Comment by sentenza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sentenza | Hacker News Reader

I think this one hit home. Judging from what I can see right now, these revelations have stirred up some unrest among EU politicians[1], most noticeably among the generally US-friendly right. Probably the most significant consequence of this is that it will now definitely be a hot issue for the German election, which is held in autumn. There are three likely outcomes:

One possibility is that German politicians take a stand against surveillance while campaigning, making promises, thus causing Germany to become more of a pro-privacy hardliner. This would be a good outcome.

Another possibility is that mainstream politicians fail to do so, but the Pirate Party will manage to get the 5% necessary to enter parliament, thus needling them for years to come. This would also be good.

The third possibility is that mainstream politicians will ignore it and the Pirate Party will fail, causing the political leadership to see the "privacy vote" as negligible. This would be bad for both Germany and Europe.

[1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=...

Or the fourth possibility: the reason Germany was the target of so many signal's intelligence requests is because the BND(The Federal Intelligence Service) outsourced surveillance of islamic extremism (or anything else) to avoid legal complications arising for whatever prohibitions Germany has on domestic surveillance. In which case, at least some politicians will keep quiet because they were likely complicit.

Quite possible. However, as the German multi-party system has plenty of opposition parties, at least one of them is clean in this and will try to use this to gain votes and raise hell.

All mainstream German parties (CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD, Gruene) are strongly "atlanticist", lack "Zivilcourage" and would rather defer to the US than work for the privacy interests of their German voters. In the light of this, it's unlikely that we will see more than luke-warm, fig-leaf protest

Can you go into more detail || provide links? Thanks!

The only concrete thing I've seen is the information on Boundless Informant. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-in... Which shows that Germany was a rather large target of NSA surveillance.

The rest is pure speculation. First, is NSA surveillance in Germany actually disproportionate or did the leaked slides not account for population differences. Maybe, but according to the slides, there are on the order of as many intercepts in China as Germany. So lets assume its not erroneous.

Why does the NSA have a disproportionate interest in Germany? Are they of massively more geopolitical significance than their neighbors or does the USA have a dearth of insight into their foreign policy thinking via back channels? I'd say thats more likely to describe France with its Security Council seat and less strong working relationship with the US.

Is the NSA engaged in massive economic espionage? Possible, but I can't imagine that accounts for enough as that would likely be rather targeted.

So the last reason I can think of is counter-terrorism (one of the NSA's main focuses). Mohammed Atta was part of a cell in Hamburg after all. Ok, but why Germany and not say Denmark or France which both have similar populations you might expect(rightly or wrongly) to be under similar surveillance? As someone pointed out on HN a while ago, Denmark does extensive surveillance and telephone monitoring themselves. I'd guess France does too. Does Germany? I honestly don't know, but given the German's focus on privacy and the legacy of the Stasi, I certainly could see it being a problem and being easier to outsource to the NSA.

Yeah, answer is geopolitics. Germany is main country that wants united EU. UK+US don't want that, because united EU is big threat. Think what could happen if EU start connecting more on euroasia (Russia, China, India). From American point of view it would be fatal (one big territory they can't control), but for the rest of the world it would be, well, good. So, Americans are playing double game: be good with allies and keep them weak (remember Greece?).

Unfortunately, our (German) current government - which will in all likelyhood be the next German govt too simply does not have the balls to take a firm stand.

Germany is pretty pro-privacy, but they still signed the "safe haven" agreement with the US which more or less allows US companies to do anything with the data of German citizens, local laws be damned.

However, I believe Ms Merkel has had some colorful things to say in private about the slick Mr Obama who came over on a visit just a week ago. Must be nice to learn that he was blabbing about his high ethical standards while at the same time his spies were wiretapping her communications.

The politicians might say nasty things and express outrage in public but nothing will change. EU is still in a recession hell and they're nothing Washington can't soothe over with a few checks.

Cash rules everything around me. CREAM get the money, dolla dolla bill yall.

Sadly true. The EU is not held accountable by the media, and nobody (or 95% of the voters) knows who is doing what. Without voters caring every government can do what it pleases.

If you thing you know about the EU two easy questions for you: What is the equivalent of a minister in the EU? Name two and their policies.

Answer: qverpgbe-trareny The english wikipedia page does not even list their names. The german does. http://tinyurl.com/pkrllhd These people rule the eu, and only about 1/3 has wikipedia entries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com