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German Report: Obama Aware of Merkel Spying Since 2010
First time accepted submitter pupsocket writes "Yesterday the German newspaper of record, Frankfurter Allgemeine, reported that the President told German Chancellor Merkel that he would have stopped the tap on her phone had he known about it. Today, another German paper, Bild am Sonntag, quoted U.S. Intelligence sources that the President had been briefed in 2010. 'Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,' the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying."
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Just remember Seimens (a German company) has sold nuclear tech to Iran.
I have no problem with what Bush and then Obama did.
And if Seimens were to sell to North Korea, I say we start bombing.
So Slashdot reports that Yahoo News printed an article from AFP that the newspaper Bild am Sonntag heard from a "high-ranking NSA official" that something happened! It's like Obama told me himself....
Was Hayden the high ranking official?
And that, my friends, is why large conspiracies fail: a slight change in the initial conditions (such as a threat to NSA's funding, or top officials denouncing covert programs to save face) will make fellow conspirators angry or scared and the whole thing blows open. If the energy put into "we never went to the moon" crap would be put to good use, we could have some real, positive change.
Quietly spying on the womans cell since 2010, no one else knew but a few NSA lackeys. Even they couldn't see him locked in a dark office, alone, with no sound but the repetitive monkey slapping between his legs and the faint conversation of Merkel in his earpiece. " MMMmmm, I got your cigar Biatch! Daddy's gonna Farfergnugen your strudel, Heidi".....
It's a Democrat thing, ask Bill or John or Lyndon.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
To Everyone:
If you have a phone or an email account or even a computer, please, please assume that the NSA and other parts of the US government is monitoring your communications and your movements. What else can we infer from all of this?
Why would anyone believe anything that Obama or NSA lackeys say at this point? It's too late for that. Obama's successor is going to have a huge credibility gap to bridge...
IRS targeting conservatives? Nobody at the White House knew.
Healthcare enrollment website has massive problems? The President didn't know.
NSA tapping German Prime Minister's phone? The President didn't know.
At some point, the American people have to start wondering if the President knows anything.
How do you know the US is the good guy. Unmanned drones killing women and children in the middle east, psychotic banks out of control, eugenics. You sound so emboldened and brash about ur choices considering ur country is becoming completely satanic..
And bear in mind that China and Russia already have an alliance to protect themselves from u. If the EU (inclusing France and UK) joined that - both have nukes - your potential list of allies will have dwindled and you could be alienated internationally.
However, I think u just don't get it. It's not about u or me. It's all a big charade by rich people globally, to hide pillaging from their own countries. And American people seem to be the biggest suckers of them all in this regard.
He sure shouldnt tap that
This isn't a surprise, right? I mean, what are the odds that the NSA would spy on a leader of another country and the president of the United States not even know it's going on? It sounds laughable to me.
"How's that "hopey changey" stuff workin' out for ya?"
Are people really so foolish to think that the man isn't aware of the multitude of abuses under his administration?
No wonder this nation is so fucked.
...but I repeat myself.
Like a spoiled kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Obama needs a good spanking. Amongst genuine "small government" and "limited government" types, this just leads to feelings of frustration and despair. The Tea Party movement seemed promising, until it was hijacked by the religious right. What other chance is there, really, to reign in the US government? It's no wonder that talks about secession and revolution are kicking up again.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
A textbook example of the Limbaugh Doctrine. For those of you in Rio Linda, CA: the Limbaugh Doctrine states the president had absolutely no idea that something bad was going on, he's just as shocked as everyone else, at the turn of events, but he's going to put a stop to it.
The president had absolutely no clue how big of the train wreck the healthcare.gov web site was going to be, until the day of the launch. As far he knew, everything was going just fine, and he was just as shocked as everyone else, how big of a botch it turned out to be.
The president had no idea that the IRS was harassing his political opponents. He read about it in the papers, when the story broke.
The president did not know that our troops on the ground in Libya called for help several times, when the barbarians attacked the Benghazian embassy, but someone in the military chain of command told them to stand down, and that no help was forthcoming. The president found that out only after the fact.
The president did not know that the Dept. Of Justice was sending illegal firearms to Mexican drug gangs. He was shocked, just shocked, to find out about it, in the papers.
Etc... etc... The president never has any idea what's going on in his administration. Who's running the government anyway?
I've been reading Der Spiegel for 25 years. I've never seen them get angry about anything, not even when Russia shut off the natural gas pipeline running to Central Europe to mess with the Ukraine and whacked Germany in the process. They're white hot mad about this. The German Interior Minister is talking about bringing the NSA to justice. The SPD is pushing to drop trade talks with the US unless Washington does something real about it. Meanwhile, Obama wants to talk about immigration and fly off to visit schools in Crown Heights rather than deal with this directly. Caught in lie after lie after lie about the NSA he owns this now, and he owns the consequences for the entire world if he doesn't deal with it.
Consider, fellow Americans, what goes if Germany goes. That's NATO and the EU. That's all our happy European client states cheerily playing along when Washington wants to force the President of Bolivia's plane down and search it. That's an economy bigger than ours, a continent whose population is much bigger than ours, suddenly not playing ball with us any more and pushing back hard on everything. That's a profoundly different world for American geopolitical power that will have material consequences for every American.
This, the government shutdown, the near default, the promise of more of the same in February, it all has everyone who has been on our team the last 50 years looking for the exits at once. The American government has proven it can't even get a website right; there's no way in hell they can deal with all of this at once. A fat, happy American middle class would have been a bulwark against it, but the elites have spent 20 years scraping out their substance. Most of us are running mighty thin. The risk of a trigger event, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or the Rodney King verdict, bringing it all down is growing.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
And with a large and loosely coordinated bunch of people, the easiest way not to repeatedly get caught lying is to tell the truth. And if the truth is too ugly to be told, one needs to change the truth in synch with the facts rather than trying to twist the truth while keeping the facts ugly.
And "telling the truth" does not mean "masking the truth" as long as possible with technically accurate but wildly misleading statements. Those assholes just love word games and one does not exactly know why: the have no problems to just outright revert to lies or perjury when evading the questions becomes too tricky. Probably they just want to keep in practice.
Does ANYONE believe ANYTHING obama says anymore?
Really?
Whats wrong with you? How many times does he have to flat out lie before you wise up?
Once? Ten times? A hundred?
I don't know what the count is upto by now. But it's getting pretty high.
Dismantle, defund and shut down the entire NSA. Fire all of them and put the responsible directors on court trial.
Either that or the USA will be one day as isolated as North Korea with no friends left whatsoever.
Fixed subject. Sorry.
One not of. Must have been auto-"correction".
Given the subject, maybe we can get an actual gibbon to write it this time.
Really, the story is that Obama was unaware of spying for 8 years! How on earth is that possible? 2007 - 2008, he was Chairman of United States Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, and after that as a president.
I know there is oversight, but geez it must be really loose. You'd think that those two posts would let one know about things.
She's been spied on since before she became the German leader, the 2010 thing comes out from possible Keith Alexander backers:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24692908#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
"But on Sunday Bild newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying NSA head Keith Alexander personally briefed the president about the covert operation targeting Mrs Merkel in 2010."
Which sounds like Keith Alexander having a go at Obama if anything (or supporters of Alexander).
But what struck me is the sheer naivety of the woman:
"Mrs Merkel - an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 - is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany."
That's why they let her become Chancellor! if she was against America, you can be damn sure they'd be using all that info they have on her to her disadvantage to make sure she didn't come into power. It's not *her* who is the victim here, its the German they spied on to weed him out of the race for Chancellor. And the democracy they undermined in the process.
She should know this from the KGB control of East Germany that ensured only party approved leaders could ever be elected.
They're shaping their 'allies' to make them into 'servants'. I think a few of them know it. 5 eyes countries leaders seems to know they have to tow the US line or be leaked against, and maybe a few others. Some others, might suspect it, but don't want to seem paranoid.
Merkel needs to realize that her surfing history is known too, so is her emails, the public info she read that's known, the open discussions, known. Coutresy of Bullrun, probably even the encrypted one. It's not done for laughs, it's done for control.
There's probably a 100 countries with a president. Fuck you editors.
Sounds legit. A fair amount of gullibility on /. Also if your biggest problem is electronic spying then you don't have any real problems. Min wage that's too low for people to support themselves, homelessness, college debt, bloated military budget which robs from valid infrastructure investments, etc.. are real problems.
Moreover, complaining about what governments have done since before the beginning of civilization is a first world problem.
I say we are right to spy on them - who knows what they have planned.
The stated goal of Wikileaks was to make it too expensive and dangerous for powerful people to keep significant secrets, for fear of exposure. It doesn't matter whether Wikileaks was involved in this, it seems that we are much closer to that world today than we were 10 years ago. That's a good thing.
An empire that has nowhere to expand can only contract and fall, at least in the long run.
I think the US empire probably peaked in the late 1990's at the end of a 10-15 year long time when it could expand easily and relatively peacefully without any interference from the rest of the world which was largely taken by surprise by the fall of the Soviet Union. Now Russia, although still relatively poor, is arming itself like there's no tomorrow (Russia recently carried out its second or third largest military exercise ever, including the ones during the Soviet era!) and China has been growing its economy and influence at double digit percentages for years. It is only natural that US leaders and planners are becoming increasingly paranoid about signs that allies of the empire are planning to go their own way or defect to the other side or sides.
Right now the US is still by far the best choice for countries to align themselves with, so this is likely to go on for a long time.
In the beginning was the Plan and the Specification.
And the Plan was without form and the specification it was void.
And darkness was on the face of the implementation team.
And they spake unto their Leader, saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks"
And it was the Leader and it was the Project Head.
Now the Leader spake unto the Project Head, saying,
"It is a crock of feces and intolerably malodorous."
And it was the Project Head and it was the Department Manager.
Now the Project Head spake unto the Department Manager, saying,
"It is a container of excrement and its effluvium is very strong."
And it was the Department Manager and it was the Product Manager.
Now the Department Manager spake unto the Product Manager, saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer of overpowering strength."
And it was the Product Manager and it was the Centre Manager.
Now the Product Manager spake unto the Centre Manager, saying,
"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants and strong it is."
And it was the Centre Manager and it was the Director.
Now the Centre Manager spake unto the Director, saying,
"It promoteth growth and it is very powerful."
And it was the Director and it was the President.
Now the Director spake unto the Vice-President, saying,
"This powerful new product will promote the growth of the Company."
And the President looked on the product and saw that it was good.
He probably planted a bug on Merkel when he gave her that creepy hug.
Have gnu, will travel.
Obama is an embarrassment.
American "foreign policy" is an embarrassment.
Please understand, many Americans are not in favor of
Obama, his behavior, his illegal military actions, or any
of the other things he has done. The truth is, it is one of the most
depressing times to be an American in many decades.
The average American is powerless to change any of what is happening, but
at least some of us can let you people in the rest of the world know that
what the American government does is NOT what many American people
would choose to do.
Only a matter of months before Obama walks to 'Air Force 2' (the helicopter) and waves Good By at the door.
How's that Hope and Change working for you?
For anyone who has had a layover on an international flight it is pretty obvious that countries don't trust each other any-more when one views current airport security practices.
The process on every single layover is as follows:
1. Get off air-plane
2. Leave no-mans-land and enter the country (Customs and Border Control)
3. Pick up your baggage
4. Check your baggage
5. Go through security back into no-mans-land
6. Get on the air-plane
Pretty sad...it was so bad when I left the EU last time that I had to show my passport just to leave.
Just my 2 cents.
Hedghog
It seems to me the US secret services have gone out of control; the president clearly does not control them anymore. Obama telling he didn't knwo basically meant "the NSA has gone rogue". The NSA and CIA strike back at Obama by leaking secrets.
The US has had such a period before, the FBI under J.E. Hoover. He knew enough dirt about politicians to be untouchable. With paper files this could be corrected, now the information gas gone digital with many backups I don't see how the US people could reestablish control over these agencies other than by violence - which will be quite difficult to organise with the NSA controlling every line of communication.
To make this more relevant to Slashdot. Consider this:
No one competent in an IT department which handles anything sensitive will be comfortable specifying US produced closed source software ever again.
The issue is not just spying on politicians. It seems the NSA has been involved in 'economic' espionage as well. The company i work for has US competitors, so do most others..It seems that pretty much everything has 'backdoors' - looks like the paranoid were right after all.
Oh, I am rather annoyed the democrat-run U.S. Government is spying on me but I'd rather have that than have a republican-run U.S. Government spying on me.
Because after all, the democrats are "the good guys".
Oh, that would be the extra-juicy Sunday edition of this turd. Long history of fabricating and misrepresenting stories, and getting criticized and reprimanded for it. Fat chance an actual high-ranking "US intelligence source" would even want to talk to them.
"How's that 'hopey-changy' stuff workin' out for ya?"