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German Intel Agency Helped NSA Tap Fiber Optic Cables In Germany
An anonymous reader writes Der Spiegel has written a piece on the extent of collaboration between Germany's intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the U.S.'s National Security Agency (NSA). The sources cited in the piece do reveal BND's enthusiastic collusion in enabling the NSA to tap fiber optic cables in Germany, but they seem inconclusive as to how much information from the NSA's collection activity in the country is actually shared between the NSA and BND. Of note is evidence that the NSA's collection methods do not automatically exclude German companies and organizations from their data sweep; intelligence personnel have to rectro-actively do so on an individual basis when they realize that they are surveilling German targets. Germany's constitution protects against un-warranted surveillance of correspondence, either by post or telecommunications, of German citizens in Germany or abroad and foreigners on German soil.
Wow, this is an impressive loophole that the NSA and BND have found. The BND can't spy on Germans, and the NSA can't spy on Americans, but they CAN spy on each other, and then share whatever they find.
The sharing doesn't even have to be official, the BND and NSA could just claim that the information was "leaked" to them by some anonymous 3rd party, allowing them to gain all the intelligence they wanted on their own citizens without actually spying on them directly.
Sadly, this kind of stuff has been modus operandi for Germany for two decades now. You see, there's a whole generation that was raised on the concept of "our american friends". And that generation is in power now.
You see it in Merkel, who is basically a lapdog to America.
You see it in our financial industry, which was basically sold bridges by "our american friends" - guess who sent 400 million to Lehman Brothers literally (not metaphorically, literally) the day before they collapsed? Correct, a german bank.
And you see it in your secret services, which are basically a laughing stock the world over, but try to pretend they can play with the big boys. When in fact they can't even convince our own government members to actually use the cryptophones that they developed for them. *facepalm*
We are doing some really cool stuff over here, but our people in charge are idiots.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
These people are doing the same things that were the very basis of oppression of any and all freedoms on German soil in these two regimes. It is like these cretins _want_ that state of affairs back.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Now try to say Federal Intelligence Service. In German they drop the spaces between nouns that form a new whole, but you have similar syntax in spoken English, you just put spaces between the nouns when you write them.
He's an American. Just knowing that there used to be two Germanies puts him in the top 5%.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Stop lying. Or at least have the decency to lie only to yourself and do that in private.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
These people are doing the same things that were the very basis of oppression of any and all freedoms on German soil in these two regimes. It is like these cretins _want_ that state of affairs back.
They want that level of power, but since it's *them* this time, they'll only use it for "good" (ie. what *they* want).
Of course, they neglect to realise that's exactly what the Nazi's thought.
>> our prime minister Rutte (in NL) got mad about his phone not being tapped ...
That, sir, is impossible. We monitor everything ! We record every phone call !
An official not being listened to ? I call BS.
aaaaaaa