Wednesday, March 12, 2014

NSA fails to get iron grip on Crimea, surveillance agencies shamed

The so-called 'surveillance superpower' has overlooked the Crimea. The US government has a hold over major political figures in the world thanks to the NSA surveillance programs, yet still it failed to understand that Vladimir Putin will do everything in his power not to let the peninsula slip out of his hands. What was the ultimate mistake of the American intelligence? - the Western experts and media are trying to guess. Russian political scientists and intelligence experts try to explain the reasons why Washington was so inattentive in an interview to the Voice of Russia.

The Supreme Council of Crimea adopted Tuesday the Declaration of Independence and expressed the intention to join Russia. Now all we have to do is to wait for the referendum on March 16. If the majority of the Crimea citizens will vote for this decision, the necessary documents will go straight from Simferopol to Moscow. The officials promise to do their job without any delay.
The reaction of the new self-proclaimed Kiev authorities is predictable and thus not subject to further discussion, it is the US reaction that may be of concern here. The US President Barack Obama issues statements that can be summarized as ‘won’t let, won’t forgive, sanctions are imminent’ on a daily basis. Even some of their younger European partners disagree with such fierce statements. Especially since many of them have a valid question - where were you before, Mr. President, with your all-powerful NSA? “The United States, the country with the most advanced tracking and surveillance system, is unaware of what is happening in the rest of the world,” Michele Zurleni of the Italian newspaper Panorama says.

Here are the events as presented by the author. February 27, a few hours after the creation of the interim government in Kiev, Vladimir Putin announces a ‘sudden operability test’. Some 150.000 people are engaged in the exercise near the western Russian border. On the same day in Washington, Republican Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, receives a report from the NSA Director’s Office. Its essence in a nutshell is as follows – Putin is bluffing. The next day, a new pro-Russian government is formed in the Crimea, paramilitary forces control airports and surround Ukrainian military bases. Putin makes the first move, while the White House has no choice but to hobble, trying to catch up with the swift actions of the Kremlin leader, the author says.

Five days later, the United States began to wonder why the government was caught by surprise. Officials were talking about sluggish Obama's policy towards Putin, blame the whole US intelligence community, agencies leadership, bureaucrats and experts. Few remember that this is not the first time the all-powerful intelligence services were embarrassed, the Head of the Center for Public Policy Research Vladimir Evseev says.

"Apparently, they considered it a bluff. The fact that Russia is not perceived as an equal partner undermines the efforts of the US intelligence community. Exaggerating their capabilities and reconnaissance assets, the US naturally fell into this trap. There was a clear underestimation of the resources that Moscow had, the whole situation was miscalculated. Russian special forces proved they can work in the information war setting and under global surveillance carried out by the United States."

Recent technological breakthroughs and the up to the minute equipment had a side effect. It appears that the US analysts have forgotten the basics of intelligence work, relying solely on gadgets, Head of the Inforus consortium Andrey Masalovich says.

"For many years the intelligence practice had been facing a major stumbling block, the lack of means to get access to the raw data, such as wiretapping conversations, interception of electronic communications, access to databases, covert surveillance. When finally people invented technical devices that could help them in solving these problems, the intelligence agents were overwhelmed with exultation. A huge reservoir of data emerged out of the blue, and most intelligent services started to forget that there was one more vital part of the work – the analysis of large databases. The agent’s task is not just to tell who said what, but to provide an overview of what is happening, what are the expectations, and how can our actions be affected by the opposing side. Nowadays few draw their attention to this kind of analytical work."

Vladimir Putin does not speak about his strategy on a cell phone, nor he uses Facebook or Twitter, says a former CIA agent and author of books and articles on Langley, Robert Baer. An old CIA would try to gain an informant tried in Kremlin’s military apparatus. But those were different times. It is quite obvious that the digital surveillance programs were useless in this case, Baer says. Having started its Ukraine operation, the West suddenly discovered that Putin has a counter plan. A pity they had no idea what this plan was about. The analytical wing is fully responsible for this: the US intelligence services have unlimited access to information, and yet they have repeatedly failed to become omnipotent.

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