German Federal Prosecutor's office gets involved in the NSA data scandal | Hacker News Reader

German Federal Prosecutor's office gets involved in the NSA data scandal

translate.google.com

186 pointsnilsjuenemann40 comments

Surveillance of Germany: Federal Prosecutor's office gets involved in the NSA data scandal

By Jörg Schindler

Central NSA offices in Fort Meade: spy programs are a case for German jurisprudence

According to SPIEGEL's sources, surveillance by the the American spy service NSA has now also come to the attention of the Federal Prosecutor's office. Information is being gathered in Karlsruhe about the American and British spy programs – a suit against unknown parties has already been filed.

Berlin – the spy affair involving the American spy service NSA has now reached the Federal Prosecutor's office. Located in Karlsruhe and responsible for criminal acts against domestic security, according to SPIEGEL sources the agency is investigating whether the systematic data surveillance of German citizens is a crime involving national security.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor's office confirmed that all available and relevant information about the Prism, Tempora, and Boundless Informant is currently being evaluated. An attempt is being made to construct a "reliable basis in fact". Whether and when the Federal Prosecutor may issue a formal finding is a question that remains open.

However, she stated that even now "criminal prosecutation can be expected in this context." According to SPIEGEL sources, one such suit has already been filed: A resident of Hessen filed suit against unknown parties this week with the State Attorney in Giessen. That makes the NSA scandal an official matter for the German judiciary for the first time.

According to SPIEGEL sources, the surveillance of Germany by the US spy service NSA is more extensive than heretofore assumed. Secret NSA documents reveal that the agency systematically inspects and store a large part of telephone and Internet connection data. According to internal statistics at the spy agency, about 500 million communications connections are monitored in the Federal Republic of Germany each month. The NSA has categorized Germany as a target.

SPIEGEL also reports that the NSA has bugged EU representatives and infiltrated computer systems. The disclosures about the NSA Prism program and the British Tempora program originated from material gathered by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Videoconference with London on Tempora

The British government, whose spy service Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) hosts the data vacuum cleaner Tempora that is aimed at Germany, has in the meantime deviated from their strict policy of silence. In the past week, London responded to a request for information from the German government with the sparse note that communications service operations are never the subject of open discussion. Anyone who wants to know something should contact the British spy service directly – at the appropriate level.

In particular Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger seemed rather taken aback. "Three measly lines", said the FDP party member, are not enough to patch up a scandal of these dimensions.

Now the Foreign Office of the federal government has received an invitation from the Brits to a video conference to be held tomorrow at 4 PM in the British Embassy in Berlin. According to SPIEGEL sources, the Germans will be represented by experts from the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, the Foreign Office, and the Federal Communications Service, among others. In light of the latest revelations, it's said internally, hard questions can be anticipated.

534 words. My invoice will be in the mail. After all the discussion, I went with "target" for "Angriffsziel". In context it really is the best translation.

Thanks for the translation, it was so good that I didn't realize I was reading a translation of an article until right at the end.

Look at the top of Der Spiegel's page: where it says "English" leads to the International Edition. http://www.spiegel.de/international/

"the surveillance of Germany by the US spy service NSA is more extensive than heretofore assumed."

So they knew about it already but made a poor assumption. It would be interesting to know how poor that assumption was.

Post a bitcoin address, and I'll send you a tip.

It's so funny to see all this railing up against NSA and PRISM, while tomorrow, the first of July 2013, the "Bestandsdatenauskunft" will be implemented as law in Germany. A commentator from Die Zeit newspaper tersely summed up the intentionally abstruse wording of the new rules. The law means, “that police and intelligence services will in the future be allowed to obtain extremely personal information about mobile phone users, and do so with the press of a button and without having to face any major legal hurdles”.

Crudely translated it would mean something similar to "Inventory Data Information Act". Parts of the new law are the following:

> With respect to the obligations of the access providers, ISPs with more than 100,000 customers are now required to maintain a “secure electronic interface” in order to minimise the time needed for certain agencies to retrieve information.

The innocuous sounding term, “inventory data”, should not detract from the fact that the issue involves direct access to people’s private lives. “Not only names, addresses and bank account details will be sent to the police. But also the PINs of the mobile phones, and passwords blocking e-mail inboxes and accessing services like Dropbox and dynamic IP addresses”, warned Die Zeit .

Proper english article (I don't know about this source in general, but this one is accurate): https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/11/germ-a11.html

Google translated german articles:

Die Zeit: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_...

Der Spiegel: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...

Netzpolitik.org: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...

The debate about this is astonishing mute on its own, but compared to the NSA, PRISM and TEMPORA public outcry, the debate about the Bestandsdatenauskunft is basically non-existent at the moment.

I'm surprised Germans are not up in arms about it given the Stasi history. They should know better.

Similar-minded agencies in other nations most likely will try to catch up with NSA/PRISM. It is a serious issue and I hope people will not let the NSA scandal be a cover for those initiatives, but an aid to expose them.

Yeah, I saw a demonstration in Stuttgart once against the census - and now they're fine with Bestandsdatenauskunft?

I'm surprised, and also quite disappointed, that only Germany (that I know of) takes the spying on its citizens so seriously. I wish more governments would inquire the legality of the NSA programs, and would dare to take action in case it is ruled illegal.

The government may publicly take a stance against the NSA programs but in reality it not only wishes to, but is actually implementing simmilar programs in Germany (see "Bestandsdatenauskunft"). I doubt that any real action will be taken.

More governments have probably been complicit with the US in one way or another, perhaps in exchange for aid in spying on their own people or other countries.

An English article on these issues. Today from Spiegel Online:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-officials-furi...

Some have called for a suspension of talks on the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement.

And now we start talking about costs to the United States.

And Germany. Free trade is win-win, definitely when two countries are similarity developed.

Not going forward with this would be stupid and benefit no one. It's not even a threat.

I'm not so sure. What if one of those countries is not actually sovereign? What if there is also one-sided industrial espionage happening on a massive scale?

I'm not convinced it's win-win when the game is rigged.

Maybe my reasoning is overly simplistic. Maybe I'm being paranoid. But I'm wary now of every agenda the US is pushing.

You're German, right? (Judging by other comments you've made.)

You can sweat us a lot longer than we can sweat you. You haven't shipped your productive industries to China, you see.

There will be free trade. But don't be surprised if the terms just got a shitload more favorable to Germany. This surveillance thing was boneheaded stupid - I doubt you can really grasp the extent to which Americans really don't understand the independent existence of other countries.

Costs to the US?? What do you mean?? But people have been blathering for weeks on HackerNews that the US spying on anyone who's a foreigner is good and right and expected! Surely they can't have neglected to consider that there's only so long you can fuck with people's liberties, whether within your own borders or without, before the lie is revealed and the system build around it crumbles.

No, I won't buy it. I stand with HackerNews here. Spy on foreigners FTW!

Well, speak for yourself. I'm a part of the community, too, and I certainly haven't noticed myself alone in expressing my outrage.

Guess you missed the sarcasm. I know it's the internet, but I thought I slathered it on pretty thick.

Oh go stick your schadenfreude where the sun don't shine.

Now my (naive?) hopes are a tiny bit higher that the American espionage suspects will get extradited from USA to Germany to face charges and possible punishments.

Edit: has such action EVER taken place?

I don't know if such an action ever took place, but Bush signed a law that will combat extradition of any US service member to a foreign criminal court.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prote...

Also called the "Invasion of the Hague act" since such freeing of US citizens by force might only be possible through an invasion of The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of several international criminal courts and the seat of the Dutch government.

It has happened the other way around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri

Khalid El-Masri is a German citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian Police, and handed-over to the U.S. CIA, whose officers interrogated, sodomized and tortured him. While in CIA hands, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in a black site, interrogated, beaten, strip-searched and subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, tantamount to torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest and torture were a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees whom the CIA has abducted from 2001-2005.

That has not and will not ever happen. If it were the will of the American people, it would still probably not happen. But it will not be the will of the American people. Foreign surveillance is not something that Americans are united against.

I think there have been long standing arrest warrants for Donald Rumsfeld and (maybe) Dick Cheney in Germany for Iraq war crimes, but no extradition. Is this correct, or were some countries just talking about war crimes trials?

I thought Brussels found against at least one of them - but I don't know for sure.

Hahaha. Ask Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, and a whole host of other American bad actors who hesitate to leave the safe confines of the United States nowadays.

Perhaps Germany could create a program of secret renditions to fetch them...

Kissinger was in Germany to watch his favourite soccer club play (Fürth). I'd say that counts as "leave the safe confines of the United States".

He also celebrated his birthday in Fürth in 2012.

I wasn't actually talking about Germany. He does have to avoid countries that have declared him (accurately, in my opinion) a war criminal.

Its nice that at least something happens, but the German Supreme Prosecution Service is not independent from the government as the supreme court is. So if the German government is involved somehow its only eyewash for the crowd and nothing will happen.

At least more media coverage, that is good for mobilizing more people to protest against it.

Keep in mind that the current minister of justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger already held this position under Helmut Kohl, resigned due to her opposition to electronic eavesdropping and submitted a constitutional complaint[1].

Elections will be held in September, though, so it's anyone's guess who'll hold this position a few months from now.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungsbeschwerde

Germany has a constitutional court that is more independent than the U.S. Supreme Court is.

der Spiegel is one of the major German news publications and it has an English site:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/search/index.html?suchbe...

but it might be a couple days behind.

Is there any hope that something tangible is going to come out of that? Given its history it seems more than unlikely that Germany has any abilities of severe actions. Oh well, I am sure they are going to send a detailed list of issues that need to be addressed through "diplomatic channels"...

Germany for obvious reasons has significant power in the EU, killing the free trade agreement and blocking further cooperation on any levels would certainly be possible.

No. And actually my tinfoil theory is, that the federal prosecution is handling this, so that they can take anything PRISM related from local prosecutions, to bundle and bury it as one large package.

Doubtful, the German secret service is dependent on the CIA/NSA to get their job done, they are awfully bad and will help in every way to cover this.

German politics will just bend over making a happy face.

But it will do really severe harm to the image of the US in the German population. A lot of Germans have a love/hate relationship with the US, and this will not go down unnoticed.

It's time to stop global US cyberfascism

Ok. How?

oh, the irony of using Google to translate these....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com