Germany's own spying scandal

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

When a couple of weeks ago it transpired that the US were regularly tapping billions of phone calls, emails and text messages overseas, including in countries that were supposed to be American allies, the European media exploded with tons of angry articles. There were protests on the streets, calling for an end of this practice. In stark contrast though, German chancellor Merkel preferred to remain as silent as a stump on the question, and for a long time she remained so.

But here she is, during her traditional summer TV interview, Frau Angela opened up on the subject for the first time. She unambiguously urged the US to "respect the German laws in all the actions of their secret services on German territory". Mrs Chancellor used words of unprecedented sharpness in her address to Washington, reminding America that the two countries were partners in a shared defense alliance, and they should be able to rely upon each other.

But her call for the secret services to respect the laws of other countries rings rather false these days, because by now everyone must have learned that the very job description of a spy dictates that they should be covertly breaking the laws of the countries they are spying on. Including the German spies.

Apparently, the solution to the problem is possibly related to some kind of supranational decision. It's telling that the EU commissioner Viviane Reding instantly welcomed Merkel's statement, and she reiterated her urge to create common European rules for protecting personal data.

It's exactly because of the US's brazen-faced encroachment on personal data of millions of Europeans (including Germans) that the candidate for chancellor of the social-democrats, Per Steinbrück tossed a very damning accusation at Merkel: that she had broken her oath as the leader of the government, in which she had vowed to defend the German people from harm. In fact, at the background of the election battle in Germany, the opposition social-democratic party (which has been lagging way behind Merkel's christian-democrats in the polls) may've started to believe that they've finally found the ace card that would trump their mighty opponents.

Steinbrück was very sarcastic in his comments on the zero results from the visit of minister of the interior Hans-Peter Friedrich in Washington, where he was supposed to reach some sort of clarity on the spying scandal. And it's not just the social-democrats. The greens and the left are also pressuring Merkel with their insistence to immediately create a parliamentary commission whose sole task would be to reach to the bottom of the NSA activities in Germany. Activities which by the way (and that's the main confusion here) the German intelligence was full aware of.

According to a recent publication, the German intelligence had frequently requested intel on its own citizens from their US colleagues. Intel, which was being harvested on German territory, using the various modern surveillance technologies at NSA's disposal. Having in mind how sensitive the Germans are on the subject of personal privacy (the memory of the Stasi past in DDR not being forgotten, and all), it's not too difficult to understand why the ongoing discussion is of particular significance for the German public. Hell, Germany is probably the only industrialized country in the modern world that doesn't use industrial espionage - a cautiousness that's rooted in German history and the totalitarian control that existed both at the time of the Nazi and the communist regime in East Germany.

As for the German intelligence spying on their own people and relying on the help of their more technologically advanced American colleagues, and putting all communications in a "top-secret" archive and all that, that's hardly news to anyone. And the hypocrisy behind the government's long denial-implying silence on the subject is even less surprising.

Comments

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

As we keep scratching surfaces, my suspicion is that we will find most countries with security apparati are engaged in metadata collection and evaluation.

So perhaps we, as societies, ought to discuss our willing and usually poorly informed habits of shoveling over dumptrucks of data to 3rd parties who are then approached by government agencies empowered by national security legislation and compliant (sometimes secret) courts to plumb its depths.

People are horrified by what governments can get their hands on, but we are willingly creating these reams of data and it is not exactly an easy exercise to avoid doing so while simultaneously participating in modern life.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

but I wanna play Angry Birds!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Without being nuked.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

at least let me make sure my iPad is turned off beforehand, so it doesn't get zapped in the EMP.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Or, conversely, we can recommit ourselves to being vigilant about giving the government permission to take and use that data, and go after those who do so anyway.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

are they looking for swastikas?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

For some reason, Reinhard Gehlen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen) comes to mind. He was very quickly de-Nazified in order to spy on the Soviets and Communist East Germans. There is also a strong telecommunications tie between the US and Germany (ATT and Deutche Telekom share similar mobile infrastructures).

I would happily applaud any effort that the Germans might make in reining in American despotism. (They probably should have done more to debunk the fabricated intelligence that was used by Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.)

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I thought ECHELON was old news.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Good point about the Germans being particularly sensitive on this subject due to their history. So far they've entirely relied on the US intelligence to gain knowledge about what's going on around Germany. And their major vulnerability is that as a rule, the US intel is being served to the German intelligence in a very succinct way, just a few in-a-nutshell sentences really. The problem is, in principle one cannot distinguish how the info was obtained - whether through a tapped phone conversation, or standard interrogation of a suspect, or "enhanced" interrogation, or trawling through the email communications. And that poses a serious difficulty for the further actions of the German intelligence services. Because they're essentially taking every piece of US intel on its face value, without being able to further process it.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

All this sudden hubbub sounds to me like "OMG, we just found out that spying agencies are actually... GASP... spying!"

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Shit and here I thought it was all about the gadgets, women and cars

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Too many Austin Powers movies.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

And bad teeth

[dwer.livejournal.com]

well, sure, but everyone thought that their countries were spying on everyone ELSE, not themselves!

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Damn spooks just can't be trusted!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

If they keep the nukes in line, I guess its okay.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

What did you expect from Merkel, she is an entrenched statist with information-gathering experience going back to DDR Stasi connections and her Gruppenfuhrer role within the FDJ youth organisation.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ah, so the Germans decided to bring out the Stasi methods again, eh? Irony bites hard.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Our NSA spying on citizens thing is like a STD and anyone sleeping with America had better get themselves to a clinic.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Also: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-firms-fear-industrial-espionage-after-snowden-leaks-a-912624.html