Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation, from a Dutch perspective

I&#x27;m in the middle of reading Richard Aldrich&#x27;s book on GCHQ - which I thought might be a bit dry but is actually completely fascinating.<p>Sigint is a remarkably devious business e.g. during the Falkland&#x27;s War the UK got live information on Argentinian ship locations from, of all places, Norwegian intelligence who obtained it by hacking into <i>Soviet</i> spy satellites.

This is a fascinating revelation, the European equivalent of the Five Eyes.<p>The author, by the way, is a Dutch professor of Security, Privacy and Identity at the Radboud University (Nijmegen). His website is here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.ru.nl&#x2F;~bart&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.ru.nl&#x2F;~bart&#x2F;</a>

We need to know if these are organs for circumventing the law of its member countries by spying on each other when spying on their own citizens is illegal.<p>Privacy is fundamental to democratic elections and enemies to democracy should not be tolerated.

Some weird things I noticed:<p>There are at least two typos in the abstract:<p>#1<p>&gt; [...] Danmark, Sweden, Germany [...]<p>Should be &quot;Denmark&quot;<p># 2 &gt; [...] crypto analisis [...]<p>Should be &quot;analysis&quot;<p>There&#x27;s a &quot;cryptanalysis&quot; later in the article.<p>The author&#x27;s list of papers: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.ru.nl&#x2F;~bart&#x2F;PAPERS&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.ru.nl&#x2F;~bart&#x2F;PAPERS&#x2F;index.html</a> doesn&#x27;t mention this article, even though it mentions another not-yet-published paper.

Interesting. I wonder why this is being revealed, and why now, and who it serves.

A sigint alliance established after meetings in a pub and named for a brand of beer. That is charmingly comforting.

So the European equivalent of the Five Eyes?