Germany turns up pressure in suspected US spy case
america.aljazeera.com
america.aljazeera.com
No, don't ask somebody for assistance who has just proven (again) that you can't trust him on that level.
Do your own investigations, and find out who was involved. If any of the involved people were US diplomats, expel them from the country (and escalate to the UN? dunno if that's done). If not, go the normal route through the justice system.
On a political level, decouple German intelligence agencies stronger from the US ones, and drive out as much US intelligence as possible.
in fact lets expel their embassy too!
That this wasn't done was illegal.
Also, if making an enemy seems to be the only option to retain sovereignty and protect human rights, it's an option that must be considered, at least.
It also lends some credence to the "Germany was never really souvereign" theory.
[1] Just check the comment sections in the major German newspapers.
Inevitably, signs of "foreign control" turns out to be some form of competition, cooperation, trade or just plain common interests.
What counts more is that Germans are allowed to say anything they want, there is no evidence of tampering in elections, the press is free and extensive, and people can largely do as they please. Nothing is ever perfect, but claiming US sovereignty over Germay is just plain stupid.
However, here are some of the arguments I find interesting:
- A decent amount of videos about this topic can be found on youtube, most of the feature also Schäuble (Minister of Finance) saying that Germany neither is nor ever was souvereign.
- Untampered elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy. What if you elect someone and the newly elected just do as they please after the election? (see US or Germany)
- free press: This is my personal opinion but I often find that very interesting things happen worldwide and the German press doesn't care or all major journals have the same opinion (example: EU is good, Russia is bad, Ukraine is Putin's fault)
- Say anything they want: Unless you mention the H with the J's... and cough Horst Köhler cough
- No evidence of tampering in elections: mmmmmmh there are always issues in the east and there is always something coming up in small districts or states. They are not major but important nonetheless (Read: Local press)
- The press is free and extensive: LOL!!!!!!!!! Axel Springer and Spiegel dictate the opinion here, everyone else is a jew-baby-eating holocost denier.
- people can largely do as they please: yes, if they can afford a lawyer to help them with the paperwork.
Not getting into this stuff and just accepting everything would be plain stupid.
Don't wonder. Throughout the Cold War it was patriotic to sacrifice some of your nation's sovereignty to secret agreements and relationships to make your country safer from the very real Soviet threat.
Now all those agreements and relationships have been repurposed in the Global War on Terror. So first you have to decide how much sovereignty you, as an insider who took part in those agreements, want, and how much alienation from your voters you can stand.
Considering the comments I see on websites like the Guardian, I don't know why I'd trust the comments section on any German newspaper.
Maybe the Germans like that the US is footing the bill for most of the intelligence gathering in the world.
You bet we aren't outspending the US.
I would stubbornly refuse to call this a representative cross section of German opinion.
The fact that he got uncovered and that the whole affair got public is a serious problem for Angela Merkel though: The German public already perceived her as way too soft towards the US during the latest NSA affair, so if she doesn't act this time she will lose a lot of goodwill in the German population. Judging from her recent media appearances, it seems actually likely that she will act in one way or another.
A probable "retaliation" could be to cancel the free trade treaty that's currently being negotiated between the US and the EU (and which, like most EU projects, depends heavily on Germany's consent), which would be a huge economic loss for the US (and to th EU as well of course). So, although this move was "business as usual" for the US, it could have pretty serious consequences for them. Makes me really wonder if the return-on-investment of the current US surveillance strategy is actually positive, or if it will result in a huge loss of economic power and trust for them.
LOL, I hope you're not being serious. The only ones TTIP and friends are going to benefit is Big Capital and American producers of chlorine-treated chicken. No thanks, it's enough you fuck up your own country, no need to fuck up Europe too.
Seriously, if Germany wants to make a statement, it can start by banning all NSA listening stations on German soil.
Having the most amount of data is not the same has having the best intelligence agency. How can data be useful if you don't know what it's for?
German intelligence is likely more sophisticated than American intelligence.[0] Of course, as with most European intelligence agencies, they do have several centuries of advantage. It took CIA quite a while to figure out not see world politics in a pure East vs West picture. You cannot build that amount of experience overnight.
Do you think the KGB outmanoeuvred the CIA at every turn because of a bigger budget or lack of restrictions? Nay, KGB relied heavily on 600 years of espionage experience. Experience that used to mean the life or death of several European states.
Europe may have granted their former colonies independence, but the experience gathered in our years as masters have not been for naught. It is not without reason France knows central Africa like its backhand.
USA may have more data, because they have the technical knowhow and capability. But they still lack the experience. The relationships between European and American intelligence agencies are certainly mutually beneficial.
CIA's best kept secret is how little they know.
[0] Of course, there will often be the occasional embarrassing story that would dispute this claim. But don't let these few stories fool you.
Doubtful. German intelligence is probably as effective as Wally from Dilbert. However, shelving TTIP and/or expelling the US ambassador would make a statement.
And of course - in the long run - not sitting on our asses but building and effective intelligence service ourselves.
But I concede, German intelligence is likely the weaker link in European intelligence agencies (and weaker than American as well), not from lack of skill or knowhow, but a political inability to pursue it. Germany's recent history has left Germans rather on the unfavourable side of intelligence agencies and surveillance. I would even imagine the Allies imposing restrictions on the Germans following the Second World War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAR-Lupe
Germany has the synthetic aperture radar birds and France runs optical satellites.
I'd love to know who they spend most time watching.
Do you have any sources for these claims?
Although what I experienced there was... laughable.
Angela Merkel eyes place for Germany in US intelligence club - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e2492a3a-3d7a-11e3-9928-00144...
US lawmakers push for German entrance to Five Eyes spy alliance - http://www.dw.de/us-lawmakers-push-for-german-entrance-to-fi...
The biggest fear for Merkel is twofold:
- Industry espionage. This would attack Germany at what they're best at and be huge problem. USA has been lucky to not be caught about that (in Germany).
- The much bigger problem for Merkel is however the growing Anti-Americanism in Germany. There has always been a good amount of it. But mostly, Germans see the US as a partner. There is in huge decline and it's a growing problem. Germans are much more serious about their privacy than Americans and the spying scandal didn't help America. Merkel also knows that she has to listen much more to the German public than for instance Obama has to listen to Americans. Germany has a very well functioning Democracy and any pressure from the public will quickly result in resignations or losing the next election. Germany has done this before: Kohl's affair got his party out. The FDP got thrown out of the parliament last year. You can quickly go from 40% to under 20% in Germany. Due to the many US scandals in the last 2 years, Germans see America very very skeptic these days. Der Spiegel yesterday's issue has some numbers: Who should Germany work together with? USA: 56%. Russia: 53%.
If you read many of the forums in Germany you'll see the growing dissatisfaction with the US as a partner. And more and more understanding for Putin these days.
My point of this post is: What this means it that if USA continues to bully the German people, then Merkel will be forced to take action and do something that she doesn't actually want to. She knows very well that America is extremely important and without a good relationship things will get much tougher in Europe/Germany. After all Germany is benefiting from the huge security the US provides to us. But Germans don't think that far ahead and only see the bully in America these days. I hope it doesn't get this far that Merkel is forced (by the German people/media) into getting distance from America since it would hurt both, Germany and the US. I'm very certain that Obama know that Merkel will always be his friend. But I'm not so sure if he realizes that the German people can make Merkel do something that she otherwise wouldn't do.
America: Watch out how far you take the bullying. It might just happen that the next generation of Westerners will end up hating you in 10-20 years down the road. And then, you will have no friends left but only enemies. What Obama and America's government does can be very dangerous for America in the future.
The US is not just Germanys' biggest partner - it controls Germanys' sovereignty. The German intelligence services are all run from Washington. When Merkel says 'it does not matter', its because its really not relevant that America is spying on Germany: its allowed to. Germany lost WW2, and has not had a restoration of the sovereignty of its intelligence services in its constitution. That part is still held by the occupying power.
Please don’t spread this bullshit. There is (mostly) mutually beneficial strong cooperation with a power-differential. That’s all. Stop spinning your dumb conspiracy theories.
Germany is, at most, a puppet state - a model for what America had hoped to pull off in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on ..
Seriously, everyone who works for the NSA has lost all my respect. You're undermining civil rights for everyone including yourself.
Another hint about the sovereignty: there are still army bases on German ground, from which drones are controlled and people are killed ...
After all, USA is the biggest partner of the EU/Germany.
Germany can't afford a dent in the relationship with the
US.
If I do what the bully tells me to do, he leaves me alone and attacks other people. That's not security, that's abuse.
Most of the western world and the US have extremely aligned interests when it comes to security. And most of it revolves around making sure that trade routes stay open, and also making sure that instability doesn't end up messing with trade.
America has enough power and influence to shut down any possible discontent - both within the country and of their minion states in Europe. It's been ruling over EU for many decades now and knows well how to handle "unpopular opinions".
America doesn't realize it fully yet, but it's making itself very unpopular in the last 5 years and this will be a huge problem in the future when all that's left is UK, Mexico & Canada (Maybe India) as your friends.
Are you sure Europe couldn't manage its security by itself?
I mean, while keeping strong relations and cooperation directly with the US and inside NATO I don't understand why European countries wouldn't be able to defend themselves especially if we started thinking about a stronger cooperation between our defence systems or even a unique European army instead of keeping one for every country.
Europe isn't financially situated, nor does it seem to have the social stomach for it.
We just don't spend it on an imperial posture and wars of aggression.
There are no European security interests in invading mid-eastern or latin-american countries, propping up dictators and toppling democratic governments in these regions and creating/financing the next wave of "terrorists", so that tab is all yours.
Furthermore, there is no "on your behalf" for the troops stationed in Europe. While some would argue that these are occupying forces in all but name, it's really in many cases just a convenient staging area for operations in the middle east.
In addition, and this tends to be forgotten, the nuclear shield is not a sign of generosity, but simply a tool to maintain US nuclear supremacy, by trading protection under the shield for a guarantee that those nuclear-capable countries under the shield don't, in fact, go nuclear.
US troops are stationed in those countries as assurance, human shields so to speak: if those countries are hit with nuclear strikes, US troops will die, ensuring a US retaliatory response.
Did Merkel work for the Stasi? http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-317907
The past of the current German president may not look much better (IM Larve)
Anyway, should anything of this be true, the top German leader may be tremendously vulnerable for blackmailing.
As a German I very much see that as an issue. If there indeed are polititions having "deep connections to enemy states" (who do you mean?), I want the democratic process to handle that, not the intelligance agency of another state. What do we need a parliament for, anyway, if you think a practically unregulated third party is the right way to handle domestic discourse?
* given the recent news, I do not really consider the USA as an ally. (I'm french)
Hence, neither a conventional army nor human-operated nuclear weapons (an actual real life example rather than a sketchy sketch of this would have been the Falkland War, btw) provide a sufficient deterrent, making an automatic Doomsday device à la Dr. Strangelove the only logical choice.
Is that what you’re saying?
Furthemore, the US are keeping their side of the agreement. They are providing Ukraine with military equipment and intelligence and leading the way in destabilizing Putin's regime through sanctions. Thanks to that multi-levelled support and offensive Russia is right now losing the war in Ukraine and is on the brink of a Revolution itself.
All of this with barely any help from central Europe, which has its head up its ass and has succumbed to Russian influence and propaganda.
The point is that it can also means everyone lose.