U.S. now bugging German ministers in place of Merkel – report | Hacker News Reader

U.S. now bugging German ministers in place of Merkel – report

uk.reuters.com

84 pointsrbanffy54 comments

> Bild am Sonntag said its information stemmed from a high-ranking NSA employee in Germany and that those being spied on included Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a close confidant of Merkel.

So it looks like, according to Bild am Sonntag, this information was provided by a new, non-Snowden source from within the NSA itself. The report even goes so far as to indicate the source isn't an entry-level employee.

Courage is contagious?

Or the newspaper just made it up. Per Wikipedia:

>> In the paper's beginnings, Springer was influenced by the model of the British tabloid Daily Mirror,[3] although Bild's paper size is larger, this is reflected in its mix of celebrity gossip, crime stories and political analysis. However, its articles are often considerably shorter compared to those in British tabloids, and the whole paper is thinner as well. Bild has been known to use controversial devices like sensational headlines and invented "news" to increase its readership. The policy of having a topless woman on its front page virtually every day has also been criticised by German feminist groups.

In Germany, the topless woman is on the front page below the fold. In Britain, she's on page three above the fold.

Bild is about as trustworthy as the Daily Mail or other British tabloids.

Are we supposed to be mad about this or something? I'm no fan of the NSA monitoring everything that every American does for no particular reason, but that isn't what we're talking about here. Every country in the world spies on its enemies, rivals, and allies to the best of their ability. There's no such thing as "Fair Play" in diplomacy.

Obama promised spying on Merkel would stop. Should Merkel have looked at the fine print when she talked to Obama? Even if you agree to this premise, the leaks show that NSA is not competent enough to carry out this task.

I agree with Mr Scheiner[0] that the NSA ought to be broken up.

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/opinion/schneier-nsa-too-big/

All of which is pretty obvious. Of course we're spying on them, and I'm sure they're spying on us too. Somebody made one of the programs public, so of course we're going to promise to stop. What else is Obama going to say, "We're gonna spy on you and you can't stop us, nyah nyah!"? Thus the essential hypocrisy of diplomacy - that's obviously the truth of the situation, and it isn't going to change, but nobody can say it publicly. Clearly, he told them publicly to stop doing that, and through some back channel told them that he really wanted them to only obey the letter of that - keep on spying, just don't use this particular source in this particular way.

Germany is not technically able to spy like that on the USA. The german agencies don't have direct access to american telefon lines and communication providers, and not to that amount of internet traffic, nor the technical equipment needed to search through data of that amount. And they don't have the rights to operate like that on american ground (in contrast to the rights the USA still have from after the war). There are american listening posts in Germany, not german listening posts in the USA.

Or do you think that if the BND asked the NSA to send over a few million of the collected emails from american citizens, they would happily do so? No, that is of course a one-sided thing.

The "of course they are spying on us" is FOX-rhetoric, and wrong.

The US (and UK) have no right to operate listening posts in Germany either. Just because they have some secret contracts or whatever doesn't make it a right.

Contracts can be canceled. The current affair would be a very good reason to do so, and close all the military bases in one big swoop.

I think, the locals like the military bases well enough in most cases, because the military injects money into the local economy.

(I am not sure, whether Germany has to pay for the US bases, though.)

I'm pretty sure the US rents the land. You're definitely right about money injection. There are ~48k US Personnel in Germany.

Source: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/04/17/report-us-paying-b...

Yes, and as the article says, the locals are also paying. The parlance seems to be "costs and burden-sharing".

On the other hand a fraction of ten billion USD is not that much for the Germans to sacrifice for slightly more privacy. (A fraction, since ten billion USD is the total cost the US pays, and Germany is but one country they have bases in.)

The bases do provide security, though.

And so what? The world is not a fair place. We can and do spy on all countries using any means at our disposal, as do they. If their means aren't as good as ours, that isn't our problem. If they had better means than us, they would use them, and they wouldn't care that it wasn't "fair".

But if they could, they would.

Exactly. As an American I really do not see why I should care if we spy on our allies. We have everything to gain from gathering privileged knowledge and very little to lose.

The arrogance of lines like this is amazing.

You realise there will be a time when the U.S needs it's allies help... and spying on them, does not make them want to help.

Arrogant? Maybe. But it's the exact thing every country in the world has been doing ever since there was a such thing as nations and diplomacy. I think it's naive to think that anybody really cares about some objective notion of fairness.

As for their help, whether or not they want to help has never mattered. They will continue to either help or not help (or impede) for the same reasons they always have - whether it's in their own national interest to do so.

"it's naive to think that anybody really cares about some objective notion of fairness."

It seems that Brazil cared, to the tune of $4.5B in lost sales from an American company due to our eavesdropping.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2...

You're a sociopath. I'm an equal human being, despite not being born in the US.

You're a private citizen. You're not worth spying on and it would be wrong to do so. If you were the Chancellor of Germany, it would be ridiculous of you to expect not to be spied on by anyone with the capability.

NO! Please read up on the Belgacom hack.

Private citizens are now targets for the NSA and GCHQ because their personal vulnerabilities (and devices) can be used to compromise infrastructure that is used by "interesting" players.

Right and I'm saying that while that crosses the line, spying on Merkel or her cabinet does not.

You're clinically qualified to declare another person a sociopath? And even if you were, I'm pretty confident HN is no place for doing so.

The problem with saying "equal" is that there are two ways to achieve that.

Who is our allies? Who are our enemies? Do we spy on them equally?

Is the information yielded from spying only used for valid national concerns?

The answer is of course you cannot see why you should care, since any duplicity is hidden behind the cloak of good ole patriotic national security there is nothing for you to see. Continue on brave blind soldier.

We should spy on all foreign states equally. We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Please define what you consider a valid national concern.

All of this said - I am wholly opposed to any and all domestic spying without proper legal and constitutional authorization. Further, information learned about America citizens through foreign espionage must never be used and should be destroyed as soon as it is discovered.

You seem unaware that spying is a military aggression that doesn't have to be tolerated.

Except that no remotely rational state starts a war that involves killing real people over a little espionage.

Good luck taking on the U.S. military, which, even if you could defeat via some joint coalition involving the EU, China and Russia - the economic fallout from such a war would probably be globally devastating - much worse than whatever damage the US inflicts by blatantly spying on foreign entities.

> We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Why do you want to benefit the `American' shareholders of American companies vs the `foreign' shareholders of foreign companies?

Sail a carrier battle group down to Central Africa and grab some slaves while you're at it, why not?

I think it is up to you to define valid national concern. Since you are OK with it the onus for explaining how policy is carried out in action and why it is OK is with you.

As far as I can tell many resources both human and otherwise have been expended by the US govt to solidify US corporate grounding. Many of those corporations seek to maximize profit and revenues by offshoring labor and finances. I do not accept this byproduct of excessive lobbying as valid national concerns.

If the nation's sovereignty is a conduit for corporate profits, and immense personal profits by the few monied enough to lobby state actors, then the nation is not very sovereign at all.

I essentially did in the first sentence of my original reply - any foreign affair that could potentially involve our defense or economy is a valid national concern and therefore should be the reason we perform significant foreign espionage.

I do not follow where you are going with the lobbying/off-shoring concern? I do not have a position at this time, one way or another on the idea of whether a nation controlled by corporate-interests is sovereign or not... I could see arguments for both - I will say such a system is not democratic however - and I strongly opposed to non-representative forms of government.

There might be no such thing as "Fair Play", but having a reputation for fair play goes a long, long way.

So you don't support things like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...

Looks fine to me, but I only skimmed it. What in it do you think I should be opposed to?

International trade and cooperation is a fine thing. But don't harbor any illusions about it - both sides do it because the benefits to each country outweigh the costs to that country of not doing it. Nobody involved cares a whit about whether anybody thinks any particular part of the agreement is fair. Any claim made by anybody that something is or isn't fair is only a negotiation tactic, meant to try to get the other side to give something up without getting anything in return.

I do hope the U.S. manages to completely isolate itself internationally. The U.S. losing it's allies and therefore effectively super power status would definitely be a positive outcome of all of this.

US superpower status isn't based on how friendly it is with everybody. The USSR wasn't a superpower because everybody liked it.

It's based on: $200 trillion in assets + $700 billion in military spending + $16 trillion GDP + 7,700 nuclear warheads (per FAS). Then throw in 313 million people with one of the highest GDP per capita and average income rates, plus the third largest country by geographical size (with prime positioning on both major oceans). There's also the USD as global reserve currency, which today has no serious competitor for that status.

China for example will likely soon be a formal superpower, and it won't be because everybody loves their government.

Isolation can sting, no question, but realistically unless we're talking North Korean or Cuban style isolation, it has minimal bearing on superpower status.

Pax Americana will continue for another 3 or 4 decades, even more. No matter what the U.S. does, there is a time needed for the developing giants at the moment (mostly China and India) to get into the next gear and make that power shift.

The next power status bearer won't be any different, though. That's how international relations have rolled in the past, and that's how they'll continue to be.

The way it's looking it's going to happen one way or another. It's probably better that the move towards isolation happens intentionally rather than be forced by screw-ups like these.

Germany won't even ask the US to give up military bases in the Fatherland, so you may be disappointed. If you really want to see the fall of America go help Russia or China.

Bill am Sonntag is clearly a very serious newspaper. There is no way I would doubt a source like this: http://www.bild.de/

I am curious just how credible this high-ranking official source is. These are pretty explosive claims and if true, have the potential to jeopardise US > Germany relations and force other countries including Australia and New Zealand to investigate and question if the US has been doing the same elsewhere.

If this is seriously true, then the US are most definitely spying on everyone. This is the kind of stuff that starts wars, it's actually quite scary what the NSA has been and continues to do.

>This is the kind of stuff that starts wars

Not really. Intelligence gathering has pretty much been par for the course for centuries.

New Zealand and Australia are already in cahoots with the NSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

As a German I also second that Bild is not a trustworthy source and I find it odd that such a charged information would be seeded to Bild instead of Spiegel, FAZ or Süddeutsche which all have a much higher reputation within Germany and internationally.

Funny though - I guess Bild is right about this anyway ...

Apparently so. Here are some articles on the subject in more trustworthy publications:

Süddeutsche Zeitung: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/us-geheimdienste-nsa-uebe...

Die Welt: http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article125122483/Nach...

TAZ: http://taz.de/Ueberwachung-durch-US-Geheimdienst/!133621/

Hey Carlo! Kompliment für das neue Design von neues-aus-der-zukunft.de - wird immer chicer!

w00p, danke! :)

Hate to keep being the voice of sanity here.

1) The loss of privacy and anonymity on the internet is horrendous. The NSA is the poster child, not the problem. We don't need to "stop the NSA". We need to fix the problem.

2) Yes, even allies spy on each other. Spying on each other is a good thing. It prevents misunderstandings, it allows for back channels. It's been expected ever since there was diplomacy.

As far as Obama saying he was going to stop spying on Merkel? That makes no sense to me. Somebody should ask him.

In all of this, I get the distinct feeling that people without knowledge of (or who don't care to understand) how intelligence and diplomacy work are being used as pawns for other intelligence agencies who I can guarantee will have no Snowdens. This is not an optimal state of affairs for stability in the world.

"Lying is a good thing"

Directed against a government, maybe it's not 'spying', it's enforced transparency. And it's not a 'bug', it's a miniaturized digital whistleblower.

> "We have had the order not to miss out on any information now that we are no longer able to monitor the chancellor's communication directly," it quoted the NSA employee as saying.

Saying "we'll stop spying on Merkel", but we'll continue to spy on everyone near her even more so we can "incidentally" collect most of her conversations, or find out anything she would know from the ministers", is like a distinction without a difference.

If I were Merkel I'd be just as pissed off at this, because the whole point of me getting mad in the first place was NSA trying to find out what I know. Whether they spy on me directly or through friends/colleagues, it doesn't really matter, does it?

I'm imagining these guys guying their asses off in their offices when Obama made the speech about his "reforms", knowing very well the changes are at best cosmetic, and that they will continue to do everything they've been doing so far, while making the public believe otherwise.

Merkel's outrage is probably just more theatre for our benefit. You don't become the leader of a G8 country and hold onto any illusions about how the world works.

Indeed. I don't use gmail, but Google still knows almost everything I write since half my correspondents use gmail.

If Germany really wanted to retaliate (they're already talking about amping up their spying on the US), they could publish what they hear while spying on the US. Provide transparency to the world, as a public service.

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