German defense minister: Officer in Singapore using insecure line led to Taurus conversation leak
German defense minister: Officer in Singapore using insecure line led to Taurus conversation leak
An "individual error" resulted in a call between high-ranking German military officers being leaked after one officer joined the meeting from abroad via an insecure line, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said at a press conference on March 5.
The call was held via Webex videoconferencing software, hosted on German army servers, but "not all participants adhered to the secure dial-in procedure as required," Pistorius said.
In principle, the systems used by the German military are secure, but one participant dialed in from Singapore using an insecure line, according to Pistorius.
Ugh. So how long have random people been joining secure meetings from random insecure places abroad?
More to the point. Why was the Webex software setup to allow Plain old telephone service connection to connect?
Because Bundeswehr incompetence. I believe the state of the german military can be explained by considering that after the cold war it was absolutely gutted and never meant to be an efficient armed forces because there was no support for that, not politically and not among the german people. The remains were just meant to be some kind of feel-good alibi towards NATO partners. And it's not even about the money but about how it was setup as an organization. Just compare french and german military spending and military capabilities to get an idea how inefficient the german military is. And then also think about which types of people would make a conscious choice to spend their professional career in that environment and what their motivations are. I don't want to offend anyone but I think it's not far fetched to say that many are in for the comfy low effort paycheck with no intention of actually pulling their weight when it matters. It's absolutely sad and wasteful but at least it seems that finally change is started to improve and to take national defense more serious again. But the necessary changes are immense and will take quite some time. So, saying this as a german citizen, maybe manage your expectations towards the professionalism of the german military at least for a couple more years 🙁
I think there are some interesting aspects to this. First, is the info about french and british personell being active in Ukraine actually new? I think I remember reading about this quite often already some time ago but I don't have any sources right now. Then the second one is, that shortly before the leak Scholz gave yet another explanation on why he doesn't want to send taurus and it was actually quite a lenghty and detailed interview that was also pretty big in the media, in germany at least. And basically his arguments were that taurus requires german personell in ukraine which is too risky. But what's said in the call actually contradicts this, the generals at one point discuss that with some training ukrainians could handle taurus on their own. So that's good to know but also makes me wonder if the purpose of the leak was also to somehow hurt Scholz?
@smonkeysnilas @LaFinlandia
The sooner that the impotent old men of Scholz's generation die out politically, the better. It took the dying out of a generation of Soviet leaders to make change possible and end the Cold War. They always try to shape the world into a recreation of their 'glory years.'Away with him.