Central Commission for Discipline Inspection State Supervision Commission website Li Yunshu Chai Yaxin
On May 31, local time, the Franco-German joint ministerial video conference was held, and French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the US National Security Agency's use of Danish intelligence to spy on allied leaders was unacceptable, and France and Germany asked the United States and Denmark to explain this. (Image source: People's Vision)
Chart: U.S. re-exposed surveillance allies (Image source: People's Vision)
The United States is once again caught in a "storm of eavesdropping." On May 30, Denmark's national broadcaster broke the news that the U.S. National Security Agency had used its partnership with Danish intelligence to spy on European allied leaders and senior officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. For a time, the European Union was in an uproar.
As the world's number one espionage power, the US wiretapping scandal has been exposed many times, but it still goes its own way, laying down a "wiretapping net" on the one hand, spying on opponents, allies, and even its own citizens, and on the other hand, on the grounds of so-called national security and network security, it wantsonly excludes and suppresses enterprises of other countries. The eavesdropping incident exposed this time only exposed the hypocrisy and hegemonic nature of the "American double standard" once again.
The United States was exposed to using Danish intelligence to spy on allied leaders, and several European politicians said the move was "unacceptable"
The Danish national broadcaster reported that after months of investigative visits and several meetings with nine sources who had access to classified information from the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency, they reported that they had roughly restored an investigation report that had been completed in May 2015 but was secretly hidden by the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency, the "Operation Dunhammer" report.
The report shows that between 2012 and 2014, the U.S. National Security Agency used Denmark's submarine Internet cable landing point to obtain data and secretly monitor and monitor the phone and text messages of political leaders in Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries. Among them, Germany, as the "bellwether" of Europe, is the hardest hit area of eavesdropping, and Chancellor Angel Merkel, then Foreign Minister Steinmeier, and then opposition leader Steinbrück are all on the list of wiretapping in the United States.
As soon as the news came out, international public opinion was in an uproar. The countries concerned expressed dissatisfaction with Denmark's approach and were even more angry at the US approach. French President Emmanuel Macron demanded an explanation from the United States and Denmark for the surveillance, saying that "this is unacceptable between allies, especially between the European Union"; Merkel said that "Germany's attitude of wanting clarification from the United States has not changed, and believes that allies will make explanations based on mutual trust."
Sweden's defense minister, Hurtquist, said Sweden could not accept such surveillance between close allies and that it was a "matter of principle". Norwegian Prime Minister Solberg told Norwegian National Radio that if the media reveals that it is unjustifiable and unacceptable for allies such as the United States and Denmark to spy on Norway, which will create distrust among allies.
Denmark is located in the throat of northern Europe, bordering Germany to the south and Norway and Sweden to the north. With the help of the United States, several key landing sites for submarine Internet cables connecting the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden and Germany have been established in Denmark. The Danish Defense Intelligence Agency had provided the United States with access to a special site near Copenhagen, whereby the United States could monitor information transmitted by submarine cables.
According to reports, the United States uses its allies to eavesdrop on its allies, and the scope of surveillance is very extensive, not only intercepting mobile phone text messages and telephone content, but also obtaining Internet search content and chat information. Danish media reported that the U.S. National Security Agency, through the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency, has free access to raw data on the Internet, including private information about Danish citizens. The United States has also spied on the Danish government and European defense contractors to obtain information on the country's warplane procurement programs.
"America's rudeness undermines the foundations of Western values." On June 4, the Web client of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung commented on the matter, "It has made European and American civilization a joke in the world from now on." ”
However, in the face of allies' "arguments", the United States continued to be "offline" without any explanation, and the National Security Agency and the National Intelligence Agency refused to comment on the surveillance incident.
From the Prism Gate to the WikiLeaks to this new scandal, the United States says one thing and does one thing, and the gate of eavesdropping never intends to close
In fact, as a veritable "eavesdropping empire", the United States is not new to spying on allies. In 2013, Snowden, a former U.S. defense contractor employee, exposed the NSA's secret global surveillance program code-named Prism, causing an uproar. Snowden disclosed that the United States not only eavesdropped on Russia, China, etc., but also secretly blackmailed allies, and Merkel's mobile phone was also within the scope of surveillance.
Later, the WikiLeaks website broke the news in 2015 that since the 1990s, Germany's economic, financial and agricultural sectors have been monitored by the United States. Between 2006 and 2012, the NSA spied on the French president, several ministers, the French ambassador to the United States and other political leaders, including Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande, to obtain information on governance programs, foreign policy and other information.
Over the years, whether it is the opponents or allies of the United States, leaders or ordinary people, the United States has unscrupulously engaged in surveillance and network surveillance: according to European media reports, the US National Security Agency has massively monitored the telephone calls in France, Italy and Spain, as many as tens of millions of times; "WikiLeaks" disclosed in 2017 that the CIA has a strong hacking capability, secretly invading mobile phones, computers and even smart TVs and many other smart devices, of which Samsung TV has been attacked and turned into a wiretap that can be used to record...
From the "Prism Gate" to the "WikiLeaks" to the current new "Eavesdropping Gate", every time the scandal comes out, world public opinion is surging and politicians are condemning and demanding explanations from the US side; in order to calm the storm, the US side will verbally "cooperate" and privately follow the yin and yang. The raucous "Prism Gate" incident ended with the United States promising not to spy on German dignitaries' communications equipment in the future. However, from the information revealed by the Danish media this time, the United States monitored the politicians of European allies such as Merkel from 2012 to 2014. In other words, the United States says one thing and does one thing, and the door to surveillance never intends to close.
Those who risk death to expose the truth will be retaliated against by the United States in a frenzy. In 2012, Assange was forced to seek political asylum in Ecuador and lived in seclusion for seven years at the country's embassy in Britain before being arrested by London police and is now in danger of being extradited by the U.S. government. Snowden, who has been granted asylum in Russia, has lived in Russia for many years and has not been able to return to the United States.
In recent years, the United States has invested heavily in cyber eavesdropping surveillance. According to the official website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the total U.S. intelligence expenditure in 2018 was as high as $80.5 billion, an increase of nearly 30% over 2007. The means of stealing secrets are also various, including using analog mobile phone base station signals to access mobile phones to steal data, manipulating mobile phone applications, invading cloud servers, stealing secrets through submarine optical cables, and installing monitoring equipment in nearly 100 U.S. embassies and consulates abroad to eavesdrop on the host countries.
Behind the unbridled eavesdropping is the so-called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the "Secret Court" in the United States.
Why are U.S. intelligence agencies so bold? Behind the repeated exposure of wiretapping of allies is the support of the U.S. judiciary, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the so-called "secret court," the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal.
In 1978, due to the exposure of former US President Nixon's "Watergate Incident", in order to prevent the president and the executive branch from abusing their powers to arbitrarily eavesdrop, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was born, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal was established. The bill requires the government to obtain a court order before electronic surveillance, and is designed to balance national security needs with civil rights to protect people in U.S. territory from arbitrary surveillance.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal is made up of 11 judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to examine and approve surveillance and search warrants submitted by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For the U.S. government and intelligence services, the court's powers can be compared to that of the U.S. Supreme Court.
"A notable peculiarity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal compared to other courts in the United States is that the procedure is conducted unilaterally, the subject of the surveillance applied by the authorities does not have the opportunity to defend themselves in court, most of the interception orders are signed by a judge alone, and the results of the judgment are not made public." Zuo Xiaodong, vice president of the China Academy of Information Security, said.
Ironically, under the umbrella of secrecy regulations, the foreign intelligence surveillance courts, under the banner of "preventing the government from abusing their powers," have gradually expanded their oversight powers indefinitely.
After 9/11, constraints on the government's surveillance powers began to unravel. In 2008, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act, which means that the U.S. government can conduct surveillance "unscrupulously" as long as it believes that it reasonably believes that the target of surveillance is a foreigner in non-U.S. territory and that the surveillance involves foreign intelligence information.
"An important principle of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is 'internal and external differences', and when americans are involved, intelligence agencies are required to use technical investigative measures with caution, follow strict goal-setting principles, formulate and apply strict minimum procedures, and apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for writs and accept supervision; and once the subject is replaced by non-Americans, the conditions and procedures become quite simple, and even without prior approval of a judicial writ." Zuo Xiaodong said.
A judge who has entered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal has revealed to the US media that all the rules protecting the independence of judges are useless there. In the view of Afort Goode, a secrecy expert at the American Federation of Scientists, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal is "a completely different place from what we learn from books to define the law and the court."
On June 2, the New York Times published an article titled "What Are The Secret Courts Of america hiding from the public?" The opinion piece notes that the "unnecessary" secrecy regulations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Tribunal are not only unconstitutional, but also "harmful" to the court itself, the intelligence agencies, and the American public.
The "baseless secrecy" of foreign intelligence surveillance courts has bogged down public debates about government surveillance because it means that oversight powers can grow invisibly and easily deviate from the democratic consensus that confers legitimacy on them; this "unnecessary secrecy" also undermines public confidence in the court, and people will be skeptical of the courts and court-approved surveillance.
The United States, which has a bad track record, has regarded itself as a "security guard" and has wantonly squeezed and suppressed enterprises of other countries on the grounds of so-called national security and network security
"The information of the United States eavesdropping on allies has broken out again, and it should be said that everyone is not surprised at all." The United States has been trying to safeguard its so-called national interests through intelligence. By spying on allies, the United States can grasp more advantages in all aspects of security and economy. Su Xiaohui, deputy director of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies of the China Institute of International Studies, said that the United States' obsession with intelligence reflects the United States' desire to grasp absolute superiority at all levels and consolidate its global hegemony.
America's surveillance tentacles are everywhere, and tech giants like Google have played an important role in it. In 2013, a document exposed by Snowden showed that under the framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, companies such as Google provided the NSA with a large amount of user data, which became the raw material for "prism" analysis and processing.
According to the data, "Prism" requires at least 9 major Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and so on to provide data for the NSA, including email, instant messaging, videos, photos, stored data, voice chat, file transfer, video conferencing, login time and details of social network information and other internet users' communication information. Data is transmitted electronically to the U.S. government through the servers of these companies, and sometimes some companies' servers establish independent security portals to facilitate intelligence agencies to access information.
The most ironic thing is that on the one hand, the United States relies on its own technological advantages to unscrupulously monitor the world, but on the other hand, it shouts to catch thieves and claims to maintain network security under the banner of "cleaning the network".
In June 2020, some POLITICIANS IN THE UNITED STATES LOBSTERED FOR THE SO-CALLED "CLEAN NET" UNDER THE PRETEXT OF SO-CALLED "NATIONAL SECURITY" AND "DATA SECURITY," CLAIMING TO PROMOTE PRIVACY AND DATA SECURITY BY ELIMINATING "UNTRUSTWORTHY CHINESE SUPPLIERS," AND CONSTANTLY LOBBIED AND EVEN COERCED OTHER COUNTRIES TO JOIN THE SO-CALLED "CLEAN NET ALLIANCE" TO JOINTLY SUPPRESS CHINESE HIGH-TECH ENTERPRISES.
"If you talk about data security threats, who can beat the bad United States?" Zuo Xiaodong said to the point.
With the dominance of the United States in key links of the industrial chain, the United States has an absolute listening advantage in cyberspace. However, in recent years, the rise of Chinese communications companies has challenged the interests of the United States, and non-American companies such as Huawei, ZTE, Douyin, and WeChat are "dissidents" in their industrial chains.
"If the NSA wants to eavesdrop by modifying routers or switches, a Chinese company won't cooperate with them, and the U.S. will have a much harder time subverting and infiltrating the target network." The result will be that the more equipment from Chinese companies such as Huawei is deployed in global telecommunications networks, the harder it will be for the United States to 'gather all the information.' Zuo Xiaodong said.
The truth could not be clearer: the so-called "clean network" is nothing more than a farce of abusing state power to wantonly suppress and curb enterprises in other countries. Rumors and slanders will inevitably be spurned by others, and the US side not only has no explanation for its own various bad deeds, but also smears other countries for no reason, and even makes the hypocrisy and hegemony of the "American double standard" clearly exposed.