The governments from all over the world trusted a company for more than a century just to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. But it is revealed recently that the company may not be completely trustworthy as it was secretly run by the CIA which means that the agency officials had the ability to read all communications for decades.
It should be noted that after the news became viral, on Twitter several well-known personalities, including the whistleblower Edward Snowden who once brought the truth about surveillance in front of the world and revealed classified details. In his tweet, Snowden said, "Dangerous by design: How the CIA and German BND conspired to sabotage the communications of allies and adversaries alike."
Communication is not safe?
As per the report by Washington Post, the US and German intelligence agencies have joined hands on a scheme to trick dozens of nations into buying rigged encryption system. The reports revealed that the company called Crypto AG received its first contract to design code-making machines for the US military during the second world war. Soon after that, the company became a dominant maker of encryption device.
In the 21st century, the Swiss company made millions of dollars by selling the equipment to more than 120 countries, which included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan as well as the Vatican. But the buyers did not know that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a classified partnership with German intelligence who rigged the device to break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
The report said, "The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project."
The secret program
The exclusive reports which revealed the dirty secrets of the agencies revealed that the account was identified as the CIA officer who operated the program and the company officials entrusted to execute it. "It described how the United States and its allies exploited other nations' gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets," the report added.
This project was known by code name called "Thesaurus" and then it was changed into "Rubicon" which is the most audacious in the history of the CIA. The US spy agency reports claimed that the operation was the intelligence coup of the century and added that "Foreign governments were paying good money to use the US and West Germany for their privilege of having their most secret communication read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries."
