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."
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.