(1) Obama ordered NSA to spy on Israel during Iran negotiations (2) US has a national interest in stopping the Israel lobby; Obama approved the wiretaps (3) NSA tapped Communications between Netanyahu and Congress (4) Netanyahu was telling American-Jewish groups to get Congress to sabotage the Iran Deal (5) Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence (6) Is America is still an ally of Israel? Is Israel still an ally of America? (1) Obama ordered NSA to spy on Israel during Iran negotiations http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-congress-1451425210 U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress NSA’s targeting of Israeli leaders swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers By Adam Entous and Danny Yadron The Wall Street Journal Dec. 29, 2015 4:40 p.m. ET President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned the reach of long-secret U.S. surveillance programs. But behind the scenes, the White House decided to keep certain allies under close watch, current and former U.S. officials said. Topping the list was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill. The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears… that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress. (2) US has a national interest in stopping the Israel lobby; Obama approved the wiretaps http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-its-lobby-lose-the-iran-deal-all-over-again-in-news-of-damning-wiretaps/5498714?print=1 Israel and Its Lobby Lose the Iran Deal All over Again, in News of Damning Wiretaps By James North and Philip Weiss Mondoweiss 1 December 2015 Global Research, January 01, 2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-its-lobby-lose-the-iran-deal-all-over-again-in-news-of-damning-wiretaps/5498714 You’d think that there would be widespread outrage over the story everyone’s talking about today, the Wall Street Journal scoop that the Obama administration spied on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during the Iran Deal negotiations so as to counter his efforts to sink it. The wiretaps reveal that Israeli officials were up to their necks in the US political process; they "coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts." The president approved the wiretaps. Privately, Mr. Obama maintained the monitoring of Mr. Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a "compelling national security purpose," according to current and former U.S. officials. That’s right; there’s a compelling national interest in stopping the Israel lobby. Many have said that President Obama lacks spine? Well, it sure looks like the leak to reporters Adam Entous and Danny Yadron came from the administration, and it’s hard to believe that a leak of this magnitude was not approved by the president. Just when the Israel lobby thought that it was starting to get back to business as usual, the Obama administration has reminded them that something has fundamentally changed in the U.S.-Israel relationship. Not only did we beat the lobby and Israel on the Iran Deal, but: we’re exposing your tactics, and patriotic Americans are going to be very upset by what they see. Remember that Obama in his highlight moment of the Iran Deal told Americans it would be an "abrogation of my constitutional duty" to defer to Israel’s interests on the Iran Deal. You’d think it would be a scandal that the Israeli PM was intriguing with Republicans — and surely some Democrats– in the way the WSJ has documented; but instead the official reaction is likely to be how outrageous it was for Obama and the NSA to be listening in on the supposed only democracy in the Middle East. Some of the details from the article: The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill. The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an "Oh-s— moment," one senior U.S. official said — that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress… White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign… Much of the article substantiates the allegations swirling at the time of the deal, that Netanyahu was getting inside information on the secret negotiations. The eavesdropping revealed to the White House: How Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations — learned through Israeli spying operations — to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts. The notorious Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer was caught on the tapes: Mr. Dermer was described as coaching unnamed U.S. organizations — which officials could tell from the context were Jewish-American groups — on lines of argument to use with lawmakers, and Israeli officials were reported pressing lawmakers to oppose the deal… Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: "How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take?" Again, no names of US legislators, but this article contains the explicit threat that Israel could expose individuals down the road. The practice is sure to anger Americans and drive an even deeper wedge into the Jewish community over the role of the lobby. Patriotic Jewish Americans are going to be embarrassed yet again by the extent to which Israel tries to subvert our government, using American Jewish friends to do so. And many will walk away from the lobby over this kind of business. The large wavering middle of pro-Israel forces is going to be set back. J Street made the right call on the Iran Deal (reluctantly, I’ve heard) but it will reap a dividend. Notre Dame professor Michael Desch’s interpretation: "The lobby and Congress will no doubt try to spin it as more evidence of Obama’s anti-Israel animus. But the story constitutes powerful evidence of 1) divergence of US and Israeli interests on important issues like Iran and 2) close coordination of the lobby and Government of Israel in trying to influence US domestic politics." Scott Horton refers to the last big eavesdropping scandal, when then-congresswoman Jane Harman promised a suspected Israeli agent that she would attempt to stop a federal case against American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers in exchange for that agent’s political influence in getting her a committee chair. Jeff Stein reported the story: Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington. Harman was recorded saying she would "waddle into" the AIPAC case "if you think it’ll make a difference," according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript. In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win. The suspected Israeli agent was inferred (it was the opinion of Josh Marshall and Ron Kampeas) to be Haim Saban, the giant contributor to the Democratic Party. So a "suspected Israeli agent" is also a giant Democratic funder with influence over the Congress? We’re headed for a showdown between the lobby and the grassroots, inside the Democratic Party. And praise to the Obama administration, who we guess is fueling the controversy out of "compelling national" interest. (3) NSA tapped Communications between Netanyahu and Congress http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-nsa-israel-scandal-who-cares-14771 The NSA-Israel Scandal: Who Cares? Communications between Benjamin Netanyahu and Congress were fair game for the NSA. Daniel R. DePetris December 31, 2015 Adam Entous and Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal had Facebook, Twitter and every other social media platform abuzz last night when they published their exclusive December 29 piece, entitled "U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress." The account, based on interviews with more than two dozen former and current administration and intelligence officials, outlines the length to which the National Security Agency—under explicit orders from policymakers in the Obama administration—kept tabs on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iran. As Entous and Yadron report, the Obama administration made the decision to allow the NSA to continue intercepting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s communications, in a program that was apparently designed to uncover precisely what the premier’s thoughts were about the highly sensitive and delicate Iran-P5+1 diplomatic process. Contacts between Netanyahu and his senior advisors were fair game for NSA analysts to sweep up, which is standard business for the men and women who work in the massive Fort Meade complex. In the context of that work, however, the NSA realized that some of the conversations they were intercepting were between senior Israeli officials and members of Congress who were being lobbied by Netanyahu’s administration to vote against the Iran nuclear deal when the accord came up for a vote. From the story: "The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill. "The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears… that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress." No one can blame NSA officials for covering their tracks and worrying amongst themselves that they would be accused by members of Congress for spying on the American people’s elected representatives. Indeed, if Entous and Yadros’ story had gotten out during the height of the Edward Snowden disclosures, there would be more than a distinct possibility of the head of the NSA and the Director of National Intelligence being summoned to Capitol Hill for an angry and tense multi-hour grilling. And yet, when one takes a step back and looks past the initial hype of the Wall Street Journal article, there is nothing at all unusual between what the Obama administration authorized and the program that the NSA carried out. Yes, Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East and yes, the Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies are often in synch on numerous national security issues. But from where President Obama was sitting, permitting the NSA to intercept Netanyahu’s communications was both legal under U.S. law and strategically wise. Just because some U.S. lawmakers happened to be included in the reports sent back to the president does not change these three fundamental facts. 1. It was no secret to President Obama that Prime Minister Netanyahu was deeply unreceptive to Washington’s plan of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue diplomatically. If Obama viewed Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his entourage as rational human beings that would be willing to strike an agreement if the right mix of pressure and concessions were offered, Netanyahu considered the entire enterprise a waste of precious time—time that could otherwise be used to lay the groundwork for even an even more severe package of international economic sanctions to or a preemptive military operation to get Tehran to comply. For Netanyahu, any enrichment capability inside Iran was a non-starter for his government, and an inspection and verification regime that would only last ten to fifteen years was an indirect admission from the international community that Iran would eventually be able to acquire a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu wasn’t shy about expressing his reservations and outright opposition to the diplomacy that the U.S. and the P5+1 were conducting. In fact, he used every appearance when interviewed on U.S. television to condemn the concessions that the administration was offering, and scoffed at the very idea that a settlement should result in a domestic enrichment program for Iran. Whether it was bashing the interim nuclear agreement as an "historic mistake" immediately after it was signed or admitting freely on Meet the Press that he was "trying to kill a bad deal," Netanyahu’s objective as it concerned Iran’s nuclear program was completely contrary to U.S. policy. It’s only natural, indeed expected, for the United States to leverage its intelligence resources to defend an investment that the country was working to achieve over three years time. The surest way to defend an investment is to determine what other players are saying or doing. This is exactly what the administration chose to do. (4) Netanyahu was telling American-Jewish groups to get Congress to sabotage the Iran Deal https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/spying-on-congress-and-israel-nsa-cheerleaders-discover-value-of-privacy-only-when-their-own-is-violated/ Spying on Congress and Israel: NSA Cheerleaders Discover Value of Privacy Only When Their Own Is Violated 2015-12-30T19:02:52+00:00 Glenn Greenwald The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the NSA under President Obama targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aides for surveillance. In the process, the agency ended up eavesdropping on "the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups" about how to sabotage the Iran Deal. All sorts of people who spent many years cheering for and defending the NSA and its programs of mass surveillance are suddenly indignant now that they know the eavesdropping included them and their American and Israeli friends rather than just ordinary people. The long-time GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and unyielding NSA defender Pete Hoekstra last night was truly indignant to learn of this surveillance: In January 2014, I debated Rep. Hoekstra about NSA spying and he could not have been more mocking and dismissive of the privacy concerns I was invoking. "Spying is a matter of fact," he scoffed. As Andrew Krietz, the journalist who covered that debate, reported, Hoekstra "laughs at foreign governments who are shocked they’ve been spied on because they, too, gather information" — referring to anger from German and Brazilian leaders. As TechDirt noted, "Hoekstra attacked a bill called the RESTORE Act, that would have granted a tiny bit more oversight over situations where (you guessed it) the NSA was collecting information on Americans." But all that, of course, was before Hoekstra knew that he and his Israeli friends were swept up in the spying of which he was so fond. Now that he knows that it is his privacy and those of his comrades that has been invaded, he is no longer cavalier about it. In fact, he’s so furious that this long-time NSA cheerleader is actually calling for the criminal prosecution of the NSA and Obama officials for the crime of spying on him and his friends. This pattern — whereby political officials who are vehement supporters of the Surveillance State transform overnight into crusading privacy advocates once they learn that they themselves have been spied on — is one that has repeated itself over and over. It has been seen many times as part of the Snowden revelations, but also well before that. In 2005, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration ordered the NSA to spy on the telephone calls of Americans without the warrants required by law, and the paper ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize for doing so. The politician who did more than anyone to suffocate that scandal and ensure there were no consequences was then-Congresswoman Jane Harman, the ranking Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee. In the wake of that NSA scandal, Harman went on every TV show she could find and categorically defended Bush’s warrantless NSA program as "both legal and necessary," as well as "essential to U.S. national security." Worse, she railed against the "despicable" whistleblower (Thomas Tamm) who disclosed this crime and even suggested that the newspaper that reported it should have been criminally investigated (but not, of course, the lawbreaking government officials who ordered the spying). Because she was the leading House Democrat on the issue of the NSA, her steadfast support for the Bush/Cheney secret warrantless surveillance program and the NSA generally created the impression that support for this program was bipartisan. But in 2009 — a mere four years later — Jane Harman did a 180-degree reversal. That’s because it was revealed that her own private conversations had been eavesdropped on by the NSA. Specifically, CQ’s Jeff Stein reported that an NSA wiretap caught Harman "telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage charges against two officials of American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in exchange for the agent’s agreement to lobby Nancy Pelosi to name Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee." Harman vehemently denied that she sought this quid pro quo, but she was so furious that she herself(rather than just ordinary citizens) had been eavesdropped on by the NSA that — just like Pete Hoekstra did yesterday — she transformed overnight into an aggressive and eloquent defender of privacy rights, and demanded investigations of the spying agency that for so long she had defended:  I call it an abuse of power in the letter I wrote [Attorney General Eric Holder] this morning. … I’m just very disappointed that my country — I’m an American citizen just like you are — could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I’m one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, and I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I’m thinking about others who have no bully pulpit, who may not be aware, as I was not, that someone is listening in on their conversations, and they’re innocent Americans. The stalwart defender of NSA spying learned that her own conversations had been monitored and she instantly began sounding like an ACLU lawyer, or Edward Snowden. Isn’t that amazing? The same thing happened when Dianne Feinstein — one of the few members of Congress who could compete with Hoekstra and Harman for the title of Most Subservient Defender of the Intelligence Community ("I can honestly say I don’t know a bigger booster of the CIA than Senator Feinstein," said her colleague Sen. Martin Heinrich) — learned in 2014 that she and her torture-investigating Senate Committee had been spied on by the CIA. Feinstein — who, until then, had never met an NSA mass surveillance program she didn’t adore — was utterly filled with rage over this discovery, arguing that "the CIA’s search of the staff’s computers might well have violated … the Fourth Amendment." The Fourth Amendment! She further pronounced that she had "grave concerns" that the CIA snooping may also have "violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution." During the Snowden reporting, it was common to see foreign governments react with indifference — until they learned that they themselves, rather than just their unnotable subjects, were subject to spying. The first reports we did in both Germany and Brazil were about mass surveillance aimed at hundreds of millions of innocent people in those countries’ populations, and both the Merkel and Rousseff governments reacted with the most cursory, vacant objections: It was obvious they really couldn’t have cared less. But when both leaders discovered that they had been personally targeted, that was when real outrage poured forth, and serious damage to diplomatic relations with the U.S. was inflicted. So now, with yesterday’s WSJ report, we witness the tawdry spectacle of large numbers of people who for years were fine with, responsible for, and even giddy about NSA mass surveillance suddenly objecting. Now they’ve learned that they themselves, or the officials of the foreign country they most love, have been caught up in this surveillance dragnet, and they can hardly contain their indignation. Overnight, privacy is of the highest value because now it’s their privacy, rather than just yours, that is invaded. What happened to all the dismissive lectures about how if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide? Is that still applicable? Or is it that these members of the U.S. Congress who conspired with Netanyahu and AIPAC over how to sabotage the U.S. government’s Iran Deal feel they did do something wrong and are angry about having been monitored for that reason? I’ve always argued that on the spectrum of spying stories, revelations about targeting foreign leaders is the least important, since that is the most justifiable type of espionage. Whether the U.S. should be surveilling the private conversations of officials of allied democracies is certainly worth debating, but, as I argued in my 2014 book, those "revelations … are less significant than the agency’s warrantless mass surveillance of whole populations" since "countries have spied on heads of state for centuries, including allies." But here, the NSA did not merely listen to the conversations of Netanyahu and his top aides, but also members of the U.S. Congress as they spoke with him. And not for the first time: "In one previously undisclosed episode, the NSA tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant," the New York Times reported in 2009. The NSA justifies such warrantless eavesdropping on Americans as "incidental collection." That is the term used when it spies on the conversations of American citizens without warrants, but claims those Americans weren’t "targeted," but rather just so happened to be speaking to one of the agency’s foreign targets (warrants are needed only to target U.S. persons, not foreign nationals outside of the U.S.). This claim of "incidental collection" has always been deceitful, designed to mask the fact that the NSA does indeed frequently spy on the conversations of American citizens without warrants of any kind. Indeed, as I detailed here, the 2008 FISA law enacted by Congress had as one of its principal, explicit purposes allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans’ conversations without warrants of any kind. "The principal purpose of the 2008 law was to make it possible for the government to collect Americans’ international communications — and to collect those communications without reference to whether any party to those communications was doing anything illegal," the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer said. "And a lot of the government’s advocacy is meant to obscure this fact, but it’s a crucial one: The government doesn’t need to ‘target’ Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications." Whatever one’s views on that might be — i.e., even if you’re someone who is convinced that there’s nothing wrong with the NSA eavesdropping on the private communications even of American citizens, even members of Congress, without warrants — this sudden, self-interested embrace of the value of privacy should be revolting indeed. Warrantless eavesdropping on people who have done nothing wrong — the largest system of suspicionless mass surveillance ever created — is inherently abusive and unjustified, and one shouldn’t need a report that this was done to the Benjamin Netanyahus and Pete Hoekstras of the world to realize that. (5) Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence https://theintercept.com/2016/01/28/israeli-drone-feeds-hacked-by-british-and-american-intelligence/ Cora Currier, Henrik Moltke Jan. 29 2016, 1:08 p.m. AMERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world. Under a classified program code-named "Anarchist," the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. GCHQ files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include a series of "Anarchist snapshots" — thumbnail images from videos recorded by drone cameras. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft. In essence, U.S. and British agencies stole a bird’s-eye view from the drones. See hacked images from Israel’s drone fleet. Several of the snapshots, a subset collected in 2009 and 2010, appear to show drones carrying missiles. Although they are not clear enough to be conclusive, the images offer rare visual evidence to support reports that Israel flies attack drones — an open secret that the Israeli government won’t acknowledge. "There’s a good chance that we are looking at the first images of an armed Israeli drone in the public domain," said Chris Woods, author of Sudden Justice, a history of drone warfare. "They’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to suppress information on weaponized drones." The Intercept is publishing a selection of the drone snapshots in an accompanying article. Additionally, in 2012, a GCHQ analyst reported "regular collects of Heron TP carrying weapons," referring to a giant drone made by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, known as IAI. Anarchist operated from a Royal Air Force installation in the Troodos Mountains, near Mount Olympus, the highest point on Cyprus. The Troodos site "has long been regarded as a ‘Jewel in the Crown’ by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North Africa, and Turkey," according to an article from GCHQ’s internal wiki. Last August, The Intercept published a portion of a GCHQ document that revealed that NSA and GCHQ tracked weapons signals from Troodos, and earlier reporting on the Snowden documents indicated that the NSA targeted Israeli drones and an Israeli missile system for tracking, but the details of the operations have not been previously disclosed. "This access is indispensable for maintaining an understanding of Israeli military training and operations and thus an insight to possible future developments in the region," a GCHQ report from 2008 enthused. "In times of crisis this access is critical and one of the only avenues to provide up to the minute information and support to U.S. and Allied operations in the area." GCHQ documents state that analysts first collected encrypted video signals at Troodos in 1998, and also describe efforts against drones used by Syria and by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A 2009 document notes that "no tip-off exists for Hezbollah UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] activity;" apparently the spies had few signals that they were sure were associated with Hezbollah’s drone program. Another report recounts that Troodos had captured video from an Iranian-made drone flying out of a Syrian air force base in March 2012, resulting in "presidential interest in further samples of the Regime launching attacks upon the general populous [sic]," presumably referring to U.S. President Barack Obama, whose administration had first called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down the year before, a few months after his regime began a crackdown on Arab Spring protests. Indeed, also in March 2012, unnamed U.S. officials told the press that Assad had been supplied with Iranian drones. But much of Anarchist’s focus was on Israel. The drone-watching documented in the GCHQ files covered periods of Israeli military offensives in Palestine, and also indicates that the intelligence agencies monitored drones for a potential strike against Iran. The documents highlight the conflicted relationship between the United States and Israel and U.S. concerns about Israel’s potentially destabilizing actions in the region. The two nations are close counterterrorism partners, and have a memorandum of understanding, dating back to 2009, that allows Israel access to raw communications data collected by the NSA. Yet they are nonetheless constantly engaged in a game of spy versus spy. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that, although President Obama had pledged to stop spying on friendly heads of state, the White House carved out an exception for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials. Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and NSA, told the Journal that the intelligence relationship with Israel was "the most combustible mixture of intimacy and caution that we have." GCHQ and the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment. The NSA acknowledged receipt of an inquiry but did not respond to questions by the time of publication. On January 3, 2008, as Israel launched airstrikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza, U.S. and British spies had a virtual seat in the cockpit. Satellite surveillance operators at Menwith Hill, an important NSA site in England, had been tasked with looking at drones as the Israeli military stepped up attacks in Gaza in response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants, according to a 2008 year-end summary from GCHQ. In all, Menwith Hill gathered over 20 separate drone videos by intercepting signals traveling between Israeli drones and orbiting satellites. The NSA’s internal newsletter, SIDToday, enthusiastically reported the effort, noting that on January 3, analysts had also "collected video for the first time from the cockpit of an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jet," which "showed a target on the ground being tracked." Menwith Hill had worked "closely with a GCHQ site in Cyprus for tip-offs." In July 2008, GCHQ ordered Anarchist technicians to look for drones flying over a number of "areas of interest," including the Golan Heights (a region of southwest Syria seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War), the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria. "Due to the political situation of the region there is a requirement for Israeli UAV operations in certain areas to be intercepted and exploited so that assessments can be made on what possible actions maybe [sic] taking place," read the request, dated July 29, 2008. The memo asked for analysts to record and send video to GCHQ, along with ground plots showing where the drones had flown, and information about the signal. Anarchist operators were able to snag the feeds of several different types of Israeli drones, according to an Intercept analysis of the snapshots and presentations from GCHQ summarizing Troodos achievements. The 20 snapshots identified by The Intercept in GCHQ files include several video stills clearly taken from Israeli drones, dating between February 2009 and June 2010. According to one GCHQ presentation, technicians first collected signals from a Heron TP in February 2009. Intercepted images indicate that they also picked up video from other models and configurations of the Heron, and from the IAI Searcher drone. Another GCHQ presentation shows that by 2009, technicians had tapped into data from Hermes drones, manufactured by the Israeli company Elbit systems. In January 2010, Troodos reported that in the previous six months they had collected data from the Aerostar tactical drone and the Orbiter mini-drone, both made by the Israeli company Aeronautics. In several snapshots of the Heron TP, there are objects under the wings that appear to be mounts for missiles or for other equipment such as sensors. In one image, from January 2010, a missile-shaped object is clearly visible on the left wing, while the mount on the right appears to be missing its load. The Heron TP, which the Jerusalem Post described as "the drone that can reach Iran," has an 85-foot wingspan — larger than that of the Reaper, the largest armed drone flown by the United States Air Force — and can carry a 1-ton payload. Israel recently reached an agreement to sell armed versions of the TP to India. Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher on arms transfers with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told The Intercept that the items visible under the wings in the snapshots "appear to have the kind of fins such missiles have," but noted that "there could be other payloads that could be fitted in the same position." Chris Woods, the drone history author, said that they could be sensor pods for intelligence gathering. It has been widely reported that Israel launches attacks from the smaller Hermes 450s, although the GCHQ documents do not specify whether the Hermes drones recorded at Troodos were armed. Reports surfaced of Israel launching missiles from drones in Gaza as far back as 2004, and more than a decade later, drones have become a fact of life for residents. Chris Cobb-Smith, a former British army officer who has investigated drone strikes in Gaza for human rights groups, said that "during periods of tension, you can seldom go outside without the buzz of drones overhead." A Gaza City bar owner complained to the Washington Post in 2011 that drone patrols often interfered with his satellite TV signals. In 2014, the London Telegraph reported that 65 percent of Israel’s air combat operations were conducted by drones. Yotam Feldman, an Israeli filmmaker who made a documentary about Israel’s drone industry for Al Jazeera last year, said that he has been told the figure is even higher. During Operation Cast Lead, a three-week Israeli offensive that began in December 2008, Human Rights Watch reported dozens of Palestinian civilian deaths from drone strikes. In diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, an Israeli commander told a U.S. State Department official that a "UAV fired two missiles" against militant operatives outside a mosque, and that shrapnel from the strike hit civilians. Yet the Israeli government still maintains an official stance of secrecy (a tactic akin to the United States’ refusal to formally acknowledge its drone program until 2013, despite years of reporting and commentary on it). In sanctioned interviews, Israeli military personnel are careful to describe the drones they fly as being used for surveillance and marking targets for manned warplanes to strike. Aviation and defense bloggers are left speculating about blurred photos and industry rumors about how drones might be equipped with missiles. The Israeli media is subject to a strict censorship regime, and the military does not allow mention of armed Israeli drones, unless quoting foreign sources. "Releasing full details about which munitions were used and how they were used can raise many other questions about these attacks — about the targets, about what the army calls collateral damage, about the command chain," said Feldman, the Israeli filmmaker. "I think it is really the Israeli military throwing sand in the eyes of outside observers on Israeli strikes." The Anarchist images don’t show any drone strikes in action. It is not always clear from the images precisely where the drones were located, and it is thus impossible to tie the intercepts to specific attacks. A note on January 12, 2009, in the midst of Cast Lead, directs technicians "with the current situation … to keep a watch and report on where the majority of UAV flights are being conducted." But the snapshots identified by The Intercept date from after Israel withdrew from Gaza in January 2009. In several cases, the images were taken on the same day or just before reported Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, which continued after the ceasefire. For instance, on August 25, 2009, after months of relative quiet in the border area between Gaza and Egypt, Israel bombed a tunnel on the border, killing three Palestinians and wounding seven. That same day, Anarchist technicians at Troodos captured an Israeli drone signal. Decoding the Drone Drones communicate with their controllers on the ground via satellite; the transmission to the home station is known as the "downlink." The antennas at Troodos grabbed that downlink by finding the right frequency for each drone. Drone feeds are vulnerable to interception not just from the NSA — even cheap, commercially available equipment can be used to get the downlink. In a 2009 article in Wired, a U.S. military official likened such interception to "criminals using radio scanners to pick up police communications." Indeed, in 2009, U.S. forces in Iraq discovered laptops with video from Predator drones in the hands of insurgents. It couldn’t have come as a total surprise — military officials had noted the vulnerability as far back as 1999, and a 2005 CIA report stated that one of Saddam Hussein’s technicians had likely "located and downloaded … unencrypted satellite feed from U.S. military UAVs." In 1997, Hezbollah killed 12 Israeli commandos in an ambush in Lebanon. It emerged years later that Hezbollah had plotted the ambush after intercepting unencrypted drone video. The revelation caused a scandal, and led the Israeli military and drone industry to invest "significant efforts to encrypt the transmission of UAVs to their ground bases," said Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist with the paper Yedioth Ahronoth, who is currently writing a book on Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad. "The broadcast was supposed to be completely secure," said Bergman. "If the NSA and GCHQ were able to crack that, it would come as a big surprise, and might well lead to the launch of an inquiry." Israel appears to have since expanded encryption across its drone fleet, and many of the feeds grabbed by the Troodos analysts were encrypted or scrambled, showing up like the black-and-white snow on a TV screen. According to GCHQ Anarchist training manuals from 2008, analysts took snapshots of live signals and would process them for "poor quality signals, or for scrambled video." The manuals stated that video feeds were scrambled using a method similar to that used to protect the signals of subscriber-only TV channels. Analysts decoded the images using open-source code "freely available on the internet" — a program known as AntiSky. The attack reconstructed the image by brute force, allowing intelligence agents to crack the encryption without knowing the algorithm that had been used to scramble the video. Even when fully decoded, the images are of varying quality, often grainy, and often showing nothing but the sky or sun or the drone’s own landing gear nearing the runway. The aim of the snapshots seemed to be simply to identify which signals belonged with which aircraft, weapon, or radar, and to demonstrate that the intelligence agencies had the capability to grab such snapshots if needed. "The computing power needed to descramble the images in near real time is considerable," the Anarchist manual notes, but "it is still possible to descramble individual frames to determine the image content without too much effort." The GCHQ documents describe the mission against Israeli drones in broad terms. An "outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas" occasioned the intelligence agency’s interest, and so did tension with Tehran. In reporting on flights of an armed Heron TP, a Troodos employee noted that "our ability to collect and track and report this activity is important for the initial detection and tip-off for any potential pre-emptive or retaliatory strike against Iran." A 2008 Anarchist memo also notes that "interest by the weapons community in Israeli UAV’s [sic] remains high," because Israel "provide[s] many countries with their UAV’s" and is "developing large UAV’s capable of being deployed for a variety of purposes." Another, also from 2008, describes the hunt to confirm whether a specific type of radar "has been mounted on any UAV platforms." A GCHQ presentation listing "successes in 2009" at Troodos includes "UAV development Israel/India." Israel leads the world in drone exports, and capabilities Israel developed would soon be passed to other countries. Its companies aggressively market the potential attack capabilities of their aircraft. In September, India made arrangements to buy 10 armed Heron TPs. This month, Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the country would lease several TPs, citing the aircraft’s attack capabilities. "This will be the standard in the future," von der Leyen said. By most accounts, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan are the only countries known to have used drones for deadly attacks. But dozens of countries are believed to be developing armed drones, so that club likely won’t stay small for long. Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence (6) Is America is still an ally of Israel? Is Israel still an ally of America? http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/israel-us-uk-spy-hack-encryption-system-drones-idf-missiles.html Is the US a threat to Israel? US efforts to crack the Israeli drone encryption system have caused some to question whether or not America is still an ally of Israel. Author Ben Caspit Posted February 1, 2016 Translator Sandy Bloom The Intercept published Jan. 29 information about Operation Anarchist, an extensive spying initiative of the United States and the United Kingdom against Israel’s covert aerial activities. The article generated an enormous storm in Israel’s security circles and also in its highest political echelons. According to the report that was drawn from Edward Snowden’s documents, the national wiretapping services of both the United States and the United Kingdom — the National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters, respectively — set up secret spying facilities atop Cyprus’ Troodos Mountains. For 18 years, they have been tracking Israeli activities of fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles (UCAVs or combat drones) and Israel’s entire aerial deployment. According to the documents, the Americans succeeded in breaking the code encryption of Israel’s drone alignment including the Israeli Heron. The leaked documents claim that this is an unmanned aircraft capable of attacking deep in enemy territory. According to the published information, even the operating code of the Arrow project's Black Sparrow target missile was breached by the superpowers. The Black Sparrow is a missile launched by Israeli fighter planes from a very high altitude; it resembles the Iranian Shahab missile that the Arrow is supposed to intercept and damage at high altitude. The official Israeli response to these publications was "expressions of disappointment." Official Israeli speakers tried not to inflate the crisis. Israel’s working assumption is that the United States listens to every word uttered by the state’s leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convinced that he is under surveillance even in his office and his private home in Caesarea. He has asked the Shin Bet — more than once — to try to install wiretap disrupters in his private home. When Netanyahu is in the United States, he does not talk about classified matters while at Blair House, the official guesthouse. Instead, Netanyahu confines all his private talks to the embassy in Washington. When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin used to travel to the United States, his entourage always picked a last-minute, random apartment in Washington as the place for transmitting important security updates. The premise was that the Americans would not have time to install wiretapping equipment in an apartment at such short notice. Behind the scenes, however, the drama is far greater than Israel’s laconic "disappointment" response outlined here. Ephraim Sneh, former deputy defense minister and brigadier general in the reserves who is still well connected to the country’s top brass, bitterly castigated the American-British espionage setup this week. "Israel and the US have the same enemies," he told Al-Monitor. "Instead of working together positively, it turns out the Americans are investing tremendous energy in an attempt to breach Israel’s codes. Operationally that means that whoever knows where you are today can also know where you plan to be tomorrow. And technologically what we see is a conscious decision to invest much energy and resources in breaching Israel’s encryption system. They use America’s cutting-edge technology against Israel’s. That should worry us." Sneh’s words reveal only the tip of the iceberg of the new suspicions that threaten the already-fragile intimate security relations between Israel and the United States in the Obama era. "The Americans are our partners in the development of the Arrow," said another Israeli source, on condition of anonymity, who is still active in the security system. "Why are they investing all this effort to breaking the code [encryption] of the 'target missile'? All they have to do is ask nicely and we will involve them; Israel passes on to the US everything it reveals and decodes. I personally participated in meetings in which Israeli security sources met with the US national adviser. Our side would spread out satellite photographs and classified material regarding covert activities of Iran, Hezbollah or other dangerous operatives in the region. The fact that they invest so many resources in the attempt to breach the operations of the unmanned squadron is simply disappointing." Behind closed Israeli doors, there are others who raise additional worrisome thoughts: If the Americans succeeded in cracking the codes of the combat drones, then perhaps they are also breaching the codes of most undercover units such as the General Staff reconnaissance platoon, and keeping tabs even on the activities of this elite unit. If that is indeed true, then the situation is far worse than we thought. Another Israeli military contact told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, "All this time, we were convinced that America is our ally, and they never appeared on our list of threats. Now it is not clear at all that we were correct." More calming voices oppose this approach. "Israel is a world power in the cyberfield, codes and their operation, and electronic warfare," said an Israel Defense Forces source, who asked that his name not be published. "It is hard to believe that the Americans succeeded in breaching the codes of these sophisticated drones." Until about 10 years ago, Israeli drone codes were not encrypted at all. The policy change was prompted by the Naval Commando Disaster in September 1997 in which 12 Israeli naval commandos were killed in Ansariya, Lebanon. According to one of the accounts, Hezbollah succeeded in cracking the code of an Israeli combat drone that carried out a number of spying missions over the territory in which the commandos were going to operate. This foreknowledge caused Hezbollah to place ambushes on the site and inflict much harm on the Israeli forces. Israel’s Signal and Electronics Corps is responsible for the code encryption of combat drones, which is graduated or phased: The level of encryption rises with the level of stealth and combat danger faced by the UCAV. An Israeli security expert also speaking on condition of anonymity told Al-Monitor, "With regard to these code encryptions, even if an external source cracks the code, these codes change all the time and are replaced very frequently." But this statement does not mollify the Israelis. "It is absolutely possible that a world power like the US with its tremendous super computers, unlimited manpower and resources has attained impressive code-breaking abilities that supersede Israel’s code encryption abilities. And if that is the way things look, then we need to worry," he added. The assessment is that the spying project under discussion reached its climax from 2009 to 2013, when talk about an Israeli assault on Iran was at its peak. In those tense years, the Americans demanded that Israel "not surprise us" with anything connected to an attack on Iran, but the Americans came up empty-handed from this request. American tracking of aerial activity of Israel’s combat UCAVs could have given President Barack Obama a ''safety margin'' of several hours' warning before an Israeli attack. That would have allowed Obama to make a quick phone call to Netanyahu to try to block the whole process. In 2010, Israel carried out a large-scale aerial maneuver over the Mediterranean Sea, involving more than 100 fighter jets. Even before all the planes returned to their bases, then-US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen called his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, to find out what was going on. "It’s no secret that the Americans know when anything from this area goes into the air," said a former high-ranking Israeli air force officer this week. "Now we understand that in addition to being able to detect aerial activity, they also can figure out the targets and trajectories in advance. We need to learn how to live with this." -- Peter Myers Australia website: http://mailstar.net/index.html |
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