As a German I would suggest to just ask the NSA to leave the country. Additionally, I do not want Gabriel to become chancellor, but I would like to see Merkel and de Maizière (who already survived a remarkable amount of scandals) getting bitten by this. America is a friend and important to us, but even more are our ties to France and the EU, which should be our number one priority by a large margin.
But as soon as you argue in that direction someone from an agency, who wants to play with the big guys and their big toys, comes along and argues how America is critical for our security and how endangered we are and that Germany did not had a terrorist attack yet just because the mighty US of A guards us. If he is good at his job, he manages to slip in the Marshall Plan as well. People seem to believe this, even if they know, how our agencies fail to prevent (non-islamic) terrorism [0] and that it was in fact the police on its own that caught the attempted (islamic) bomber in Frankfurt last week [1].
Every time we hear about a new scandal in our German secret services, i await the news of another terrorist cell to be busted. I am rarely disappointed. Cynical me imagines a little cottage industry inside the secret services, always with a small queue of potential terrorists that their handlers can then push further on short notice. These terrorists can then be raided and presented to the public, reinvigorating our fear and making us think that the deep state is the lesser of two evils. And then, after a few weeks, it is back to business as usual.
> ... but even more are our ties to France and the EU, which should be our number one priority by a large margin.
I don't think Germany considers the EU as its number one priority. There may be a number of reasons, namely: a) The growth in exports to China; b) The long-term European crisis; c) The notion that EU countries are an already conquered market, with little penetration growth left.
Regardless of reasons, Germany's behaviour is clear: The 2011 crisis presented Germany with a unique opportunity to lead Europe. Germany could have financially supported Euro-bonds, leveraging this support to mandate fiscal policy in countries that bought said bonds. This would have effectively placed Germany in a leader role for fiscal policy. Even if this had to formally be done by EU institutions, those with the money have the power. This had virtually no costs for Germany. In a success scenario would be a cash-positive move, as it'd be acting as a development bank: borrowing cheap on one end, lending with a margin on the other, with the added bonus of Euro-wide fiscal policy control.
By skipping this clear opportunity, Germany has signaled it is not interested in further developing the EU. I think this is a strategic mistake with a multi-decade horizon. The opportunity presented by the 2011 crisis won't happen again. Worse, there is now the very real scenario that monetary pressures, coupled with a Grexit trigger will breakup the Euro area and really weaken the EU.
I think you have to understand that lots of people are "conflicted". By that i mean while some people personally might find something tasteless, they never the less can find usefulness and justification, just as long as someone else does the dirty work for them.
So, for example, may not have the heart to get a bum vagrant or homeless person from your entrance, but you'd totally be okay if your neighbor or another entity went around making sure the homeless person was shooed somewhere else because you too feel fatigued by the reeking urine at the door to your building. Or, that pest rat. I don't like the idea of animal cruelty, but never the less, please get rid of that rat for me, I don't care how you do it, just don't tell me. I just don't want to see it again.
So that is to say, one might not like some things, but we're okay, so long as someone else gets their hands dirty in our stead. Just don't let me know the dirty details and embarrass me or my conscience.
A few weeks ago China was attacking a US company (GitHub), and many Americans here called for China to be kicked off the internet. Now the USA is spying on French companies. I presume the same people will call for the USA to be kicked off the internet?
> I presume the same people will call for the USA to be kicked off the internet?
Or at least put the DNS root zone under international control (currently the root zone is under control of the Department of Commerce; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone).
Of course they did. It's the explicit job of these organizations (in all countries) to spy on foreign powers, multi-national companies, and potential people that may be a threat.
We spy on our best allies and you'd better believe they spy on us. We just happen to have the evidence of the US doing it thanks to Snowden.
It may not be right but they all do it.
Edit: Really? Down voted for saying that most countries probably do this? I'm not saying its right, just that it's not particularly surprising.
You have no clue. The BND helped the NSA to spy on GERMANS and GERMAN companies. Plus EUROPEANs.
It's not the job of the BND to help the NSA to spy on Germany and the EU.
> We spy on our best allies and you'd better believe they spy on us. We just happen to have the evidence of the US doing it thanks to Snowden.
Look, the difference is this: we have literally THOUSANDS of NSA, CIA and US military agency personal in Germany. There are huge official installations of the NSA, the CIA and US military in Germany. Instead of respecting the host country, they are spying on us, collecting data, manage their wars, disrespecting our laws, ...
There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, even remotely comparable done by Germany in or around the US.
We are talking about governments spying on their own citizens and not on other countries.
And I find it incredible that opinions such as yours are so prevalent. Because yes, it should be surprising, as this happens with governments that we elected and that should serve us and our rights. And when this happens too often with no relief in sight, it usually means that we need a revolution.
The NSA revelations are actively hurting USA's economy. You may not see it, but European companies have started to actively avoid US-made and US-hosted products and services, because guess what, people do care about it, especially companies that are increasingly worried about industrial espionage from American companies.
Therefore I usually think of shilling when seeing such pieces of opinion, because it's easy to gather a bunch of trolls to try and shift the public opinion by posting such messages on public forums - I know that at least the Chinese and the Israelis are doing it. But then I think of Occam's Razor and remember that people are in essence just sheep wanting to be shepherd.
The BND broke the law and then lied to the German Parliament about it. That's what the outrage is about.
Germany has a law regulating surveillance (the G10 Act). It has a number of safeguards to prevent indiscriminate and illegal spying. As far as I know, the BND illegally ignored several of them.
Being a spy agency doesn't mean that you're outside the law.
I think it is the complicity of the BND on behalf of the US that has got Germans annoyed, as well as asking a German spy agency to spy on, and feed information on German companies, to the detriment of those companies in favour of US companies.
Germans are just starting to realize that they are as much a US poodle as the Brits across the pond.
I have partly to agree, nobody cares if you spy on their citizens. However, once you can prove industrial espionage it becomes a totally different discussion.
I posted this in response to a comment downthread, then realized that it's probably more appropriate at the top level, given the headline. Sorry for the dupe.
That's not all the US is doing in Deutschland. "[T]he slides show that the facilities at Ramstein perform an essential function in lethal drone strikes conducted by the CIA and the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa."[0]
So it is not just spying on the EU that is being enabled by Germany's government, it is the entirety of the US drone program that is being used across the Middle East and north Africa. This program, operating as it does outside of declared war zones, is very probably illegal under German law.
It's not the first time to see collaboration like that. Time and again I find it fascinating how the members of the “surveillance community” seem to have a closer relationship with each other (across countries) than with their respective civilian compatriots.
It is the 'us and them' mentality. I know someone who worked in a government security service.
Their opinion of the general population's ability to self-govern is less than positive.
To be clear, I've put that quite diplomatically. They think we are a bunch of idiots who don't understand the bigger picture. Of course the fact that the bigger picture is deliberately kept secret from us is overlooked.
They are self serving, but what is worse in the US is that the security services are basically a bunch of private firms, who have a vested interest in keeping the government spending billions of dollars. Many of those companies also have vested interests in selling arms. It isn't a good mix.
It's called the Deep State. Germans feel outrage because, up to now, the Deep State was meant to keep the volatile and dangerous (not to mention swarthy and Muslim) Turks in line. now the Germans find they don't really run their own country for the purpose of anything of importance to the US. Their "democracy" is as well-managed as Turkey's.
this isn't surprising. Germans should be outraged since the late 90ies. The topic has been in and out of the news in Germany since long before Snowden. What the Americans did with projects like ‟Echolon” was openly known to most (albeit disputed by the Americans).
Many Germans were more or less aware of Echolon, but most thought it wouldn't be that bad (I was not among them from beginning and was talking against a brick wall (and still do in related topics)). With Snowden lots of Germans became aware that all these few alerters that were laughed down were right from the beginning.
The sad thing is, in Germany the public doesn't really seem to care. They are still the same nation that follows allong blindly until the shit is hitting the fan. Of course, when the crash comes, the responsibility will be delegated upwards.
I think it's that way everywhere.
When I talked to people about it in Switzerland they often respond with something like "this isn't a problem here, this is $country_where_i_live_in they wouldn't abuse their powers. The NSA? Sure THEY are horrible, but in $country_where_i_live_in, nah, they wouldn't do stuff like that. That's impossible."
You can point out that the last time they did (and got caught) was only 26 years ago [0]. They don't care.
Do you have any proof for this bold claim? I will try to prove that quite the opposite is true: Germany has a very active civil society and privacy ("Datenschutz") and transparency is on the agenda not only of the opposition party "Die Grünen" and the small "Piratenpartei", but also by organizations such as Chaos Computer Club, Netzpolitik.org and Verbraucherzentrale. There have been huge demonstrations, "Freiheit statt Angst" (Freedom instead of fear), with thousands demonstrating in Berlin and elsewhere. You can find all material on their website, also in English - http://freiheitstattangst.de/aufruf/
The problem is that there are more issues than that and overall at least comparatively Germany is doing rather well at the moment.
Our current government consists of a large coalition between the SPD and the CDU/CSU. A government in which neither of these parties take part would be a massive practically unthinkable shift.
No matter how much you care about this issue -- and keep in mind the majority doesn't really care about any issue enough to vote -- doing anything about it comes with a very high risk.
So no matter how much we may dislike the BND situation, nothing about it is going to change simply because there is no other party that can both be trusted to change anything about it and successfully run the government.
What "shit" is hitting what "fan"? We're not following blindly. Far from it. There is a big conversation going on and the government might fall over this incident.
What I know until now does not make me want to elect a new government. Really. I'm German and I follow the political scene.
This scandal is bad enough. I understand the urge to slap the government. But that punishment would ultimately hurt our society more than it would hurt the responsible parties. I don't see a chancellor that I don't believe will do a worse job than Merkel, and getting rid of the two dominant parties only leaves inexperienced and incompetent politicians to do the job.
I don't understand why this keeps getting reported like it's new news, or that Germans seem to keep forgetting this and "learning" about it again and again.
Remember who made the equipment Stuxnet targetted? Siemens.
When you export lots of specialized industrial equipment with potential use in military/nuclear tech, someone is probably monitoring you. Oversight is good for everybody.
[+] [-] allendoerfer|11 years ago|reply
But as soon as you argue in that direction someone from an agency, who wants to play with the big guys and their big toys, comes along and argues how America is critical for our security and how endangered we are and that Germany did not had a terrorist attack yet just because the mighty US of A guards us. If he is good at his job, he manages to slip in the Marshall Plan as well. People seem to believe this, even if they know, how our agencies fail to prevent (non-islamic) terrorism [0] and that it was in fact the police on its own that caught the attempted (islamic) bomber in Frankfurt last week [1].
[0]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/german-neo-nazi...
[1]: http://news.yahoo.com/report-german-police-conduct-anti-terr...
[+] [-] mohawk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmcknight|11 years ago|reply
http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espion...
[+] [-] sergiosgc|11 years ago|reply
I don't think Germany considers the EU as its number one priority. There may be a number of reasons, namely: a) The growth in exports to China; b) The long-term European crisis; c) The notion that EU countries are an already conquered market, with little penetration growth left.
Regardless of reasons, Germany's behaviour is clear: The 2011 crisis presented Germany with a unique opportunity to lead Europe. Germany could have financially supported Euro-bonds, leveraging this support to mandate fiscal policy in countries that bought said bonds. This would have effectively placed Germany in a leader role for fiscal policy. Even if this had to formally be done by EU institutions, those with the money have the power. This had virtually no costs for Germany. In a success scenario would be a cash-positive move, as it'd be acting as a development bank: borrowing cheap on one end, lending with a margin on the other, with the added bonus of Euro-wide fiscal policy control.
By skipping this clear opportunity, Germany has signaled it is not interested in further developing the EU. I think this is a strategic mistake with a multi-decade horizon. The opportunity presented by the 2011 crisis won't happen again. Worse, there is now the very real scenario that monetary pressures, coupled with a Grexit trigger will breakup the Euro area and really weaken the EU.
[+] [-] mc32|11 years ago|reply
So, for example, may not have the heart to get a bum vagrant or homeless person from your entrance, but you'd totally be okay if your neighbor or another entity went around making sure the homeless person was shooed somewhere else because you too feel fatigued by the reeking urine at the door to your building. Or, that pest rat. I don't like the idea of animal cruelty, but never the less, please get rid of that rat for me, I don't care how you do it, just don't tell me. I just don't want to see it again.
So that is to say, one might not like some things, but we're okay, so long as someone else gets their hands dirty in our stead. Just don't let me know the dirty details and embarrass me or my conscience.
[+] [-] spacefight|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happyscrappy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolfgke|11 years ago|reply
Or at least put the DNS root zone under international control (currently the root zone is under control of the Department of Commerce; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone).
[+] [-] kushti|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyvpx|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kghose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaptainZapp|11 years ago|reply
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bnd-intelligence...
may be interesting in this context.
Note that Der Spiegel is considered a top notch news source. Something like a German Economist in a way.
[+] [-] hans_mueller|11 years ago|reply
By who? Certainly not by me ...
[+] [-] igl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collyw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgdsgdsg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomschlick|11 years ago|reply
We spy on our best allies and you'd better believe they spy on us. We just happen to have the evidence of the US doing it thanks to Snowden.
It may not be right but they all do it.
Edit: Really? Down voted for saying that most countries probably do this? I'm not saying its right, just that it's not particularly surprising.
[+] [-] lispm|11 years ago|reply
It's not the job of the BND to help the NSA to spy on Germany and the EU.
> We spy on our best allies and you'd better believe they spy on us. We just happen to have the evidence of the US doing it thanks to Snowden.
Look, the difference is this: we have literally THOUSANDS of NSA, CIA and US military agency personal in Germany. There are huge official installations of the NSA, the CIA and US military in Germany. Instead of respecting the host country, they are spying on us, collecting data, manage their wars, disrespecting our laws, ...
There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, even remotely comparable done by Germany in or around the US.
[+] [-] bad_user|11 years ago|reply
And I find it incredible that opinions such as yours are so prevalent. Because yes, it should be surprising, as this happens with governments that we elected and that should serve us and our rights. And when this happens too often with no relief in sight, it usually means that we need a revolution.
The NSA revelations are actively hurting USA's economy. You may not see it, but European companies have started to actively avoid US-made and US-hosted products and services, because guess what, people do care about it, especially companies that are increasingly worried about industrial espionage from American companies.
Therefore I usually think of shilling when seeing such pieces of opinion, because it's easy to gather a bunch of trolls to try and shift the public opinion by posting such messages on public forums - I know that at least the Chinese and the Israelis are doing it. But then I think of Occam's Razor and remember that people are in essence just sheep wanting to be shepherd.
[+] [-] rbehrends|11 years ago|reply
The BND broke the law and then lied to the German Parliament about it. That's what the outrage is about.
Germany has a law regulating surveillance (the G10 Act). It has a number of safeguards to prevent indiscriminate and illegal spying. As far as I know, the BND illegally ignored several of them.
Being a spy agency doesn't mean that you're outside the law.
[+] [-] junto|11 years ago|reply
Germans are just starting to realize that they are as much a US poodle as the Brits across the pond.
[+] [-] 13|11 years ago|reply
Why is that necessary?
We live in a pretty miserable world if your only answer is "because everyone else is doing it".
[+] [-] nl|11 years ago|reply
The outrage is because they help the NSA spy on German politicians and companies, against the interests of Germany.
[+] [-] fromtheoutside|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filoeleven|11 years ago|reply
That's not all the US is doing in Deutschland. "[T]he slides show that the facilities at Ramstein perform an essential function in lethal drone strikes conducted by the CIA and the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa."[0]
So it is not just spying on the EU that is being enabled by Germany's government, it is the entirety of the US drone program that is being used across the Middle East and north Africa. This program, operating as it does outside of declared war zones, is very probably illegal under German law.
[0]https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/ramstein/
[+] [-] tempodox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|11 years ago|reply
Their opinion of the general population's ability to self-govern is less than positive.
To be clear, I've put that quite diplomatically. They think we are a bunch of idiots who don't understand the bigger picture. Of course the fact that the bigger picture is deliberately kept secret from us is overlooked.
They are self serving, but what is worse in the US is that the security services are basically a bunch of private firms, who have a vested interest in keeping the government spending billions of dollars. Many of those companies also have vested interests in selling arms. It isn't a good mix.
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|11 years ago|reply
http://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2015/02/16/tinker-tailor...
[+] [-] wolfgke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kra34|11 years ago|reply
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: Oh, thank you very much.
[+] [-] emsy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawl|11 years ago|reply
You can point out that the last time they did (and got caught) was only 26 years ago [0]. They don't care.
I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal
[+] [-] mcbetz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DasIch|11 years ago|reply
Our current government consists of a large coalition between the SPD and the CDU/CSU. A government in which neither of these parties take part would be a massive practically unthinkable shift.
No matter how much you care about this issue -- and keep in mind the majority doesn't really care about any issue enough to vote -- doing anything about it comes with a very high risk.
So no matter how much we may dislike the BND situation, nothing about it is going to change simply because there is no other party that can both be trusted to change anything about it and successfully run the government.
[+] [-] yAnonymous|11 years ago|reply
The U.S. are the main problem here. So, assuming you are American, clean up your own mess before blaming others.
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|11 years ago|reply
This scandal is bad enough. I understand the urge to slap the government. But that punishment would ultimately hurt our society more than it would hurt the responsible parties. I don't see a chancellor that I don't believe will do a worse job than Merkel, and getting rid of the two dominant parties only leaves inexperienced and incompetent politicians to do the job.
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justaman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stillsut|11 years ago|reply
When you export lots of specialized industrial equipment with potential use in military/nuclear tech, someone is probably monitoring you. Oversight is good for everybody.
[+] [-] madez|11 years ago|reply