[Cryptography] Crypto AG: US Spies Kept Quiet on Assassinations

[John Young]

https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2020/0315.html#cg15


More on Crypto AG

<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/more_on_crypto_.html>[2020.03.06] 
One follow-on to the story of 
<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/crypto_ag_was_o.html>Crypto 
AG being owned by the CIA: 
<https://www.npr.org/2020/03/05/812499752/uncovering-the-cias-audacious-operation-that-gave-them-access-to-state-secrets>this 
interview with a Washington Post reporter. The whole thing is worth 
reading or listening to, but I was struck by these two quotes at the end:

...in South America, for instance, many of the governments that were 
using Crypto machines were engaged in assassination campaigns. 
Thousands of people were being disappeared, killed. And I mean, 
they're using Crypto machines, which suggests that the United States 
intelligence had a lot of insight into what was happening. And it's 
hard to look back at that history now and see a lot of evidence of 
the United States going to any real effort to stop it or at least or 
even expose it.

[...]

To me, the history of the Crypto operation helps to explain how U.S. 
spy agencies became accustomed to, if not addicted to, global 
surveillance. This program went on for more than 50 years, monitoring 
the communications of more than 100 countries. I mean, the United 
States came to expect that kind of penetration, that kind of global 
surveillance capability. And as Crypto became less able to deliver 
it, the United States turned to other ways to replace that. And the 
Snowden documents tell us a lot about how they did that.