German BND Listened to US President Barack Obama for Years | Hacker News Reader

German BND Listened to US President Barack Obama for Years

zeit.de

14 pointsbelter11 comments

If I were a German taxpayer and I learned that they weren’t doing this, I’d be extremely annoyed and wondering what they were spending my money on.

According to the article they did not have the permission from Angela Merkel.

At same time, its kind of ironic, since after the NSA document leaks by Snowden, Angela Merkel raised the issue of being spied on by the USA directly with Obama...

Obama was security conscious enough to give up his Blackberry in 2009. What does this imply for Trump, who seemingly scorns security precautions and opsec?

https://images.axios.com/9HepTmPSMv2JW9mvFYfOeHG1oqY=/2023/0...

Alt text: Photo of classified documents stored in one of President Trump's bathrooms.

Fun fact: During the Mar-a-Lago search, the FBI had to use agents with appropriate high-level security clearances. Some of the documents were so sensitive they were marked Top Secret/SCI. This is normally even more restricted level than just Top Secret.

All FBI agents are cleared TS/SCI.

Given that "SCI" stands for "sensitive compartmented information", I bet they had to find agents currently read into certain "compartments", or read new agents into those "compartments".

That is not true. Only if assigned to intelligence or national security programs...

Which one way or another is most of what the agency does, and which is why all Special Agents must hold that clearance.

They even say so publicly.

https://fbijobs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/Special_Agen...

My previous statement was imprecise. They need to be eligible but only those assigned to intelligence, counterintelligence, or national security roles are actually granted access to specific SCI compartments.

The article below mentions the use of taint teams, meaning only agents with appropriate clearances, need to know, and role assignments served on these teams. So not every FBI agent present on the operation looked at classified materials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_search_of_Mar-a-Lago

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