I was stating my initial interpretation from the title alone.
It should be a given that responding in a chain with the OP stating 'By crypto they mean cryptography here.' I have ascertained the 'crypto' in the title now refers to cryptography.
I forget not everyone is capable of understanding subtext. The subtext of explaining how trivial it is to check, is that the comment is not needed for every single post with the word crypto
To those who earlier read about the company (even in Wikipedia!) before the article appeared the first part of that long article had almost no big surprises, describing more the general context. The "new" news are the BND involvement and the actual partial ownership by the CIA, but all that lacks the juicy details.
The second part, having more details, is actually very interesting, the things that appear like in the movies.
For example, an interesting coincidence about what happened to the son of the company's founder:
"Hagelin had once hoped to turn control over to his son, Bo. But U.S. intelligence officials regarded him as a “wild card” and worked to conceal the partnership from him. Bo Hagelin was killed in a car crash on Washington’s Beltway in 1970. There were no indications of foul play."
Or:
"Each year, the CIA and BND split any profits Crypto had made, according to the German history, which says the BND handled the accounting and delivered the cash owed to the CIA in an underground parking garage."
Or:
"The Germans were taken aback by the Americans’ willingness to spy on all but its closest allies, with targets including NATO members Spain, Greece, Turkey and Italy."
"This" now was not out until now, actually. The "new news" are the aspects of the actual direct ownership of a "Swiss" company by the BND and CIA and a lot of new juicy details in the Washington Post article. The readers can check my other comment here, and then the original new coverage (by the Washington Post and ZDF), not the "second hand" articles.
What I don't understand about this "news" is why it was published by mainstream media now. Anybody interested in cryptography knew about the Crypto AG debacle since around the late 90s, it was mentioned in every discussion next to the infamous Clipper chip.
Could someone who followed this more closely educate me what has changed in comparison to earlier accounts of the "news"?
22 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 64.3 ms ] threadIf you click the article you immediately find out.
If you click the comments, even if it's not written out, context clues gets you pretty far in figuring that out.
So either way it's one click to find out.
It should be a given that responding in a chain with the OP stating 'By crypto they mean cryptography here.' I have ascertained the 'crypto' in the title now refers to cryptography.
My point is with or without this comment which now appears for every reference of "crypto" you would find out very easily.
I spelled out why it wouldn't have taken more than 5 seconds for anyone to realize, even if the comment wasn't there.
And the day before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22297963
[Edited to be less annoying and more useful, sorry about that]
Thank you, much better :)
Changed my downvote to an upvote.
Also there is a washingtonpost.com original, where BBC is only talking about it, and the original was extensively commented on HN recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22297963
To those who earlier read about the company (even in Wikipedia!) before the article appeared the first part of that long article had almost no big surprises, describing more the general context. The "new" news are the BND involvement and the actual partial ownership by the CIA, but all that lacks the juicy details.
The second part, having more details, is actually very interesting, the things that appear like in the movies.
For example, an interesting coincidence about what happened to the son of the company's founder:
"Hagelin had once hoped to turn control over to his son, Bo. But U.S. intelligence officials regarded him as a “wild card” and worked to conceal the partnership from him. Bo Hagelin was killed in a car crash on Washington’s Beltway in 1970. There were no indications of foul play."
Or:
"Each year, the CIA and BND split any profits Crypto had made, according to the German history, which says the BND handled the accounting and delivered the cash owed to the CIA in an underground parking garage."
Or:
"The Germans were taken aback by the Americans’ willingness to spy on all but its closest allies, with targets including NATO members Spain, Greece, Turkey and Italy."
"This" now was not out until now, actually. The "new news" are the aspects of the actual direct ownership of a "Swiss" company by the BND and CIA and a lot of new juicy details in the Washington Post article. The readers can check my other comment here, and then the original new coverage (by the Washington Post and ZDF), not the "second hand" articles.
And now it's happening again with 5G ...?!
Could someone who followed this more closely educate me what has changed in comparison to earlier accounts of the "news"?