mark the results of your actions against that criteria.
The bit that makes me cynical, is that if any effort was successful, then it would be surplus to requirements and wound up - and I can't help feeling that's not what those involved want.
Shit, I know my ideal project would be one that runs forever, continually gets more important with more money fed in and never ends.
Best solution I can come up with is to incentivize people to want to wrap up the project and the renounce the monthly pay-cheque. Solve the problem, don't oversee it.
"kill all the terrorists, potential terrorists, their financiers, supporters and hangers-on."
By the time you've finished killing everybody, feel free to commit suicide - after all, you'll clearly match my definition of a terrorist yourself.
I'll get my exploding coat on the way out.
The "spying on their own citizens" bit was the justification for Snowden's slurp. Since these disclosures appear to be cases of spying on foreigners, why are they being published? Is it *now* the case that those with the data are now merrily publishing everything for the lolz rather than picking out just the examples that might apply pressure on the US government to rein in their spooks? Would those opposed to the NSA's internal spying now be better served by fewer Snowden-related disclosures? Are the Snowden archives now being used to discredit Snowden? (Let's face it, today's story is hardly a big deal. Israel isn't going to get hot under the collar about it and Iran probably expects it.)
Might even have some other allies questioning their relationships.
I suspect that questioning may have been taking place for quite some time. I seem to remember the NZ government being upset by Mossad operatives stealing NZ passports.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/16/israel
I'm sure the Israelis are relying on it.
Fly drone over suspected terrorist training camp / wedding.
Allow US to eavesdrop on data.
US agencies confirm to politicians that Israel is under threat and so should be given some more weapons which can be purchased from suppliers in your congressional district.
And ps.our funding should be increased because of all these terrorists "we"just found
Are you trying to tell me that the country that NDS (now owned by cisco) tv encryption came from was able to be decrypted?
I've never done this on here but
O.o
Why? I'm sure better minds than the NSA's have had a crack at that one and the best they came up with was encryption sharing (cams)
Why on an expensive drone or fighter would would you use analogue video with cut and rotate encryption? Is their next plan to upgrade the system to replace the h-sync with a 4MHz burst?
Surely in the 20+ years since this was state of the art they would have managed to drag their drones into the digital telemetry era, even the crap consumer ones from china are doing video over wifi now.
Probably because it was cheap and proven technology at the time the decision was taken to develop the drone. I.e. probably 10 years ago...
Also in most cases the data is not *that* secret as they are looking at "the enemy", and not at their own top secret bases, so probably it was deemed sufficient for that sort of job. After all, they (NSA/GCHQ/etc) can probably track the location of the drone no matter what encryption it uses, so they can guess at what they are looking at and send their own spy drone/satellite to look.
I could be totally wrong, but I imagine the ability to heavily encrypt signals would be rolled out to a more elite squadron, one that is secret and deployed strategically, like on the eve of a full scale invasion.
I just can't see the point of giving your enemies years and years worth of experience in trying to counter your best. No, just send the dumb tin cans along for now, and leave the strategic advantage for a time when it's needed.
Unless the signals were directed laser like, then an intelligence gathering outfit would find it almost impossible to not listen in, whilst going about their normal business, of listening to everything.
I think the phrase that should have come to mind was, "pick up", as in, millions of people around the world, pick up Radio 4. Not millions intercept Radio 4.
An h.264 video stream is probably going to be about 3 Mbps. Within the resultant IP stream will be endless examples of 'known text', originating from the digital video well-defined format.
If Bletchley Park could crack the Enigma with mechanical switches because of standardized format German weather reports and the odd 'HEIL HITLER', then in the modern era one would have to take ultra-careful special precautions with such easily-recognized video formats and vast data rates. There would be dozens and dozens of large 'known text' hits per frame, hundreds per second.
How big is their Nonce as compared to 3 Mbps?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
