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Comment by julianpye | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget that the 9/11 attacks were planned out of Hamburg and that some of the WTC bombers of 1993 were living and captured in Germany.

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How is that even relevant? How does that justify the interception of 500 million messages per month?

It simply shows that there had been ongoing planning activities by terrorist cells in Germany.

That comment simply shows that while the lights may be on, there is nobody home.

Why the downvote? The cell planned and coordinated with AQ while they were living in Germany and the BND did not detect their activities. Since then the US intensified their activities in Germany. I am not saying this is fair for Germany or not, but it's simply a logical conclusion from the US point of view in light of activities such as the patriot act and the creation of the DoHS.

I did not downvote you, only verbally if you will. But I will elaborate, to me it sounded as if you were saying that the NSA is only ever going after terrorists [whatever that even means, considering activists also seem to fall under that umbrella], so no matter what they do, it must be required to fight terrorism. By definition. [that's a great way to create fiscal black holes, but rather shoddy reasoning]

So why was COINTELPRO not required to keep the US from being destroyed by, uhh, black supremacists? The CIA did it, it's concerned with "criminals", that's in the name -- good enough, no?

The cell planned and coordinated with AQ while they were living in Germany and the BND did not detect their activities.

Yes, and as I said elsewhere, I can totally see why they wouldn't leave anything serious that could possibly be a threat to the US to German intelligence. But I still don't see how 500 million messages per month could figure into this, unless they are spying on everyone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who visited a jihadist website...?

If guessing how much it costs to wash all windows in Seattle is a normal job interview question for some, maybe they can help? I wouldn't even know where to begin, myself. But 500 million seems like a lot no matter how I look at it.

Since then the US intensified their activities in Germany.

Oh, so they "intensified it", and that explains everything? 500 million messages, or 500 billion, who cares?

To me that sounds like chocolate rations are up 5%. And I don't mean you, either: without anything to go by, no solid ground to stand on, both of us are pretty much guessing. You inherently trust, I inherently distrust, but I can't see a way for us to find out who the NSA is spying on and why. But even just the acceptance of that annoys me :/

I personally find it problematic that such an infrastructure is set up, because it can be used for industrial espionage (which is also a matter of national security). So anyway, I don't trust :) But my point was just that if the NSA has these surveillance programs all over the world, it should not surprise Germany that they are under stronger observation by them than for example the UK, which operates a CCTV surveillance state and shares all its data with the US.

Yes. I could see not trusting the competence of the BND on this stuff... but 500 million messages per month?

How many phone calls, e-mails and SMS does Germany generate per month in total, by the way? I would assume corporations generate a lot more than individuals, but it seems fucking bad either way.

The BND has a tradition to focus on political extremist groups in Germany, while domestic surveillance in the other large EU countries such as Britain, France and Spain have always had a stronger focus on Islamist groups. So I don't think it's a question of competence, but rather of focus.

The BND has a tradition to focus on political extremist groups in Germany

Which is actually one of the reasons they seem so incompetent, they're not very good at that. [also, did you perchance confuse the BND with the Verfassungsschutz? Not that it matters, the Verfassungsschutz is probably worse than the BND, they help Neonazis more than harming them] Also, BND officials say some hilarious stuff when it comes to computers.

Not the IRA and ETA ?

Some of them were living in New York as well. The 9/11 attackers trained in the United States, but as Saudi nationals they were protected by the Bush Administration.

While the Germans used regular police work to find their own terrorists, we decided to spend more money attacking an unrelated nation than the United States had ever spent on a war before.

So who do you trust more in finding and stopping terrorists? I'll take Germany and competence over America's war profiteering on flimsy pretext any day, thanks.

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