Slashdot Mirror
German Intelligence Traded Citizen Data For NSA Surveillance Software
An anonymous reader sends news that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, was so impressed with the NSA's surveillance software that they were willing to "share all data relevant to the NSA's mission" in order to get it. "The data in question is regularly part of the approved surveillance measures carried out by the BfV. In contrast, for example, to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BfV does not use a dragnet to collect huge volumes of data from the Internet. Rather, it is only allowed to monitor individual suspects in Germany -- and only after a special parliamentary commission has granted approval. ... Targeted surveillance measures are primarily intended to turn up the content of specific conversations, in the form of emails, telephone exchanges or faxes. But along the way, essentially as a side effect, the BfV also collects mass quantities of so-called metadata. Whether the collection of this data is consistent with the restrictions outlined in Germany's surveillance laws is a question that divides legal experts."
One thing people don't seem to understand is that networks (phone, IP, etc) are not private. They aren't designed to be, they were never meant to be. In fact, they were designed for a complete opposite purpose: so that nodes on the network could exchange information freely and without prejudice. The concept of security on a network was added later (poorly) and is antithetical to the purpose of network communications.
Therefore, just assume that whatever information you are sending out on a communication network is being captured or consumed by any other node on the network.
Can I have data on the whole of Sweden in return, please? Actually, no, dragnet operations are immoral... I'll stick to women aged between 18 and 34. Thanks!
(Nobody believes this was the nature of the exchange. This is merely what was written down. Humans are rationalising creatures, not rational creatures, and will formulate official-sounding bullshit in support of anything. Why was Germany really willing to share this data?)
I find this a little surprising. The NSA might have some great spy tools, but some of the most incredible programmers and IT people that I have ever known are German.
One would think that they could not only build an NSA type system, but do it better.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Every time I hear some political pundit on TV talking about the evils of communism and the police states of the old Soviet bloc I am reminded of crap like this and I laugh out loud. The more time that passes from the fall of communism the more 1984 becomes reality and not in fascist dictatorships or communist countries like Orwell predicted but in the so called democratic countries of Western Europe and North America. I wonder what Orwell would have made of that?
This all shows: the Chancellor's reaction back then "Das geht gar nicht" was just empty posturing, and actually she (and her government, staff and party) don't give a rat's ass about anyone's privacy.
Whatever's needed to cling to power, I suppose.
(Yeah, yeah. That's the BfV, not the Merkel, and all that. You expect any "real" consequences? Thought so. Predictable, ain't it?)
This reminds me of people trading baseball cards, only scarier.
It's not like the Germans to employ Gestapo tactics.
What people need to understand about the current security and surveillance industry is that it is, first and foremost, a business. The business of keeping the now tens of thousands of people involved in permanent pensionable employment.
I'm not simply talking about the bonanza of outsourcing, supply contracts, and R&D being enjoyed by companies in the security industry supply chain -- though this is a factor as well obviously. I'm talking about the entire attitude of the 100% government employees who ultimately sit at the center of this process. A generation of managers and "leaders" in the Western world has been raised on an ideology of "Marketism", to believe in "markets", "customers", "stakeholders", "competitiveness", "trading partners", "contracts", and "global synergies", even when such concepts have utterly no place in the work they are charged with carrying out.
Case in point: This story. Why would a domestic intelligence agencies actually hand over that most precious of all intelligence resources data, to a FOREIGN rival intelligence agency. Even in the globalist dreamland of one happy Western Civ family, such a move makes little and less sense. But in the world of "Marketism", this is simply "doing business", "making a deal", making an "optimal tradeoff". All notions of basic fundamentals, rationalism, or common sense is secondary to the Cargo Cult drive to act as though your organisation is some kind of stock brokerage -- complete with "performance bonuses" for yourself of course. Sadly, most employees by this stage do not even require financial incentive. They have reached the point where they want to engage in these ridiculous actions, as they have internalized the ideology.
And this is an ideology. It's infected our society's professional classes from top to almost bottom. A belief that the principals of the "Markets" are universal, omni-applicable, aspirational and virtuous in all circumstances. It is now the religion of the western professionals, and unbelievers are not smiled upon. Such a mindset might be suited to industries in finance or industry -- though even this is an increasingly dubious proposition -- but it is clear that applying them to public services and now even state security services is calamity now transcending utter insanity.
I believe we are approaching peak Marketism. The dogma has become too pervasive, too obvious, too familiar, and the buzzwords are all losing their power, even as modern society loses its momentum. Hopefully we will see the pendulum swing away from this Marketist cult, but if it does, you can expect the three or four generations raised on, and ultimately paid by, this ideology to launch an almighty campaign to maintain their ascendancy. They had better hope they won't have "rationalized" their ability to do so in the meantime.
"In my opinion the reality of some rogue terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear bomb and detonating it in a population center is quite real."
Classic scaremongering, but the most likely scenario here is NSA spies on German political machine, US shapes German politics to be compliant to US wishes. Democracy lost in Germany, German business undermined, unfair trade agreements pushed through.... etc.
*Not* terrorist organization obtains nuclear weapon by Hotmail, NSA taps all Hotmail, spots threat, sends data to BfV, who arrest terrorist.
I am not familiar with any German software companies other than Software AG and SAP (both which produce uniformly terrible software).
Then you haven't looked very hard. Plus there are tons of German companies that make software that are not pure software companies. Siemens for example makes quite a lot of software.
If there is a doubt if it is legal, assume it isn't legal. And approach it that way.
The standard is NOT to collect information, unless so if any OTHER data is collected, it is illegal to do so.
Just follow the idea of what the law was intended for and it becomes clear. When in doubt, do NOT collect the data.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Lets be clear about this, its not accidental snooping by some sort of sentient 'network'.
NSA has been faking certificates, Backdooring encryption, faking websites, installing taps into fibre optics around the world, hacking into servers to install back doors, writing malware, blocking encrypted connections force unencrypted fall backs etc. etc.
It didn't accidentally wake up and find it was building 7 massive exabyte class data centers!
"You will also never have "automatic encryption" across the network they way they are designed now"
Thats simply not true, you can exchange a first time key, and to defeat that key exchange, NSA would have to intercept all communications all the time. If it missed the first exchange, it fails, if it missed ANY subsequent exchange, the tap is revealed.
The problem currently is the certificate authorities and key cancel are a back door the NSA uses.
I feel like this is a common deal between various western countries and the NSA. At least, this isn't the first time I've heard of it being made, although I don't recall the context in which I've heard of it in the past.
Coward. Put your name to the article
In recent years we've had several scandals in Germany, NSA being the most recent, that have shown that our intelligence services are pretty much out of parliamentary control. The government is probably in on it, and tries its hardest to keep everything under wraps. The western democracies are firmly on their way to total surveillance states, and modern technology is making it possible. If it can be done, it will be done, laws be damned.
When one TLA deals with another, apparently "metadata" suddenly becomes a valuable asset as "data".
Yet when the TLA deals with the citizenry, they insist that "metadata" isn't data.