by Wayne Madsen
FOR AT LEAST HALF A CENTURY, THE US HAS BEEN
INTERCEPTING AND DECRYPTING THE TOP SECRET
DOCUMENTS OF MOST OF THE WORLD'S GOVERNMENTS
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After Hans Buehler was arrested in Iran on
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SWISS CHEESE NEUTRALITY Although the Iranians may have been technically wrong about Buehler's complicity in the massive deception, they were right that something was rotten at Crypto AG. And even before the firing of Hans Buehler, some of Cypto's engineers were |
Apparently not. A document released in 1995 by Britain's Public Records Office indicates that Switzerland and nato concluded a secret deal in 1956. The |
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Boris Hagelin and one of his early cryptographic machines.
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CRYPTO HUDDLE Once the cipher machines were rigged to include the secret decryption key, the BND and NSA codebreakers could use the transmitted key to read any message sent by Crypto AG's 120 country customers. One previous Crypto AG employee |
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Crypto engineer Juerg Spoerndli, who was responsible for designing the firm's encryption equipment, had heard from older engineers about the visits in earlier years by mysterious Americans. He concluded that NSA was ordering the design changes through German intermediaries. He confirmed the manipulation and admitted that in the late 1970s, he was "ordered to change algorithms under mysterious circumstances"25 to weaken his cipher units. PRIVACY? HA! Although the Buehler incident lent credence to the NSA Trojan Horse theory, it was not the first time that suspicions were |
Radomes ar NSA listening station, Menwith Hill, England.
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In this official NSA PR photo, the agency intercepts a message from above.
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If it turns out that the extent of communications interception is as broad as suspected, the international implications are profound. Every country in the world that used secure communications is potentially affected. Some have sought to abandon Crypto AG, but found their options limited. The US had at times required purchase of specific machines as a condition for favors. Pakistan was allegedly granted American military credits with only one provision, that it buy its encryption equipment from Crypto AG. Additionally, "It is not unheard of for NSA to offer preferential export treatment to a |
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See also: Exposing the Global Surveillance System about Project ECHELON Networking with Spooks about control over the internet domain name system Big Brother Goes Hi Tech about loss of privacy in the information age The Secret FISA Court: Rubberstamping on Rights about the loss of legal protections from covert surveillance. |
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