Slashdot Mirror
German Intelligence Spying On Allies, Recorded Kerry, Clinton, and Kofi Annan
cold fjord writes: According to Foreign Policy, "The revelation that Germany spies on Turkey, a NATO member, should dispel any notion that spying on allies violates the unwritten rules of international espionage. ... For nearly a year, the extent of NSA surveillance on German leaders ... has drawn stern rebuke from the German political and media establishment. ... Merkel went so far as to publicly oust the CIA station chief in Berlin. 'Spying among friends is not at all acceptable,' Merkel said. ... [C]alls made by Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were accidentally recorded. ... 'It's a kind of delightful revelation given the fact that the Germans have been on their high horse.' Christian Whiton, a former ... State Department senior advisor, added that the report on German spying is a perfect example of why rifts over intelligence among allies should be handled quietly and privately." The Wall Street Journal adds, "Cem Özdemir, the head of the Green party and a leading German politician of Turkish descent, told Spiegel Online it would be 'irresponsible' for German spies not to target Turkey given its location as a transit country for Islamic State militants from Europe." Further details at Spiegel Online and The Wall Street Journal."
...nation states are always a bunch of hypocritical jerks.
Color me incredibly unsurprised here - every nation state is built upon a foundation of distrust. Distrust of other nation states, and distrust of even their own citizens.
Hell, if people could actually trust each other, we wouldn't *need* nation states in the first place.
Anyone who thought that Germany's protests over surveillance was anything other than hypocritical bullshit is an idiot. All countries spy on all other countries. They always have and they always will.
Why the NSA Tag?
The Speigel article states that the person responsible for making the call recordings of Clinton/Kerry and Kofi Annan was the same person the BND now believes to be a double-agent working for the US. The headline here makes it seem like the German government ordered the BND to do it, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.
the guy who screams loudest about (insert issue here) is hiding their own little sin pad of the same.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The germans keep coming into World of Warcraft as your allies only to look at your gear then they suddenly stop aiding in the battle... They switch sides and use the intel against you... Worst of all they only play gnomes for maximum humiliation. Damn you German Gnomes! Damn You!
" If men were angels, no government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist Papers #51
So... rather than entertain the notion that such spying is simply wrong, the "right" solution is for all the bad actors to keep the issue amongst themselves, and thereby avoid accountability to or even awareness by their citizens.
In general are people so personally hypocritical that they don't completely reject this pseudo-ethics immediately, due to a perverse perceived "common cause" with this stance?
... 'It's a kind of delightful revelation given the fact that the Germans have been on their high horse.' Christian Whiton, a former ... State Department senior advisor
Yup, Germany stepped off their high-horse and dived right into our cesspool. But just because everyone is violating our fundamental civil liberties en-mass doesn't make it any less evil.
The only thing this tells us is what our threat model should have been from the start.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
doveryai no proveryai
Life is not for the lazy.
And you can bet the info on that came from some agency in the States that is sick and tired of Germany playing the victim. A little bit of screaming and political ballyhooing over something like this is expected, but they've ridden it for way too long... time wean them with a little sour milk.
The fundamental rule of spying is not that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail.
It's that you are not supposed to get caught doing it.
It's a sad state of affairs when two supposedly first rate intel agencies get caught.
'Spying among friends is not at all acceptable,' Merkel said
And I doubt very much Turkey is a true friend of Germany: it's a economical, immigration and to a certain extent, religious threat to Germany - or at least perceived as such by a sizeable part of the German population. It's also a liability, as it's capable of singlehandedly dragging Germany into the huge Iraqi and middle-eastern quagmire if it starts to get involved and calls on NATO members to provide help.
Turkey just happens to be a member of NATO like Germany, is all. That doesn't make the two friends.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The Germans spy on the United States and other NATO countries?
Yea, so?
If Kerry is dumb enough to have sensitive conversations in ways others can monitor, then the Germans need to listen. Even as a USA citizen, it matters not to me. Please, listen in. Just don't cry crocodile tears when we listen to you.
What bothers me about all this is that it's being talked about in public. Everybody used to just accept this and quietly go about their business. Now it's policy to rake your friends over the PR coals for something you already knew was going on? That is seriously troubling to me. Just go encrypted if you don't want the other guy to know what you are "really" thinking. Why all the complaining?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Turkey is a terrorist country...supporting Hamas and other violent Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, preaching a hatred against Jews and others not seen by most other "westernized" countries. Not to mention they have been bombing their own people as well as northern Iraq for years now. They are Europe and the USA's enemy in sheep's clothing.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Do Germans eat crow with bratwurst?
Table-ized A.I.
Which, of course, negates the impact of the story. Oh, wait... it doesn't.
When America needs to save face, we don't need interweb preteens to explain to us what's going on. This is a simple, stately, clearing of the air. Each side can now shut the hell up and get back to serious business.
No true Scotsman? That's convenient. By that logic, Germany is probably not a true friend of the US, given its history of dragging us and others into wars, its recent Soviet connections, and the fact that they were just caught spying on us. So, hey, let's all be frenemies, right?
Achievement Unlockled: Jimmies Rustled.
*zoidberg dance*
...when it became known that the US were bugging her phone. Probably her reaction was "What's the hubbub, it's not like we don't...".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Alliance, n.:
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that
they cannot separately plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Government is for the people, not to control. Transparent government is needed and then spying would be unnecessary. Only murderers have secrets. Nothing about the administration of a country should be hidden.
... and always has.
What makes the NSA revelations unacceptable is not what they're doing but how well they're doing it and how insidious they are at it.
THAT is the issue. Not that they're doing it. EVERYONE IS DOING IT.
The NSA is just really good at it.
Which actually means that what we should be doing is upgrading network security and generally being a good deal more paranoid about how we connect things. I have no interest in telling the NSA what they can and cannot do. For one thing they'll just lie to me if they find my restrictions inconvenient. They see that as their job in fact.
What we need to do is upgrade security. Then the NSA can do whatever they want and it simply won't be worth their time to collect data on people that are not actually threats.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...on the revelation that Turkey spies on Germany and others.
And --particularly-- the precious toned-down reaction. Such as is displayed now, all of a sudden.
Go Turks -- GO!
If they say it was not intentional then we must accept that, right? A small reminder from Senate Hearing, March 2013:
Senator Wyden: "And this is for you, Director Clapper ... Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
Director Clapper: "No, sir."
Wyden: "It does not?"
Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."
Big government is ALWAYS dangerous to individuals and their liberty because it is a huge concentration of power in the hands of a relative few people who are just as imperfect, temptable, and corruptable as the people they seek to rule. When big government seems safe, it is generally because the population is unaware of what it is up to. That same total power, in the hands of the citizens themselves, is less dangerous because it is more diffuse.
Don't be naive. Everyone spies on everyone else, to the extent possible.
...I find the concept of "German intelligence" an oxymoron.
One for me too, thanks Annan.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Cem Özdemir, the head of the Green party and a leading German politician of Turkish descent, told Spiegel Online it would be 'irresponsible' for German spies not to target Turkey given its location as a transit country for Islamic State militants from Europe."
My, my, that is interesting on so many levels.
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
Wyden knew what was going on, he sat in on the closed secret briefings and read the secret reports. He was simply grandstanding to try to create a leak in an embarassing way.
The Speigel article states that the person responsible for making the call recordings of Clinton/Kerry and Kofi Annan was the same person the BND now believes to be a double-agent working for the US. The headline here makes it seem like the German government ordered the BND to do it, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.
Oh come on! That's like saying: "The Germans made it seem like the Americans are excited about the NSA's actions. In reality, the NSA is really a triple agent for Germany through Russia, so it really isn't America's fault that the NSA was spying on other countries, right?"
Germany, despite all their protestations about spying, had the infrastructure in place to record calls by other political officials. If they did it accidentally (which sounds like BS), they they are automatically collecting ALL calls and they are hypocrites. If they did it intentionally, they are also hypocrites for targeting allies.
It isn't surprising that they are doing it despite their prior protestations. What is satisfying, however, is that the US will now get to rub their noses in it.
I would say that if spying on other countries is to be subject to musings of there being "unwritten rules" about the vague notion of espionage, then I think the notion of conspiracy might as well be invoked if member states cooperate in spying on each other. So espionage wouldn't be this simple normal and harmless thing some people make it up to be.
...are nowhere near insanely high threshold deployed by U.S. counterparts.
Hypocritical? Hypocrisy has a certain connotation of "sincerity in insincerity", that is hypocrites tend to have a certain amount of belief in their falsenesses. They don't necessarily think they are outright lying.
The German 'government' bullshit you are talking about is only just very basic public relations and damage control for the populace only.
And most people saying the bullshit may be very much uninformed or misinformed about the truth, even at what is considered by the general public as the "highest levels of states". It is supposed to make them look more sincere, although most of them being already so obviously corrupted and stupid, I don't suppose people oblivious to this, would see a difference with that.
The NSA, CIA, DHS, TSA, local law enforcement, various ethnic groups when one of their own is killed, etc?
Government hasn't stopped tribalism and in fact has created a few more. Unlike normal tribalism however these ones haven't been recieving equal treatment in regards to their tribal misdeeds.
EVE online now :)
States are not people. States can't be friends with eacother any more two cars can be friends with eachothers.
All governments should stop all spying on anyone who is not a direct suspect of severe criminal activities.
As soon the BND realized whom the recorded, higher officials ordered the recording to be destroyed. So it's really the same???
Why it got to be like that? - If nation states cannot trust each other then we *need* also something else, wouldn't we?
Your statement sounds like it was, is, and will be forever just exactly that way.
If I had to sune it up, I have great empathy for the poor German linguist that had to lsiten to hours and hours of John Kerry droning and droning and droning. That has to be in the realm of waterboarding. Whoever you are sir or m'am: das tut mir leid!
Actually, if you look closely, you'll find that the germans protesting loudest are also protesting against domestic surveillance.
See, amongst others:
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/
etc.
We're not hypocrites, we're complaining about both our own government and yours ;-)
I suppose everyone, corporate, nation state, whatever... spies on everyone in this brave new world... whatever really matters comes down to civil liberties.
What nation state lets me do what I desire? Clearly not the one I'm in now anyway.
What with all kinds of inter-country intelligence sharing deals being reality, it could very well be that whatever information the Germans dug up was actually wanted by, for example, the NSA, but obviously couldn't be directly obtained by them legally.
Yes, it is well-known (and I certainly knew it) that Wyden is a grandstanding jerk who already knew in advance the correct answers (EVERY competent lawyer knows to always know the answer to any question you lob at a witness in court to avoid being surprised). This fact, however, has no bearing at all on the fact that Clapper directly lied under oath about the matter to decieve the American people. This displays an attirude and a default behavior toward the people of the country.
There was NO need for Clapper to lie. Had I been in the "hot seat" I would have said something along the lines of "Senator, this entire line of questions involves classified matters of sources and methods of intelligence matters which I will happily discuss with you in a closed hearing but which it is inappropriate to discuss here" - that's the sort of answer the pros used to use in public forums when grandstanding politicians tried to "out" classified matters in public hearings. The fact that Clapper's automatic response was to lie under oath to the Senate and the public is ... disturbing and unprofessional. Even "Clapper-apologists should at least be alarmed that Clapper's staff appear to have completey failed him in whatever briefings and prep work they did with him pre-hearing.