Merkel's Cell Phone

David Sanger, as some of you know, is one of my favorite reporters because he has some of the best sources in Washington.  I always wonder where he gets some of his ideas, especially those on our most sensitive subjects like the Stuxnet Worm deployment in Iran's closely controlled nuclear facilities.

I saw David on TV a couple of nights ago, and he was asked about the U.S. monitoring of calls made by Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor.  He asked more questions than he answered, but his first one made me think:  What head of state does not have an encrypted cell phone to use for communications?  Why didn't she have one?

I'm not sure when Heads of State became so careless with information we should know is being monitored.  The Chinese are building a raft of small satellites they sell to anyone interested in having one.  They can put anything they want on one of these things, so a small country can get into the business of listening in to their neighbors and enemies.  Are we so naive as to think the U.S. is monitoring everyone in the world, but nobody else can?  The Russians were doing it many years ago, and it would be hard to believe they stopped.  The Chinese have hacked every major business in the free world, and nobody has made as big a fuss as our allies have over cell phone monitoring.

An insecure cell phone is an open invitation to anyone with even a glimmer of capability to listen in.  The French even admit they spy on everyone, though they seem to be indignant about being monitored themselves.  On the Continent, there seems to be a mass of hypocrites, lined up, to say how terrible such a thing can be.

They seem to still believe the words of Henry Stimson, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."  What we forget is, he used those words to shut down the U.S. code breaking capability for many years, the same capability that was used to break the Japanese codes during WW II.

For those who are squealing the loudest, we might remember another quote of Stimson:  The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.  There is a little of that on both sides right now.