German woman uses an AirTag to find a government arm that doesn't exist | Hacker News Reader

German woman uses an AirTag to find a government arm that doesn't exist

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42 pointsschlowmo15 comments

A longer article by Lilith Wittmann (the "German woman") herself can be found here [0] or you could listen to the detailed and entertaining interview on the podcast Logbuch:Netzpolitik [1], unfortunately both only in German language.

[0] https://lilithwittmann.medium.com/bundesservice-telekommunik...

[1] https://logbuch-netzpolitik.de/lnp419-und-aehnlich-verschwor...

I'm convinced this is a non-story. She didn't prove the existence of the alleged secret government organisation "Bundesservice Telekommunikation", but rather that the system to protect government organisations and their staff from possibly hazardous letters works as intended.

She claims that the fact that the letter she addressed to the allegedly not existing secret org was redirected to a government organisation in another city proves that the secret one exists.

But she conveniently doesn't mention that the org where the air tag letter ended up is specifically the authority which watches and investigates fringe groups like neo-nazis, terrorist sleeper cells, conspiracy cults, etc.

The idea that the redirection of the letter from Berlin (to Cologne) is of significance is quite ignorant as well. Because Germany isn't as centralised as for instance France or England, where almost all government organisations are in the capital. In Germany, they're all over the country.

Using Occam's razor, what happened here is clearly:

1. She sends an envelope containing an electronic device with a battery addressed to the "secret organisation" which only is rumoured to exist in fringe and conspiracy communities, which allegedly hides behind another, officially acknowledged organisation with a publicly known address. This is akin to someone sending a strange, possibly dangerous envelope to "Bill Gates 5G Vaccine Mind Control HQ, Whitehouse, Washington D.C."

2. She tracks the airtag and finds out that it has ended up not in Berlin at the alleged "public front" of the secret organisation in Berlin, but rather in Cologne at the "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz", the org watching fringe groups.

3. The envelope was clearly scanned and flagged as a possible threat, e.g. a mail bomb / anthrax letter. Or simply a device containing a battery sent without the appropriate warning labels on the outside. The fact that she addressed to an alleged "secret organisation" only known in conspiracy circles probably triggered the redirection to the German authority which deals with such threats.

4. The envelope was processed in Cologne by specifically trained staff at special facilities at the organisation officially tasked with handling such things.

Hence my believe that this is a non-story - and it hasn't been picked up by any serious major news outlets in Germany, not even those famous for their investigative journalism. Of course this will be taken as "proof" by the conspiracy theorists as well.

While I don't think there's anything super sustentative in the blogpost itself pretty much the exact same thing happened in Husum a few years ago. Fictitious agency with a unassuming name (Federal agency for telecommunication statistics) turned out to be operated by the BND. Intelligence operating under nondescript aliases isn't exactly equivalent to 5g conspiracies.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BND-Au%C3%9Fenstelle_Husum

Oh, no doubt that intelligence gathering operations are almost always made to look nondescript and not what they are, especially nowadays with Google Maps and such. Everyone who's seen a war / spy movie will know this.

The difference being that the alleged secret organisation she claims to have proven to exist, is to conspiracy circles not just a "listening outpost" but much more sinister and powerful. Hence my comparison with the 5G mind control theories.

You might have a point, and clearly are more experienced than I am about the inner workings of the german gov but, if they redirected what might be a dangerous letter, shouldn't they have sent it to another less bureaucratic institution instead of a random office where people would be affected for whatever dangerous stuff that's in there?

You're missing the plot twist: The exact point she (I think deliberately) left out: The letter didn't end up at some "random office" - it ended up exactly where such letters would be expected to end up.

"Such a letter" meaning, a letter which had a "to" address of an allegedly existing sinister government org, contained a tracking device and looked like it was put together by a mentally unstable person.

Of course, whoever actually received this letter would get the impression that it was sent by a person or group worth looking into by employees of the BfV - the exact, correct organisation, based in Cologne, that watches these types of fringe groups.

Nothing surprising happened here. She probably knows it and that's why she is making an effort to have it appear like the place her letter ended up at was "random". But it wasn't random whatsoever. It was the logical place her and similar letters will end up.

Why does the article call her "German woman" as if that was her job, or as if she accidentally found this? She's a professional security researcher.

Factually or self-described?

Neither.

You can hire her by the hour, but she explicitly won't do penetration tests or audits for pay.

https://de.linkedin.com/in/lilith-wittmann

When I read that it had something to do with the constitution protection office I knew it had to be a front for the Interior ministery. It just made sense. Really makes you wonder how many more fronts are there waitingto be discovered

She sent a letter to a government address famous in fringe conspiracy circles, containing an electronic device. Clearly her letter was flagged as a possible threat and redirected to the proper authority equipped to deal with such envelopes. Think like someone sending a strange electronic device to the Whitehouse.

I am sorry to say I feel this seems like cosplay journalism.

I don't know if she specifies it but, did she track it along the way? Also, it's just an airtag, why would it be sent to the constitution protection office directly and not to another department of the interior ministry (i.e EOD or any other place). Everything about this sounds weird tbh

I don't follow why you think anything about this is weird. I tried to explain that what happened here was what anyone with a little knowledge about Germany and its government agency would expect to happen. She either feigns ignorance in order to make this look like huge story, or she's really so ignorant as to not know that not all government agencies in Germany are seated in Berlin. She should have done more research.

The original German Medium article linked in this article does not mention using an Airtag at all?

There's a newer post on medium by her which mentions the AirTag [0]. Sorry I didn't spot that myself when I linked to the older medium post in an earlier comment.

[0] https://lilithwittmann.medium.com/bundesservice-telekommunik...

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