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

[Henry Baker]

At 02:22 AM 3/15/2020, John Young wrote:
>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.

This is not novel in the spying world.  Bletchley Park intercepted Nazi messages
about the Holocaust killings, but the Brits felt that keeping the code-breaking
secret was worth the cost.

Unfortunately, there was enough anti-semitism in both Britain and the U.S., that
neither country wanted WWII to be motivated as a rescue of the Jews.  FDR himself
wrote that he didn't want his "New Deal" to be seen as the "Jew Deal".

It will be up to historians -- once they have all the information declassified --
to sort out all of these things and put them into some kind of perspective.

Much of WWII 'history' is still disinformation/mythology which needs to be
re-examined with the full knowledge of extensive code-breaking.  For example,
General Montgomery had to be lauded as a 'genius' to cover up the fact that
he had almost real-time intelligence decoded from Rommel's reports.  I'm
sure that this branding of Montgomery must have made Eisenhower (and probably
even Churchill) privately furious, but it was necessary to keep up appearances.