Austria: Vice-chancellor caught on secret video | Hacker News Reader

Austria: Vice-chancellor caught on secret video

bbc.com

44 pointsnovaRom25 comments

"She offers to buy a 50% stake in Austria's Kronen-Zeitung newspaper and switch its editorial position to support the Freedom Party."

Little attention is usually paid to media ownership, yet this nicely shows how crucial it is. I've always found it odd how casual countries are on allowing foreign media ownership. A quick search turned up this: https://www.access-info.org/media-ownership-transparency - apparently, even if one does pay attention, getting the information can be difficult.

This is an interesting conundrum. The govt can't outright pay media to spin a certain narrative (...obviously this happens but it has to go thru abstraction layers to get around laws) meanwhile a foreign entity doesn't really care and can just buy them out.

But the government can make it difficult/impossible to hide the ownership of media. It could even mandate disclaimers, forcing media to declare their owners the same way drug commercials have to state side-effects.

I wonder if we'll not see more scandals like that. New digital interconnected world offers more chances to end political careers just overnight.

The news houses who published a video don’t say anything about who has made the video. But it was very professionally made some two years ago and used now.

Yes. So? People have known for a very long time that Strache and his party are a danger to democracy and human rights. For people with the means and the motive to set this up, it made sense to do it.

> Yes. So?

Independently of condemning what the politician said the media tries to ignore that some “external power” directly orchestrates not only the compromise of the political party but also by carefully selected timing the outcomes of the political life in one european country and even more, in whole Europe.

That secret power is definitely not the media house, they got the whole thing on the plate, carefully prepared. They just serve it.

An everybody pretends that doesn’t matter?

It sure mattered when wikileaks did it.

Wikileaks published leaks. But note: this was not a leak. This was a professionally created and organised blackmail-worthy compromising material given to the media two years after the creation at the point in time to make the biggest possible influence on the European politics and the media turning their head away from even trying to ask which power did that, with which financing and with which agenda.

..."and the media turning their head away from even trying to ask which power did that, with which financing and with which agenda."

what makes you say that?

The original story at: https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/artikel/politik/caught-in-t...

clearly states:

Neither Der Spiegel nor the Süddeutsche Zeitung have any reliable information about the motives of the people who set Strache this trap in 2017 or who they may have been working for.

But one thing is clear following the evaluation of the material and verification of its authenticity by two experts: It is in the public interest to know how Strache and Gudenus, high-ranking representatives of the Austrian government and of their party, responded to dubious advances from a purported oligarch.

I agree that this should be discussed more. But always with the important observation that in this case it's not anti-democrats trying to smear democrats; it's the opposite, it's democrats exposing corrupt anti-democrats.

> t's democrats exposing corrupt anti-democrats.

It is not “democrats” but some hidden power.

After reading the article it seems that at this point no-one knows who is really behind this. Could be a foreign government, could be a comedian, could be another political party,... Or did I miss something?

I think the general consensus seems to be that this was a large-scale operation (the woman groomed Gudenus over half a year or so before the Ibiza meeting) that points to a very professional actor. But yeah, everybody is guessing.

This article guesses at a western intelligence service that wanted to stop intelligence leaks towards Russia: https://diepresse.com/home/innenpolitik/5630280/Woher-kommt-...

How on earth do you know that the smearers are ”democrats”?

Fair enough. Anti-fascist anti-corruption fighters who are possibly not democrats.

BTW, it's not a smear if it's true. Smearing involves false accusations, but nobody denies the authenticity of the video.

Sure, but whoever set the trap obviously did so to control him, not to expose him, or they wouldn’t have waited so long. So there are more corrupt parties to expose.

> whoever set the trap obviously did so to control him, not to expose him

We have no indication that he was controlled, so what are you basing this on?

My guess is that the video was produced as a form of insurance by people who wanted to see if he gets into government, and how bad it really gets. Otherwise they could have leaked the video before the last parliamentary elections. At some point they decided that Strache must go, and it seemed like timing it before the important EU elections would have the biggest impact.

> So there are more corrupt parties to expose.

How does this follow? (Not that it isn't true...)

> what are you basing this on?

Orchestrating and preparing such a complex setup that culminates in the recording of the compromising material 2 years ago.

Then waiting, delivering the material exactly one week ago to the media. The editor of "Spiegel" newspaper personally claims that they received it one week ago and don't know who prepared the whole setup and recorded the video.

It wasn't a small trick: the recording happened on Ibiza at the begin of Summer 2017, involved a "fake daughter of an investor" introduced through the circles of the top politicians involved, a preparation of the huge villa to contain a number of cameras all carefully placed so that during the whole stay the good shots of the politicians can be made, including placing the expensive cars in front of the villa etc.

And then, after the successful recording... waiting two years?

You didn't read my question correctly.

Regarding you questioning the statement "> whoever set the trap obviously did so to control him..." I consider that part of the statement obviously true. Causing somebody to give up his political functions is effectively a kind of control over the person (and more, when the person is the head of the party). What I understand you don't agree is "not to expose him" part, which was also true for whole two years -- an eternity in politics -- the video was made but not used to expose him for two years.

Therefore more interesting than philosophizing about the exact meaning of the words is following what was going on and how it was done:

There is a known relatively recently told story about the most powerful country in the world organizing events to compromise somebody in order to blackmail them:

"Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as formative, stating that the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. Snowden said that when the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered to help in exchange for the banker becoming an informant."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

The scale of this what was used now is many orders of magnitude bigger. You mentioned in your other comment "the woman groomed Gudenus over half a year or so before the Ibiza meeting" and giving a link to the article in German, thanks for that -- so there is at least somebody writing trying to figure out who's behind this. Do you know what is the story mentioned there at the end (used Google Translate):

"And last but not least, the house search in the BAT with all its consequences should be mentioned as a secret service disaster."

The most interesting detail from the article you've linked:

"Above all, the US, which sits in virtually every major intelligence agency, has expressed a great deal of concern that information could flow away to Russia."

> organizing events to compromise somebody in order to blackmail them

Yes, but this is exactly what did not happen here.

> so there is at least somebody writing trying to figure out who's behind this

Of course there is, and claiming that there isn't is just paranoia on your part. For whatever it's worth, here is another one: https://derstandard.at/2000103424380/Die-Drahtzieher-hinter-...

All Austrian and most major German-language news sites should have something along these lines, but you do have to look rather than assume that it doesn't exist.

> "And last but not least, the house search in the BAT with all its consequences should be mentioned as a secret service disaster."

Here is a summary, but only in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BVT-Aff%C3%A4re

Very briefly, a police unit controlled by an FPÖ politician illegally searched the offices of the BVT (the office for constitutional protection and counterterrorism) and seized data, apparently mostly about right-wing extremist networks.

From your "der Standard" link: "In the field of intelligence, it points to the risk that left-wing activists would undertake with such an "operation" - after all, there are payment dates for the rental of the finca, the rental car and the flights that can be found out. Intelligence agencies would not have this problem. They can construct so-called legends, ie false identities. Even if the video were scattered in the activist scene, that does not mean that an intelligence background is excluded. So secret services used again and again confidants to spread content and disguise their involvement."

So some western intelligence agency is still the most probable organizer, and it's not something that any country should be worried about? Even if the guy himself fell in the trap, the construction should be a major news topic. And it surely isn't, but I see that it's at least mentioned, thanks for that.

The timing is beyond curious, but it almost seems to be suspicious that no news orgs are pointing it out.

For a longer read with more background and details, here is the original writeup by Süddeutsche in English: https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/artikel/politik/caught-in-t... (and not paywalled, unlike the German version)

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