Of course, but to be honest, that was the previous expectation of the NSA. It's not that apparent that there is anything useful to gain by leaking their attempts to spy on foreign counties like every other country does.
Since when is sabotage an act of spying, or for that matter acceptable behavior in peace time?
Lets say Swedish spies was sent to the US in order to infiltrate and weaken the 911 system, the power grid, or other key infrastructures of the US. Would you shrug at that also, since after all, what should people expect from spies?
Sabotage and spying is two different activities. Sabotage is a tactic employed during war. Spying is a tactic employed during peace. Confusing the two simply states that peace is war, and war is peace, and anything goes so long its against foreigners.
>On the other hand it deals a pretty big blow geopolitically/internationally.
So? For me (Godwin's law be damned) it's like leaked documents about Nazi germany practices. If you were not a German you'd cheer, and if you were a non-Nazi German you'd also cheer.
SENTRY EAGLE and the 13 page draft (summarized in the article) is new.
SENTRY EAGLE is the protection program outlined jointly by the NSA and the U.S. Strategic Command.
The first line reads:
"SENTRY EAGLE... compartmented program protecting the highest and most sensitive level [by] NSA/JFCC to support the U.S. government's efforts to protect America's cyberspace."
The document goes on to specify the broad U.S. cyber protection strategy broken down into Sentry Hawk, Sentry Falcon, Sentry Osprey, Sentry Raven, Sentry Condor, and Sentry Owl - all of which are new.
Add on top data about infiltration into (allied) South Korea and Germany. Not a good day for the NSA.
The names are certainly new, but AFAIK the names themselves aren't classified. What's behind the names is classified, but more details about such actions were already published. We just learn more names, that is, how they call these actions internally. And we get a nice summary of the previous disclosures. Written by the authorities who otherwise denied the parts of it even as the specific documents were published. It's that everything is written together that's new. The new potential to embarrasment of the officials is in having it all in one document, which makes the denials much harder.
It's like seeing certain plays from a sport team before, and then after a game seeing their notebook with their general game strategy. Yeah everything we saw before 'fits in' to what was released today - for example we already knew from examples that the NSA works to break encryption - but now we also know that it is considered one of six key investments and that it probably has its own leadership separate from the others. This is useful because you know what programs have more overhead talking to each other/partnering. For example to speculate that corporations probably aren't helping very much with the crypto breaking effort.
Wrong, the names aren't classified, contrary to your claim "the names are most definitely classified." Look in the document, the title "Sentry Eagle Data Sheet" is clearly marked "U" which according to Wikipedia
One line before the one where you've probably found that combination is just "(U) Sentry Eagle Data Sheet" clearly without the FOUO (which, if existed, would mean "for official use only"). The markings specify the following not the previous content. So the title I quoted as containing the name is just and only "U" unclassified.
As the terms are not classified there are minimal standards regarding using the names in less secured conversation. If another country has intercepted communications or documents with some mention of SENTRY EAGLE, now that this has been released they know some of the conversation/document context.
Almost correct, FOUO is a designation used to effectively classify the unclassified information from the public (really! [1]) but he looked at the wrong line.
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[1] "unclassified but which the government does not believe should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests" (wikipedia)
On the other hand it deals a pretty big blow geopolitically/internationally.
The big deal about this article is that it reveals the major tactical capabilities and efforts the NSA has invested in the intelligence war.
Edit: Right now HN is limiting the number of replies I can initiate. Will reply as I can.