Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns

schwit1 (797399) writes with word that, after revelations that Verizon assisted the NSA in its massive surveillance program, Germany is cutting ties with Verizon as their infrastructure provider. From the article: The Interior Ministry says it will let its current contract for Internet services with the New York-based company expire in 2015. The announcement comes after reports this week that Verizon and British company Colt provide Internet services to the German parliament and other official entities. ... Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said Thursday that Germany wants to ensure it has full control over highly sensitive government communications networks.

Comments

Now it's time for New York to nut up!

[killfixx]

New York and New Jersey.

Verizon has been fucking them for years...hard!

Never thought I'd feel bad for people from Jersey...

Are you getting it yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody wants anything communications-related from the U.S.A. anymore.

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[gatkinso]

What kind of fools would trust their internal government communications to a foreign company in the first place?

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[Mashiki]

Dude, do a traceroute to slashdot or GTFO.

Well I live in Canada, the only time my ISP(teksavvy) routes to the US now is if I'm requesting a US based address. Not even traffic going to europe or asia is routed through the US.

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[ArcadeMan]

The Nazis didn't outsource the creation of enigma to the Americans for a good reason.

Because Americans are bad at math?

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Germany probably thought that the US were their allies . . .

. . . fools, indeed! The US doesn't have any allies any more; just enemies. Or, at least they treat everyone as enemies.

Hell, even the citizens of the US are treated as enemies by their own government . . .

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because none of the routers on the traceroute is in the US, doesn't mean the routing doesn't go THROUGH the US.
http://cablemap.info/

Re:Are you getting it yet?

[HiThere]

FWIW I'm *still* a paranoid freak. I don't believe that ANY centralization of power under the control of humans can be trusted. People are corruptible, and worse, some among them are psychotically driven to seek positions of power. At some point any position of power will fall under the control of one of them, and his (these characters are extremely predominately male) first act will be to extend his current power, and his second will be to increase his immunity to repercussions for his illegal, or at least immoral, actions.

Please note that this doesn't mean I think there is any reasonable way to eliminate such concentrations of power. What it means is that I think it should be made as difficult as possible to reach such a position by political maneuvering and scheming. To this end sometimes I suggest that the holder of such a position should be selected by lottery among those technically qualified. This will produce an inefficient government, as those selected would be less adept at diplomatic negotiations and compromise. OTOH, look at the current congress, and contemplate whether it could do worse. I am bothered by isolated positions of power such as the POTUS, but my real feeling is that they should be devolved into purely symbolic offices, and the real power should vest in some small committee, selected, as suggested above, by lottery....and not from any small pool of candidates.

OTOH, I can see the value of voting, if not of plurality wins voting. So I am also moderately supportive of Instant Runoff Voting or Condorcet Voting. They would clearly be an improvement over the current system, though they would increase the problem of information overload at election time.

As for Germany...I suspect that their motives are basically economic, but this time it's causing them to make the correct decision. They should not trust a foreign country with their governmental communications.

How many of these will it take?

[kolbe]

For their corporate lobbyists to actually get some movement on Capital Hill and attempt to undo this.

Re:wtf forced on beta again?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to evade beta, for now, is to use the URL http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 before you open any other Slashdot page. It's a cookies thing.

This public service announcement was brought to you by Beta Sucks (tm).

Zimmerman telegram?

[mi]

The announcement comes after reports this week that Verizon and British company Colt provide Internet services to the German parliament and other official entities.

Germany should've learned their lesson, when a telegram sent to their Ambassador in Mexico was intercepted by the British — and shared with the US-government.

Had we not obtained that piece of intelligence, the history of the world could've been quite different...

Re:Zimmerman telegram?

[Dasher42]

Yeah and if MI6 had grown a spine and called bullshit on the CIA case for WMD's in Iraq maybe that country would not now be on the cusp of becoming an Islamist Caliphate and 179 British soldiers would not have died what is increasingly looking like pointless deaths. At least the Germans had the good sense to see that the CIA 'evidence' for Iraqi WMDs was a steaming pile of horse manure and the strategic foresight to realize that intervention in Iraq would highly probably become the kind of FUBAR it currently is. Could it be that Germany (and France for that matter) learned some lessons from WWI, WWII and the cold war proxy conflicts that Britain might be well advised to take to heart?

Ummm - they did. In the time between Colin Powell's UN address and the State of the Union address by President Bush, I was able to read links on foreign media where MI6 was warning the CIA and the CIA was passing the warning upward. That's "the facts fixed around the policy" for you: only a tiny minority of the USA's population knew as Bush spoke that he was deliberately using hoaxed information as a pretext for an unjustified war.

Similarly, "full" transcripts of Hans Blix's testimony to the UN about the findings of weapons inspectors in Iraq were carried on CNN and the BBC - but the BBC's was the one actually full. The rest of the world got to see the entire thing; most of the US public had omitted from its media all the most convincing evidence that WMDs in Iraq were a fiction, and no cause for war.

Don't let someone cover their ass at Langley or in DC. The falsification of evidence started from the top.

For the love of God, don't put most of your point

[easyTree]

in the title.

World Cup

[JustinKSU]

For a second I thought Slashdot was starting to get into sports reporting.

Re:Yes.

[easyTree]

No, he's a traitor to his country's attempts to act dishonorably without widespread knowledge. Shame on him.

Re:Is it any different with anybody else?

[timeOday]

The USA is unique in the resources it can devote, and therefore the scale at which it can operate. Which is to say, it is unique.

Re:How is Verizon involved?

[sjames]

If they shared nothing but the name, that would be one thing, but they actually share the same management as far as I know.

A $2 whore is still a $2 whore even if she moves to another country.

De-americanization has officially began

[boorack]

Will be somewhat off-topic but still (somewhat) related.

De-americanization has officially began when Russia signed gas deal with China bypassing dollar. This process started long ago but with this deal it's now official. Things seem to speed up since then. Germany Verizon thing is just another domino piece falling. Regardless of what Americans think of it, I see it as a good thing. Aside from taking (most of the) world of american hegemony, ending of US imperial project can benefit Americans themselves - granted that their (incompetent and incredibly corrupt) government manages to transition from imperial power to ordinary (but better managed) country in orderly way (that is, without inciting WW3).

Message to fellow Americans: you're still one of the most progressive folks in the world (yet NOT the most ones), it's just your fucked up government that sucks, causes mayhem (Ukraine being the last manifestation of this) and blocks your potential. It's time to abandon your imperial/global hegemony policies - you can prosper pretty damn well in a multipolar world (much better than most of the rest). It all depends on you. BUT there are few things to do. You need to bring your fucked-up out-of-control government back in control, forget about american exceptionalism and learn to live in (competitive) multipolar world (ie. do not solve all problem using military or inciting civil wars).

Re:De-americanization has officially began

[AHuxley]

The world has already had near constant regional conflicts via Covert United States foreign regime change actions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Most nations may not want to be at some "plate" allowed crumbs by a 'superpower' if they elect a good party or live under a tame dictator.

Better yet ban the company from the whole country

[mrspoonsi]

If it can be shown that the company is working against the countries interests (company treason?), such as in this case, ban them from all sales in that country. That really would get the attention deserved.

Re:wtf forced on beta again?

[peragrin]

the low tech solution? login. I only see slashdot classic. the conversation view is better, it is easier to follow long threads. The best part? Slashdot classic allows you to login once and keeps you logged in. Mobile and Beta slashdot log me out of the system after every post, If I can login at all.

One would think Slashdot would have tested user logins without someone like 1password or apple keychain providing login every time.

We the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

This story has close to none coverage in Germany.

It's been dug up by a blogger (1) and reblogged by netzpolitik.org (2), who then started to ask questions.

There are some articles gathering up by now, but the big media seems to shush things.
The leading tv-stations (ARD & ZDF) that are publicly funded have no real content regarding this story.
This being said: ZDF does list a story in which the government looks as if it has addressed this problem entirely by itself. Some reuters-bot-written junk. (3)

But this was not the case, the government clearly had no intention to reveal it's ties to Verizon. If it wasn't for the blogger, they wouldn't have had to.
Now they're trying to downplay the story and to make the provided services look like a fallback routine or - even better - like an unused source.

The Fed. Ministry of Interior posted yesterday that it had contacted Verizon in 2010,
telling them they would slowly withdraw from the contract, since the Verizon services were being replaced gradually by a new infrastructure for the Government. (4) ...they forgot to tell us when this would happen, but now it seems like they are ready for the big transition m(

After the internet died last summer, this is a bad joke.

Anyhow:
also yesterday the big coalition has managed to finalize their decision regarding a hearing of E. Snowden.
They hold a majority within the exclusivly formed task force regarding the NSA affair.
They have decided mutually that a hearing can not take place on German soil - given the 'fact' that an extradition treaty with the US is in effect. (5)

1: Daniel Luecking http://medienkonsument.de/
2: https://netzpolitik.org/2014/arbeitserleichterung-fuer-die-nsa-deutscher-bundestag-bezieht-internet-von-us-anbieter-verizon/
3: http://www.heute.de/bund-baut-kommunikationsnetz-neu-ohne-us-partner-verizon-33792814.html
4: https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Kurzmeldungen/DE/2014/06/bund-wechselt-netzbetreiber.html
5: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nsa-affaere-grosse-koalition-verhindert-befragung-von-snowden-a-977742.html