Tuesday, February 11, 2020

CIA secretly owned world's top encryption supplier, read enemy and ally messages for decades

Ed.'s note: No kidding? Some of us knew this when the internet was first given to the plebeian slave class. Are you free now?

Operation RUBICON: The secret purchase of Crypto AG by BND and CIA
________

Source: boingboing


By XENI JARDIN | TUE, FEB 11, 2020

For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. That company was secretly run by the CIA, which had the ability to read all those communications for decades.

Greg Miller at the Washington Post:
The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.

The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.

But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.

The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project.
Read more:

'The intelligence coup of the century'

[washingtonpost.com, Greg Miller Feb. 11, 2020, via techmeme, image modified from a photograph by theglobalpanorama CC BY-SA 2.0 ]

Please go to boingboing to read the entire article and tweets.
________


Source: AFP

US, German spies plundered global secrets via Swiss encryption firm: report

AFP | February 11, 2020

US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company, Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media reported Tuesday.

© SAUL LOEB The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seal displayed in the lobby of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia

The Swiss company was a top supplier of devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries from after World War II to the beginning of this century, including Iran, South American governments, and India and Pakistan.

Unknown to those governments, Crypto was secretly owned by the US Central Intelligence Agency together with Germany's BND Federal Intelligence Service.

Together they rigged Crypto's equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government's messages, according to reports by the Washington Post, German television ZTE and Swiss state media SRF.

- 'Coup of the century' -

Citing a classified internal CIA history of what was originally called operation "Thesaurus" and later "Rubicon," the reports said that in the 1980s the harvest from the Crypto machines supplied roughly 40 percent of all the foreign communications US codebreakers processed for intelligence.

© JOHN MACDOUGALL Germany's BND Federal Intelligence Service once was part owner with the CIA in a leading supplier of encryption equipment to governments around the world

Meanwhile, the company took in millions of dollars in profits that went to the CIA and BND.

"It was the intelligence coup of the century," the history says, according to the Washington Post.

"Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries."

Please go to AFP to read the entire article.
________


Here is the real problem Americans have to contend with: getting sold out by mercenary computer engineer geeks.

COMPLICIT ENCRYPTION GEEKS ENABLE THE AMERICAN SPY STATE


What were these mercenary geek computer engineers doing when this went down?

DOJ Charges 4 Chinese Military Hackers In Equifax Breach


This is from Wikipedia but it's a start...located in Switzerland.

Crypto AG

For decades, US and Germany owned Swiss crypto company used by 120 countries








1 comment:

  1. Well it's known that the usa and germany where always partners after ww11, just follow the gold, Morgan, Rockafella, Rothchild, they l sold their people out, thus the name Holocaust, each of these Upstanding Names with other and the usa knew the profit margins at the expense of their own people.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Looking into our circumstances...