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GCHQ and NSA Targeted World Leaders, Private German Companies
Advocatus Diaboli sends this news from Der Spiegel:
"Documents show that Britain's GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America's NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database. Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation? ... A secret NSA document dealing with high-ranking targets has provided further indications that Merkel was a target. The document is a presentation from the NSA's Center for Content Extraction, whose multiple tasks include the automated analysis of all types of text data. The lists appear to contain 122 country leaders. Twelve names are listed as an example, including Merkel's."
Since USAian's hurt feelings are a matter of national security, NSA is well within the law for collecting info about what Germans think.
Could someone from the US please tell me and convince me why Germany should still be friends with the USA? 'Cause the USA are certainly NOT behaving like a friend. More like a foe and bully who thinks Germany is an enemy.
Get used to it.. Stop being butthurt and increase your security.
You are aware that the US still kinda depend on international trade, yes? And that said trade in the US is kinda dependent on exporting high tech equipment?
Now, could you see that this could get mighty complicated if every nation out there starts to distrust everything remotely electronic coming from your place?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
citation needed
Everyone spys on everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
Fuck all these other countries. You can't stop us anyway, we are the mightiest, richest, most powrerful nation on Earth and we do whatever the fuck we want.
And Americans wonder why they have a reputation for being both arrogant and uninformed...
Ironically, this is exactly what many of the beneficiaries of, um, your foreign policy would love you to do: take all your military kit and, respectfully, piss off.
The problem is that your trampling on "weaker" nations is kind of a large part of your being "mighty" and rich (well, one marginal fraction of you anyway) and your leaders are unlikely to give that up.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
It's kind of getting old hearing about the latest spying activity of the NSA.
It would be more interesting to hear who they're *not* spying on these days.
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
Following the shutdown of services from Mastercard and Visa in Russia, he is pushing for a russian payment system. At least he is facing his responsibilities, not like european leaders who, even facing the evidence that they are spied, won't do anything and still rely on US products.
We must ban Cisco equipment and Microsoft/Apple systems from our governments offices, once and for all. There are alternative solutions available, let's develop them, let's deploy them. Before, there was a risk. Now there is a fact. So what are we waiting for ?
I'm shocked. SHOCKED!
Seriously, WTF did you THINK they were doing exactly?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
So, the NSA is doing foreign signals intelligence, eh?
As it is mandated by law to do...
Somehow, I can't get really excited that the NSA is actually doing its job. And yes, spying on foreign leaders is part of the job of the NSA, as it is for EVERY espionage organization in history....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And if this news was about Russians caught spying on USA and Britain, there'd be a bunch of people foaming at the mouth declaring "act of war" instead of the recently common "oh well, that's just what they do" dismissive brush-off.
Hypocrites everywhere.
Better safe than sorry, I reckon. Wouldn't want them to bomb Pearl Harbor again.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Murderers murdering? Say it ain't so!
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http://articles.chicagotribune...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
So people are upset about the NSA spying on companies and a country that was willing to look the other way on some very questionable practices ?
A little reality check here. George Washington was one of our first spymasters,
http://www.amazon.com/George-W...
And the value of intelligence information to our well being has not decreased one bit since the revolution.
Who in the world thinks that Russia DOESN'T spy on the US and GB (and France and Germany and everyone else for that matter). FFS - we ALL do it to everybody else.
This is like complaining that farts stink, and somebody just found out that we left a beige cloud in the restroom. Somebody light a match, close the door, and get on with it. In polite society you hold your breath and pretend like nothing happened, because the next time the remains of the burrito might be yours.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Everyone speeds while driving eventually. Does this suddenly mean that speed laws should be ignored? Laws are in place for a reason. "But everyone else is doing it!" didn't work when you were 13, and it sure as fuck doesn't work when you're an adult.
Not quite. The situation might be a good business opportunity for countries with high tech capability like Japan, Germany, maybe even Poland. Make the infrastructure hardware that's absolutely unhackable. That might put Cisco, Juniper, Dropbox, MS Azure, etc., out of business.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
If your enemies become neutral or allies, that's a bonus, but if your allies turn that's a nasty surprise. So there's a case for keeping a very close eye on your allies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If your enemies become neutral or allies, that's a bonus, but if your allies turn that's a nasty surprise.
Doubly nasty when they turn against you precisely because you were spying on them.
At least it won't be a surprise though... since you were spying on them, so you'll know its coming.
Allied countries should of course maintain tabs on each other, but it hardly needs to rise to the level of tapping your closest allies cell phones to be effective.
Which, of course, is a fallacy because NSA is currently very short on popularity.
Ezekiel 23:20
Because none of them would ever DREAM of spying on anyone, right? Jesus-On-A-Moped, every nation spies on every other nation to the extend that they can do so and have done for the last few thousand years at least and will likely always do so.
German companies are some of the biggest arms dealers in the world and have sold arms to regimes that are hostile to the US.
Nice joke.
Germany lags the USA and Russia in arms sales. Even the numbers can be tricky with smaller nations e.g. the UK firms doing very well out of US needs during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
> Other nations can distrust anything they wish, but they have not other useful alternatives than to deal with us, they are our bitches.
That is true in case of some technologies like chips which are expensive to independently develop for less rich/advanced nations. But a good deal of software stuff is quite replaceable, with minimal pain. There are open source solutions or foreign services that are only slightly behind proprietary or US hosted solutions/services. The current surveillance situation simply incentivizes the alternatives and bridges that gap.
Peru did an open source requirement for government work some time ago and other governments were looking at similar stuff. Microsoft wrote that famous letter, 12 years ago, defending proprietary companies; something which is quite indefensible now.
http://opensource.org/docs/msF...
They simply did not have enough incentives until now. This isn't rocket science; its mainly a policy decision. China is developing its own Linux-based OS and has already replaced western social media services and search engine with its own etc. etc.
There is already that project that this will cost us $180 Billion in the near future.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/...
Let's see if it will bear out.
We aren't playing a game of "who is morally superior". We're talking about whether the US has a reasonable national security interest in spying on Germany, and it does, as long as Germany remains a large exporter of advanced weapon systems.
West/Germany opened its telco system up the NSA, GCHQ - with that would have come very few conditions - Germany would not spy on the US and UK.
The US would help Germany with a few unrelated mil projects and other systems or hardware.
Germany knew it was a one way agreement but to have German staff supporting junk encryption and help track German firms is getting to be a hard sell.
German political leaders have to work out if they want to share conversations with 5++ other nations and their contractors. Or will German political leaders support German jobs, German energy needs, exports, needed imports and German entrepreneurship long term.
The US can go on selling the junk encryption and offering mil support. Sooner or later other nations will do their own math and wonder what lost trade deals are worth vs shared access to some results of global junk encryption.
Will the German brands that lost huge long term deals have a say this time around or will the German telcos win again?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's a troll. I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster actually gets pouty about "Americans" too and wrote that in some attempt at sarcasm or humor.
"agrees to it or likes it" is kind of hard to work via German telcos without local support. Long term its down to the elected political leaders of Germany to ponder their exports role.
As for other "exporters" you may recall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... or
Domestic audiences in the EU want their value added high skilled export jobs. They are tired of seeing their very public expensive trade missions return empty handed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's a troll. I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster actually gets pouty about "Americans" too and wrote that in some attempt at sarcasm or humor.
You, and the AC above, are probably right. Poe's law and all that. Of course the corollary to that law is it doesn't actually work unless there really are people who genuinely believe what is being parodied. That includes some of our beloved moderators, in fact; this troll was at +1 when I replied.
And from where I am standing that also includes some of people shaping foreign policy, because the "eff you, we can do whatever we want" attitude is pretty much what the US project internationally.
I appreciate that this is not the opinion of most, or even all that many, Americans. But being a nominal democracy has the flip side that the People have a collective responsibility and accountability for allowing their elected leaders and diplomatic corps to misrepresent them so. This is not a new thing.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
lol...I guess PT Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Angular Ferkel might be annoyed that they're tapping her phone, but she's pretty unlikely to throw in her lot with that baboon-faced untermensch Putin.
Seriously. These are senior politicians, not teenagers.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not all court orders are legal, ignoramus. If the judicial branch goes against the constitution, all that means is that they're complicit in the crimes against the American people.
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She doesn't have to ally with the Russians, all she has to do is refuse to lift a finger to facilitate some trade dispute; decide to prioritize meetings with diplomats from other countries, not bother to pursue some treaty or other the US thinks is important for it to have an impact.
Seriously. These are senior politicians, not teenagers.
Right. Teenagers aren't as corrupt. :-p
In all seriousness though, they are human beings like the rest of us. They remember favors, and they remember those that have embarrassed them. They may set aside grudges when politically necessary but will absolutely act on them when ever they can 'get away with it'.
Okay, so how much of what the NSA did is clearly unconstitutional? The Fourth Amendment says the government may not do unreasonable searches and seizures. The NSA, AFAIK, seized nothing. It took as much metadata as it could about emails, but is that unreasonable? It's like noting down addresses at the Post Office, in that the routing data cannot be private. They recorded the contents of the emails automatically, with no human seeing them except under court order (and individual employees breaking the law and frequently getting away with it). They weakened the security of US cryptosystems, but I don't see anything in the Constitution about that.
In short, while I consider some NSA actions to be heinous, and likely violating various laws, I don't see anything specific that was clearly unconstitutional.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The Fourth Amendment says the government may not do unreasonable searches and seizures. The NSA, AFAIK, seized nothing.
If you were going to use lawyer logic, you shouldn't have bothered replying. If this sort of technology had been used against the founding fathers, it would have been unconstitutional.
It took as much metadata as it could about emails, but is that unreasonable?
Yes.
It's like noting down addresses at the Post Office
No, it's not. You cannot compare data to mail. The actual data is no less private than the "metadata" (*Which is just data!*), so why not collect that, too? How is that any more private? It isn't; not in the case of data. I expect that data that is sent over the Internet (Whether it's deemed "metadata" or not.) be left alone by worthless government thugs; I want it to be private from them. I do not expect that no one reads the text on the front of mail.
They recorded the contents of the emails automatically, with no human seeing them except under court order
Doing something automatically doesn't make anything better. Tons of malware operates automatically, but that doesn't make it okay. My privacy and the constitution are being violated regardless of whether humans are reading the data (not "metadata").
As for court orders, that court is just a piece of shit rubberstamping court. Fuck them.
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If this sort of technology had been used against the founding fathers, it would have been unconstitutional.
Or rather, its unconstitutionality would have been more explicit. In any case, it's still pretty damn clear that it's unconstitutional to gather everyone's communications, if you care at all about the spirit of the constitution. Comparing data to mail isn't going to help.
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