The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => History => Topic started by: TomSea on February 17, 2020, 04:15:36 pm
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Compromised encryption machines gave CIA window into major human rights abuses in South America
By Greg Miller and Peter F. Mueller
February 17, 2020 at 8:00 AM EST
South American military dictatorships combined forces in the late 1970s on a continent-wide crackdown they called Operation Condor against perceived threats to their rule. It was part of a broader wave of violence in which nuns and priests were imprisoned, dissidents were tossed out of airplanes and thousands of victims were “disappeared.â€
To coordinate this brutal campaign, Argentina, Chile and other countries established a secret communications network using encryption machines from a Swiss company called Crypto AG.
Crypto was secretly owned by the CIA as part of a decades-long operation with West German intelligence. The U.S. spy agency was, in effect, supplying rigged communications gear to some of South America’s most brutal regimes and, as a result, in unique position to know the extent of their atrocities.
Read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/compromised-encryption-machines-gave-cia-window-into-major-human-rights-abuses-in-south-america/2020/02/15/bbfa5e56-4f63-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/compromised-encryption-machines-gave-cia-window-into-major-human-rights-abuses-in-south-america/2020/02/15/bbfa5e56-4f63-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html)
That's interesting and a lot of propaganda will just recklessly lump the US as being involved in some of this action.