Der Spiegel Targeted by US Intelligence
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
In the last several years I have been surprised how many Der Spiegal articles accurately (apparently) documented things that embarrassed the U.S. government.
Too bad U.S. news media does not do as thorough of a job with their reporting.
The Pentagon Papers were broken by the New York Times. The "Deep Throat" espionage controversy with President Nixon's administration was broken by the Washington Post. American filmmaker Linda Poitras introduced the person responsible for the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history (Snowden) to an American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who previously wrote opinion pieces for various American newspapers, including the Cato Institute. At the time, Greenwald was writing for UK newspaper The Guardian, which at the time and still does maintain a significant office in the U.S. [1]
Further pieces based off of the NSA leaks were written by journalists at the Washington Post. Only after a few months did Der Spiegel write any articles. Oh, and the source of Der Spiegel's leaked documents? American software developer and activist Jacob Appelbaum. Hell, he even wrote their most prominent NSA articles. [2]
American journalism is the most robust source of sunlight for U.S. government secrets.
I get it, one can find all sorts of individual cases of American news outlets letting the public down. But in aggregate, no other country's news organization comes close.
[1] (March 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact
[2] (July 2013) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whi...
Then this: 'As of February 12, 2014, the United States is ranked 46th in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index.'
The articles they printed by Judith Miller before the Iraq War are unforgivable, however.
Looking at the original emails,[1] it seems legitimate to me. The CIA seemed to want to know if something classified was being leaked. I expect and hope any publication would make careful, informed decisions about releasing information that potentially could harm people.
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/104180865/Advance-Maureen-Dowd-Pie...
Now both Poitras and Greenwald are afraid to go back to US, though. I wonder why would they avoid the most journalist-friendly country on Earth?
They both live outside of US now and have mentioned their reasons countless times. Laura Poitras explained why she's staying in Germany and how she does not take any materials with her during her trips to US, for example, at the last CCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmKqdMDastM
Now you'll say that location of Guantanamo Bay prison outside of US jurisdiction is an 'unfortunate accident' as well. Both seem quite purposeful decisions to me.
And yes, the fact that two probably most important journalists of modern times have both chosen to go into exile just to do their job, even though both love their country, - I think this actually says quite a bit about the freedom of press in the said country.
Others have already mentioned that they don't carry their work into the US, but they, themselves, still travel to the US. This is hardly the "exile" that you want it to be (to prove your point).
Poitras's and Greenwald's behavior support a conclusion that they are not afraid to go back to the U.S.
Your statement still fails to refute any of my assertions.
Laura Poitras
Today is different, papers are struggling, ownership has dramatically consolidated, and reporters are very vulnerable to influence, as their access to future stories and future employment (ie. On the staff of a politician or agency) can be cut off by officials.
It's really obvious at the state level. In the 80s, 30+ reporters covered the NY state Capitol. Now, maybe a half dozen full timers.
How can you assert reporters are vulnerable to influence, when you're replying to a post citing a group of reporters who did the opposite?
In other news, foreigners don't look to the US constitution before deciding whether to be cross about being spied on.
Legal scholars disagree with you: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
... blatant... rediculous...
Let me know if you can't figure out where our wires got crossed and I'll try and clarify.
Only if you read things like "no person" (as in, among other places, the Fifth Amendment) to mean "no citizen", which isn't what the text says, isn't likely what was intended by the original authors, and isn't how legal scholars or courts have interpreted the language since its been written.
Now, there are rights in the Constitution that belong to citizens as such rather than persons in general, such as voting rights protected under, among other provisions, the 15th Amendment. But to say that foreigners don't have any rights under the Constitution is incorrect.
Only if you read things like "no person"...
By your own standards the NSA by isn't doing their job, as they have been shown to be spying on US entities.[1]
> Foreign entities are not protected by the US constitution and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment and have no right to privacy from the NSA, CIA, etc.
The strongest justification, IMHO, for limiting spying to clear, identifiable enemies of the state that represent real threats - as opposed to blanket, dragnet surveillance of everyone, everywhere - does not come from the Constitution. The strongest argument comes from the basic principle that hypocrisy is bad, and we shouldn't engage in it on a personal or social or governmental level. By surveilling everybody, we lose the moral high ground on which to stand when criticizing the various dictatorships, tyrannies, and theocracies around the world that engage in massive surveillance in order to maintain their power. In short as the world's supreme military power, we owe it to the rest of humanity to do the right thing, act like adults and set a good example. Right now the NSA and the rest of the intelligence community makes our government look like a pack of lying hypocrites.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillanc...
Are you kidding me? It's almost comical, the straight face with which they act hurt that a foreign entity is spying on us and intruding in our networks.
I'm sure that the Germans were shocked, shocked, to find that an intelligence agency was spying in Berlin.
*) Unfotunatly, its mostly some media who even care about this stories. Most citizens are too lazy to even admit that this is a big scandal and Merkel uses her strategy of just doing nothing until media cannot earn enough money with the stories so that everyone just forgets. The only bigger outcry came from the industrial spionage allegations (media were like 2-3 weeks on it) because $$$.
The US lost a lot support in public opinion and people are increasingly demanding that the US removes these installations, troops and intelligence groups from Germany. Also the US will have a hard time to sell communication services, IT services and IT hardware in Germany (and Europe).
Why host the NSA in Germany, when it acts against our interests?
What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'.
That does not shock me at all. It makes me sad, that these days, there is simply no time for justice. There are so many complex scandals the average citizen cannot understand coming up after each other, by the time a scandal is investigated it is not interesting any more. So the public has largely just given up caring. There is some outrage but overall the sentiment seems to be: "Well, that's what politicians do."
Merkel hired those genius consultants, who taught her how to act, dress and hold her hands so that she is immune to public outcry. We know she is brilliant but she comes across as being just as stupid as we are but totally upright. She would never enrich herself or get caught being openly corrupt. She is just to boring for that, which is exactly what the German people want their leader to be. Every other politician would have lost his job so many times by now, but that woman can get away with everything. She is made out of teflon, these scandals just bounce of of her. And it is not, that we do not notices this: She famously destroyed all her political enemies a few years ago - after all the number two is 72 years old now. It makes me sad, that it works nevertheless.
The biggest political scandal in recent years was the fall of president Wulff [0]. There have been minor but simple accusations that the public could understand and was outrageous about. No complex monetary system, no difficult cold-war conflict, no highly technical espionage stuff. He was corrupt, but on a scale that the average person is corrupt. Take a small present here and there, take photos with people you should not take photos with. You cannot get away with something simple like that, especially when you handle the crisis badly.
The logical conclusion is, that we get borderline psychopaths and/or actors as politicians, who manage to build up an image of total boringness. They cannot be educated in any field, because their field actually is managing their own image. It makes me sad, that you are more likely to stay in office when you seem boring and stupid instead of intelligent and innovative. We ended up with a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where everybody just maintains the status quo and tries to separate him- or herself as much from actual politics as possible. This of course leaves the actual decisionmaking to institutions like the intelligence agencies or big corporations and is how we end up with stuff like this.
"Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes."
Swordfish @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxTHeyKuXGw
1) The first half of the headline reads "An Attack on Press Freedom". How exactly was freedom of the press attacked? Did the US or German governments stop Der Spiegel from publishing something? Were they blackmailed into suppressing a story (but for some reason not so for this one)? As far as the story indicates, the only action that was taken was to move the person accused of leaking from one department to another. But, hey, "An Attack on Press Freedom" gets more people to view those 9 ad banners scattered throughout the article...
2) I just read this article twice over, and I can't actually see any evidence that US intelligence services were targeting Der Spiegel. Somehow the CIA station chief finds out that someone in the German Department Six is passing information to Der Spiegel, and informs the head of Department Six. They don't actually give any indication as to how the CIA got that information, but just state that it was most likely the NSA spying on Der Spiegel as if it were a foregone conclusion. How do they know this? I can think of a number of other situations where the CIA may have received this information...
- The CIA had a source inside Der Spiegel
- The CIA was spying on their source (not Der Spiegel)
- The NSA was spying on their source
- The CIA/NSA was spying on a third party that knew of the leaks
- The source was drunk at a bar and bragged about it to or within earshot of a CIA agent
- One of the journalists was drunk at a bar and bragged about it.
- The CIA/NSA was spying on Russian intelligence (or any other country in the region) and that foreign intelligence service was doing any of the above
- etc. ...
Research conducted by SPIEGEL has determined the existence of CIA and NSA files filled with a large number of memos pertaining to the work of the German newsmagazine.
Really? That's it? They somehow know that documents exist which somehow make reference to a global news outlet known for breaking headlines concerning the work of these intelligence agencies? What kind of research was conducted, and what do these documents actually say? For god's sake - Der Spiegel is one of the few news agencies that has the whole Snowden trove and regularly releases documents from it, but they can't show anything from there proving their claim?
Not too long ago, the Sunday Times in England ran a story claiming that documents stolen by Edward Snowden were in the hands of Chinese and Russian intelligence services, relying solely on anonymous sources in the British government. They were rightly lambasted for it in a number of other media outlets. Der Spiegel is now doing almost the exact same thing.
In the least, this is intimidation and intrusion.
How do you know it? What sort of interference would you expect these days anyway? The secret order signed by Angela Merkel herself ordering to stop the story or face lifetime in prison?
FOIA records on FBI and CIA show again and again that western governments are not ashamed to use misinformation, defamation, subversion and provocations. In fact, they have become extremely skillful at these hard-to-prove-yet-so-effective-against-civilian tactics.
The burden of proof rests on the person alleging it happened, not the person saying there is no evidence. You're asking me to concede that something must have happened in secret unless I can prove a negative. To top it off, Der Spiegel very strongly suggests that they just recently learned of the matter in the editor's note on the left hand of the page. Nowhere in their reporting (or, to my knowledge, anyone else's reporting) are they claiming that the government forced them to withhold a story.
> FOIA records on FBI and CIA show again and again ...
Could you provide links to these FOIA documents?
If we allow this shit to happen, we lose as a democracy. How on earth do you think it could be even remotely acceptable to spy on a journalistic outlet?
/rant
Edit: chinathrow is actually correct, I thought OP was being sardonic but they seem to be sincere based on their follow-up comments.
I don't think we lose as a Democracy just from the spying alone, but rather what is done with it.
What lawsuit? Would you like to wager how likely it is that an American will be convicted?
Treating the law as "a list of rules everyone follows or they get in trouble" is a model that works for when you have a state to judge and enforce the rules. It does not work when organizations like powerful nation states are interacting with one another. A similarly non-traditional-law model can be seen in banking, where fines and settlements are often reached without a judicial process.
"As a target of the surveillance, SPIEGEL has requested more information from the Chancellery. At the same time, the magazine filed a complaint on Friday with the Federal Public Prosecutor due to suspicion of intelligence agency activity."
Fines and settlement by the way are in quite a lot of countries part of an actual judicial process.
If you don't want to answer about the chance of conviction, what do you wager the chances of a prosecutor simply bringing a case to a German court are?
Fines and settlements negotiated without a case ever being made public is an example of the laws working differently than they do for most. The banking example isn't much like foreign intelligence activity, of course, but it's similar in that powerful organizations' relationships with laws is different than yours or mine.
Fines and settlements can be reached for common people too - you can agree not to proceed with litigation and settle out of court. There is nothing wrong with that if both parties agree. Yes, I agree that sometimes it feels wired how the banks are treated, but you and I could settle out of court too if we wish.
Stop nitpicking words. Do you really disagree that banks who are negotiating with the IRS or DoJ have a different relationship with the law and prosecutors than the average prosecutee being offered a plea deal? The relationship between legal costs and settlement costs alone makes for a very different game.
I do not know the chances but I do hope that there will be more light what happened between the BND and the NSA. And I also hope that some folks at the BND will be put to jail for what they allowed to happen on german soil.
I am not nitpicking words. I do not disagree that banks have a different relationship, no. I see that as well. But I also see and accept that corps as well as private persons can settle out of court. (Thas has nothing to do with a plea deal). Settling out of court mostly is done on private terms, i.e. money or patents or whatever exchanges hands, where I think a plea deal is more about going to jail for less than what would be at risk with a trial.
There have been lawsuits against CIA operations in EU before: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html?...
Intelligence agencies are above the law not because they offer tips to each other, but because they have the resources and practice to be careful and not to leave enough evidence to be used to charge anyone.
There's also something fundamental to the nature of dealing in information - you can send anonymous tips, or suggest something while maintaining plausible deniability. I'm sure the source here didn't hand German intel a notarized letter saying "I'm John Doe of the CIA and we've been tapping Der Spiegel phones and this dude's definitely their source on the inside".
In a world where information is power and without a justice enforcer more powerful than the actors, an unknown leaker is significantly more of a threat than an allied IC. An ally will keep your secrets, and mutual secret-keeping reinforces alliances [1]. Journalists, on the other hand, are the gossip queens of the information trade, as they reap their rewards by telling secrets to everyone without much regard for when it's convenient. They are useful only as long as their access can be controlled.
The entry points NSA/CIA used are being watched by them, or maybe even honeypotted. The space of potential attacks is enormous and it's a waste of resources for the Germans to look for them (if that's even legal) as long as America remains an ally.
Please don't take what I am making as moral judgement of one way or another here, just as the practical analysis of the system I imagine these organizations to operate in.
1. Similar to high school cliques or criminals where mutual blackmail creates alliances where there is no access access to the normal judicial system, contracts, etc.
As it is, the NSA is not permitted to spy on domestic data. How do they get around that? The data of US citizens is moved to a data warehouse abroad. Oh, it is not in the USA anymore, now it's fair game! It's a huge loophole.
There has been talk of foreign governments colluding with the US government to get around domestic spying laws going many years back. I'm pretty sure I heard about it when the tech community was abuzz with Echelon and Carnivore. The Echelon furor was back around 2000.
My example was for Germany as this is the focus of this thread.
Not preventing someone from spying on your citizens, possibly encouraging them, and not prosecuting that entity once the matters become known, - looks certainly illegal to me.
Nah, would never happen in real life....
You go, Ecuador! Fuck the system!
Sounds like pot calling the kettle black.