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Germany: We Think NSA May Have Tapped Chancellor Merkel's Cell Phone

Posted by Soulskill on from the days-since-NSA-diplomatic-incident:-0 dept.

cold fjord writes "According to a report in the Miami Herald, 'Chancellor Angela Merkel has called President Barack Obama after receiving information that U.S. intelligence may have targeted her mobile phone. Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said Merkel made clear in Wednesday's call that "she views such practices, if the indications are confirmed ... as completely unacceptable" and called for U.S. authorities to clarify the extent of surveillance in Germany.' Der Spiegel has some information on Germany's own "PRISM" project. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama 'assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor' her communications. He didn't mention anything about past communications. This news follows allegations of U.S. surveillance of the Presidents of Mexico, and France. Yesterday the LA Times noted, 'French authorities are shocked — shocked — to learn that the American government is spying on French citizens. The Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador to the Quai D'Orsay to inform him that what's going on is "unacceptable," and President Francois Hollande claimed to have issued a stern rebuke to President Obama in a phone conversation.' Up until now, Merkel had been reluctant to say anything bad about the U.S. over the NSA leaks."

31 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. The sad thing is... by jdbuz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that Obama probably doesn't know either way.

    1. Re:The sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, just like how bin Laden supposedly communicates through his blinking in his videos, Obama and Clapper probably set up something similar for their covert communication based on how Clapper rubs his face when he's lying.

    2. Re:The sad thing is... by FudRucker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      obama is a puppet, he is owned by his handlers (military/industrial complex & wallstreet & federal reserve) and he does exactly what they want him to do

      --
      Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    3. Re:The sad thing is... by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

      obama is a puppet, he is owned by his handlers (military/industrial complex & wallstreet & federal reserve) and he does exactly what they want him to do

      This is probably what he has the most in common with previous presidents. I'm sure that when he got into office after promising to repeal or reform the patriot act, the NSA and other people sat him down and told him the way it is, and that was that.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    4. Re:The sad thing is... by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He never would have gotten into office without playing ball with the elites.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    5. Re:The sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't be silly. Any politician strong enough to have a shot at the presidency knows how the game they played their whole life works. They help a select few companies, the companies throw them some crumbs. The candidate is happy because he gets what he wants, the companies are happy because the status quo is left unchanged, and the public is happy because they know THIS TIME things will be different.

    6. Re:The sad thing is... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Notice that all those things he "doesn't know" about are bad things......

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    7. Re:The sad thing is... by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sure that when he got into office after promising to repeal or reform the patriot act, the NSA and other people sat him down and told him the way it is, and that was that.

      He voted in favor of wiretapping shortly before getting elected. If you thought he was going to repeal it, you were naive. He indicated clearly what he was going to do, and you should have known beforehand what you were getting.

      I'm not saying McCain would have been better but you shouldn't fool yourself.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:The sad thing is... by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Insightful

      obama is a puppet, he is owned by his handlers (military/industrial complex & wallstreet & federal reserve) and he does exactly what they want him to do

      So, you are thinking that they wanted:

      - The sequester to cut $50 billion per year out of the defense budget? (With the MIC already down to 4-5% of GDP from 9.3% in 1962?)
      - Massive new financial regulations on loans, consumer credit, and much increased Federal government oversight?
      - Massive increases to Federal regulations across most sectors of the economy which raise the cost of business and threaten uncertainty?
      - The Obamacare debacle?

      You think they seek their own weakening or destruction? I think you haven't thought that through all the way.
       

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    9. Re:The sad thing is... by ImOuttaHere · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, Obama knows.

      What maybe Americans don't yet realize is why this such a huge deal here in Europe, and why, in particular, Germany was "OK" with the whole NSA spying scandal, at first.

      It turns out that a rather large trade deal between Europe and US was in process when the NSA spying scandal broke. The Germans had the trade pact right where they wanted it. The French did not. You perhaps noted the German hand waving that they were outraged by the NSA spying, but really weren't going to do anything to torpedo the trade deal. The French, OTOH, were prepared to back completely out.

      Now it seems that the Germans found something they clearly do not like.

      Think "leverage." Each country is looking for more favorable terms with the Americans.

      that Obama probably doesn't know either way.

  2. Shocking by OglinTatas · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am shocked. Shocked! That a country--any country--would spy on a foreign head of state.
    What a world we live in

    --
    More music, fewer hits
    1. Re:Shocking by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Informative

      I am shocked. Shocked! That a country--any country--would spy on a foreign head of state.
      What a world we live in

      As long as you are "shocked, shocked," in this manner, you are correct.

      NSA, France and spy wars

      Naturally, the French would be outraged. What government would be happy to learn that a close ally was secretly monitoring its people? Then again, it was revealed in 2010 that France conducts its own espionage activities here on U.S. soil. What's more, French officials have been aware of the NSA program in France for months. Oh, and also, France's intelligence agencies have established an electronic surveillance system of their own that monitors their citizens' phone conversations, emails, texts and even their Twitter posts.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    2. Re:Shocking by Murvel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, that sarcasm came trough! But this is so unbelievably clumsy, and at a time where the situation is already quite tense. They took a gamble to begin with, setting up wires all over the European parliament but targeting the head of state of one of the US closest allies. Mind boggling, but then that is probably only a part of the picture. A very nonsensical one at that.

    3. Re:Shocking by Desler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you wouldn't mind one of your friends tapping your phones?

    4. Re:Shocking by H0p313ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I am shocked. Shocked! That a country--any country--would spy on a foreign head of state.
      What a world we live in

      Exactly, this whole thing has been standard practice for decades.

      But now that the man on the street knows your elected officials can play it for political points without being the bad guy.

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    5. Re:Shocking by gweihir · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think the NSA has has/had completely lost sight of the most important thing in politics: Don't piss off your friends. You are going to need them. Instead they hacked, sabotaged security and listened in wherever they found it possible. This also means there was no oversight of any kind that was in the least bit effective.

      Quite frankly, the NSA is now basically a serious problem, and not part of any solution anymore. And that the the US administration proved this incompetent at controlling the NSA or may even have been cheering it on (as Rice reportedly did) has lost the US a tremendous amount of goodwill. Those that claimed the US administration is an amoral monster that does not understand the concept of "friend" seemed like crackpots before. Now it looks more and more that they might have had a point. Not good at all. The modern world needs team-players. Even a player as big as the US will eventually be left behind if they cannot manage that.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    6. Re:Shocking by echnaton192 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The point you are all missing is that our intelligence service actually does not do that on allies. They have turned a blind eye to US activities in Germany and profited from the results, but try to understand that such spying activity you implicitly accuse German intelligence services is absolutely unthinkable.

      That is not naivity from a German citizen, it is a complete misunderstanding about how my country ticks. We have a disgusting Government, just as you do. We have too uncontrolled intelligence agencies. We have some poverty.

      But it is not comparable to your country. Our governments tried to be accepted back into the international community by behaving... better... than ever before since WW II. Another war is one of the greatest fears in my country. Kosovo was one thing, because it reminded people of our past. But even for Afghanistan, the chancellor had to threat the bundestag to resign if they did not vote for "unrestricted solidarity" with america. Not because the majority forgot what America has done for us, but because the fear of war has been implemented in the german conscious.

      This is a really narrow description and there may be some Germans here describing other or contrary views, and they are valid. But this is not my mothers tongue, so I'll have to simplify a lot.

      My point is: You really misunderstood the Germans if you accuse us of spying on our best allies. One does not do that as a good ally, so it would have been conpletely out of the question. No BND buerocrat or MAD soldier would dare to do that, because there would be some serious consequences like losing the job or at least let their career come to a full stop.

      I know this sounds crazy to you, but even though I am a strong opponent to every party currently in the Bundestag, you should really try to understand the world better. The outrage is funded, but of course I disagree with the government about the real scandal.

      The real scandal fo my government lies in the complete ignorance of "Mutti" when the information about mass surveillance on us all leaked (which is forbidden for our agencies, so they let yours do the job but did not publicly aknowledged the scale ogüf the programs, maybe even actuelly underestimated them). Mutti is outraged because she was spied upon. She did not even raise a finger against the mass surveillance on every German citizen.

      My government is bad. But to campare their doings to the atrocities your governemnt did in recent years is unfounded. You still have the nobel prize in the western world for behaving like complete assholes. No, not every country is doing those things. Most of our intelligence agencies are boring beyond belief. And stupid. And blind on the right eye so they let the nazis kill "non-aryans" again, which is a scandal even if the numbers of our nazis today are comparable to other countries.

      But mass-surveillance? On a smaller scale and I am talking about per cent, not absolute numbers. And spying on an american embassy or wiretaping members of the american government? You got to be kidding me. You really have no clue. UNTHINKABLE.

      Again: This is no full scale political analysis of our politics, it is a very simple description on what is happening here.

      And if I were you I would ask myself if it is in the best interest of my country to piss off every ally in the world and at the same time forcing us to boycott american service providers. Do you think I am the only one that is doing the shift away from every cloud remotely american and from any closed source product stemming from american companies? The suisse and SOME German providers are trustworthy. All american dataproducts must be considered to be compromised.

      Defend the NSA activities all day long. You are entitled to. But honestly: Do you see me using Windows outside of a very strictly secured vm on a linux machine a year from now? Gaming kept me on windows, but the security risks exposed are too big. I might trust steam on a linux machine enough to let it run while I am playin

    7. Re:Shocking by mwehle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yours is a more lengthy and more thoughtful response than usually found on Slashdot. Unfortunately many American Slashdot readers, as Americans everywhere, have very little context from which to view our government's activities, hence the automatic and unfounded reaction that "everybody does it." There's a hubris here that is hard to communicate - an assumption of the US being first among bullies. I flew back to the US from Berlin in August and before getting through customs was already being harangued by officials who treated passengers as if we were prisoners, or cattle, a contrast to the politeness I'd been treated with in Germany. My impression is that many Americans don't see the NSA and other "public servants" as civil servants at all, but rather as hired guns of a sort, who for the best reasons "step outside the law" like innumerable rogue television cops.

      --
      Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
    8. Re:Shocking by echnaton192 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sigh. Have you red the articles? And understood them? The numbers appeared on some phone bills, not everyones. And as I use posteo, have you understood wjühat the guy from posteo was saying? There is no way a court would allow all mailboxes being searched or to order them to hand over ALL mailbocüxes to get some of them.

      Posteo allows for complete anonymous use of their service, paying could be done with a reference number in an envelope. The laws allows to throw away any data if not needed for the billing, so they do that. They can not identify you if you chose the tin foil hat payment method at all.

      Posteo offers to encrypt the CalDAV and CardDAV-accounts not only with their system-wide key, but with the users password, so they can not get the data stored there themselves. 32-character, strong password, so good luck with the decryption. And all this opportunity costs for learning that I have nothing much to hide. Making it as hard as I could to get the useless information should be a fun sport for every geek worldwide. Oh, did I mention they replace my IP in emails with theirs and are working an passwordencryption of the IMAP-account as well?

      Have you red the ars technica article and understood what the podteo guy was saying? About our CURRENT laws and our CURRENT situation?

      Not so much, did you?

      We have overboarding surveillance, but your non existing privacy continues to be a wet dream for our executive powers and some polticians. The danger of my data being compromised is smaller by high factors when using posteo or suisse providers compared to the complete transparent and willingly weakened products of american companies. Good citizens like the lavabit-guy or Zimmerman excluded.

      There is surveillance is not equal to "we try to get every single bit of everyone eveytime". Data retention may come to my country as well and I fought against it. But what the Constitutional Court left over from the cases in which the data could be used is absolutely incomparable to the complete Orwellian Scheme of your country. And Data retention is in the debate again thanks to Mr. Snowden. The Data Retention and access to the Data was attempted to be nearly unrestricted. But the constitutional court did not let it stand. I still hate everyone that promotes data retention after two dictatures in the last 100 years. But the checks and balances actually worked as far as the original law is null and void.

      Inform yourself. I have no problems with tapped mailboxes if there is some evidence for extremely serious crimes, like the posteo guy was suggesting. Data retention on the other hand is bad. But as stated by our constitutional court, it can not be as bad as it is in your country.

      So stop spreading FUD, it is bad enough here as it is already. Thank you very much.

  3. The USA isn't monitoring but what about.. by number17 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think they asked the right question or got the correct response. The fact that the United States isn't monitoring her does not mean that the private company Booz Allen Hamilton isn't.

    1. Re:The USA isn't monitoring but what about.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Perhaps this is why Huawei equipment was banned, it didn't have the right backdoors for the NSA to monitor everything and they were unable to force the company to put them in.

      THAT is probably the real security threat, the NSA could not spy as effectively.

  4. Quiz: Is the NSA Watching You? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

    - Do you use electronics to communicate?

    - Do you live on Earth?

    If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, then you can assume that yes, the NSA is monitoring you.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  5. How it happened by Megahard · · Score: 4, Funny

    When GWB gave her a backrub, he must have been secretly planting a bug.

    --
    I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
  6. So what ? by Yoda222 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's the reccurent argument that we hear from politics, probably including A. Merket or at least some CDU/CSU people ? Something like "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Does she has something to hide ?

  7. it is now obvious by FudRucker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that the NSA is not doing all this spying for looking for terrorists, it is espionage, they are wanting to steal data for their fascist criminal friends that run the military/industrial complex (private sector) for profits, it is basically theft of various sorts (whatever they can get their greedy hands on)

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  8. Re:I wonder what their real understanding is by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The head of state of a friendly government is completely off-limits for spying. That is only permissible for enemies and even there highly problematic as it can be considered an act of war. Those responsible in the NSA must have lost their minds completely and worked themselves into a mind-set where everybody is the enemy. There also cannot have been any oversight that deserves the name.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  9. Re:Shocked by echnaton192 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You should get out of your country from time to time. Not trying, because that would be against our interest and the poltical will to be an accepted menber of the international community. The persons responsible for such an attempt would piss their pants if it ever came to light. No pension, no longer being a bureaucrat, no longer being paid more than the average citizen.

    Our lame inelligence services trying a stunt like that? No fucking way.

  10. NSA by mfh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's take it one step further and identify the REAL PROBLEM.

    The NSA isn't saying they want to have all information to be free and accessible to everyone uniformly -- they are saying they want to have it forever for their own purposes (whatever those might be).

    But when Snowden does the same exact thing as the NSA -- according to them he must be punished as a traitor.

    Laws are not therefore uniform. They apply only to some... and when that is happening there is no society. There is only the law of the insect colony and a fat queen riding the heap.

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
  11. Re:I wonder what their real understanding is by scoticus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Those responsible in the NSA must have lost their minds completely and worked themselves into a mind-set where everybody is the enemy.

    Yep. Everyone IS our enemy. We have completely lost our post-WWII advantage of being the only industrial power worth a damn. The world is catching up. If we want to maintain our "exceptionalism", we must consider every last nation a competitor. This means treating even our friends as rivals. It's pretty fucking stupid, but there it is.

  12. Prophecy? by cffrost · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps Dubya was trying to let Merkel know at that G8 dinner party in 2006 — one way or another — maybe not that night, and maybe not by him, but someday, she was going to get "tapped" by a US President.

    --
    Thank you, Edward Snowden.

    "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  13. Re:are French authorities retarded? by sydneyfong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Way to justify everything with a sentence.

    Can anyone honestly believe [accused] isn't [doing something wrong]? People will [do bad things] to try to get a strategic or tactical advantage .... that is what they do, some better than others, [accused] better than most.

    Let's try a few examples.

    Can anyone honestly believe Enron wasn't cooking the books? Companies will falsify financial information to try to push up their stock price ... that is what they do, some better than others, Enron better than most.

    Can anyone honestly believe men aren't out there to rape women? Humans will use force to try to get a strategic or tactical evolutionary advantage. That is what they do, some better than others, this rapist better than most.

    --
    Don't quote me on this.