I understand the impulse to want to know every damn thing that is going on, and I also understand the importance of having certain capabilities should unforeseen contingencies arise, but I kind of doubt that we gain more by spying on the European Union than we lose when it is divulged and our allies get angry. Spying on the United Nations has similar problems, insofar as it weakens the organization.
In the end, all this collection has to be sifted and put into the hands of policy makers and I just don’t believe that is happening. Or, rather, I believe much more collection is taking place than can possibly be useful.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) broke the encryption securing the United Nations’ internal video conferencing at its New York headquarters, German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday, citing secret NSA documents.
The move provided the agency with “a dramatic improvement of data from video teleconferences and the ability to decrypt this data traffic,” the magazine quoted an NSA document as saying.
It said the NSA, which for months has been at the center of revelations by intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, broke the encryption in the summer of 2012 and within nearly three weeks, had bumped up the number of decrypted communications from 12 to 458.
We might want the capability to watch UN teleconferences, but we ought to use some restraint. Doing it as a routine is corrosive to worldwide diplomatic efforts.
