German government plans use of counter-espionage against U.S. | Hacker News Reader

German government plans use of counter-espionage against U.S.

spiegel.de

31 pointsadventured23 comments

The title is wrong. A correct translation from German would be "Germany plans to to defend against USA spying."

I don't understand the article, but does that mean they'll at least start getting rid of the us bases? I keep waiting for that to happen. It's the most visible and real thing they can do in my opinion. I'm not sure how anything else can be viewed as progress if they're happy still happy to host the camps and equipment.

> does that mean they'll at least start getting rid of the us bases?

It doesn't talk about that. And I doubt it's going to happen b/c literally nobody of the current European politicians has the balls to piss off the US (as for France, Obama has declared their president to be the new lap dog, recently, calling it another "special relationship" and saying he couldn't choose between the UK and France, would he be asked to). It's really a freak show nowadays.

Not only that, but these bases usually also have a non-trivial contribution to the local economy. Especially in smal(ler) towns, I'd expect there are quite some people who'd rather have a job because of those bases (directly or indirectly) than stop some of the spying (maybe).

As a German who lived near the bases Grafenwöhr (the base where Elvis Presley served) and Hohenfels I can confirm this. Wikipedia says Grafenwöhr alone supplies 3600 jobs for locals civilians. I've heard there has been resistance against the bases in the past, but now they are part of the local economy and every reduction in personnel has caused a small outcry.

The current President may be clueless on this, but I'm sure that if the rest of America were asked whether they have a more special relationship with Britain or France (be they military members who share bases, business people who do far more inbound and outbound investment with Britain than with France, academics who collaborate far more with the higher ranked Oxford and Cambridge than any French Ecole, or just regular Americans who watch 'Sherlock' and Monty Python and listen to Britpop) that America has a more special relationship with Britain than France.

No offense to France as I am sure they prefer it this way anyway ...

>getting rid of the us bases

This is unlikely to ever happen - ever. Germany sees the US as an ally in the military context. Its just that the spying thing touches a really raw nerve for most Germans. With public opinion so united on a topic its easy for politicians to get behind that.

Plus no German politician will ever dream of suggesting getting rid of the US bases, much like they'll never suggest stopping damage payments to Israel.

The US bases are the one kind of US controlled space in Germany the german government has a right to inspect.

Which is why the assumption is that any espionage happens through the embassies (ie. as usual).

There's quite some unused space in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern - maybe we should just tell the Five-Eyes countries to relocate their embassies there, instead of keeping them right next to the most important political (Berlin) and economical (Frankurt) places of the country.

Looks like the poster copied Chrome's translation word-for-word. Although to me, "counter-espionage" == "counterintelligence", which means steps taken to prevent intelligence gathering. And that's close enough to "defend against USA spying" for my taste.

I was about to say it can't be right... Germany already has counter-espionage agencies working against the USA (and Russia, and France, and ...).

The title is not wrong.

"Regierung plant Einsatz von Spionageabwehr gegen USA"

= Government plans deployment of Counter-espionage [entities] against USA.

"Spionageabwehr" is a noun and in this case refers to counter-espionage entities in place already ( Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz & Militärische Abschirmdienst )

Ultimately it comes down to the same thing. I just find it weird that you'd shoot down a near flawless translation and offer a decidedly inferior one in its place.

It's about time someone did something about US spying... Not sure this will make it better for those of us living in the US.

Counter-espionage is sadly the wrong way to go.. we already had a cold war and this seems to become cold war part 2.0 with everyone hiding behind their iron curtains.

Most likely this won't lead to anything and is just a press release meant to appease the masses... I don't believe that our politicians would truly suddenly make this roundabout turn.

Besides, the article only says that this is being considered and that talks (probably) haven't even started yet.

Well... it's a significant change of words, though.

Up to recently, the German cabinet claimed to be content with the affirmation of U.S. officials to only work within the boundaries of German and U.S. laws.

The level of blind trust in "our allies" was astonishing, for example they called allegations backed by the Snowden documents "unfounded".

Few months ago they've sent a few secretaries over to negotiate an non-binding letter of "no spy" intent, that the U.S. obviously didn't want to agree to (because no autonomous state would).

So, now they finally seem to have come to the conclusion that indeed we (as a state) are spied upon, for a myriad of reasons, which is quite an accomplishment for these naíve guys and girls.

Sad, but they've got basically forced to take action by the US and UK agencies. This is somewhat worse than the cold war because the US and Europe do consider each other to be allies, not enemies.

They were surely already doing this, just making an issue about it in the press to score some political points.

Not really. It's already been established that the German government was partway complicit in GCHQs activities in the region.

>>this seems to become cold war part 2.0

Based on the Snowden leak, I don't think the USA knew Cold War 1.0 was over.

For the US, this is an economic war. It's about gaining/keeping a competitive advantage over the other players.

Unfortunately, this is not about fighting mass surveillance, at all. This is just about defending against US spying.

Mass surveillance and spying are NOT the same. Spying is/was a targeted measure and will probably always exist, but mass surveillance targets every single citizen and therefor means "Death to democracy", even if you won't feel it, because it happens gradually and behind-the-scenes ("unfortunate events" will happen more often and we will not know why, how and who).

EDIT: And don't count on ANY government to do anything significant about mass surveillance. Every govt wants it, because it simply means "power over the people". Nothing will happen without an immense pressure from the citizen and consumer. Besides voting, we have a "purchasing power" and we should start using it.

> Spying is/was a targeted measure and will probably always exist

That's naive. Germany has not defended itself enough against US activities in Germany. This is especially ugly, since the US has many military and intelligence installations in Germany. Germany does not have the same in the US. If the US wants to stay in Germany, they need to adjust the targets of their operations. Remember, the US military is no longer defending West Europe from its bases in Germany. It runs world-wide military and intelligence operations from Germany. We have bases from which wars in Asia and Africa are supported or even coordinated (the US central military command for Africa is located here).

It's not spying as Germans 'spy' on the US. It's a completely different thing and scale.

We've always been at war with Eurasia.

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