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One of the more "fun" things they use to justify what they do internally: the outer space theory. You have to know that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is (simplified) only allowed to operate outside Germany. Now they have antennas in Germany to monitor communication passively relayed on a satellite. As we all know, the satellite is located outside Germany, so they pretend this is legal.

In a similiar argument, internet exchange points in Frankfurt are declared "effectively outside Germany" and therefore fair game.

If you find that interesting, at last year's 32C3 they had a fun renenactment of some abstruse scenes full of such things[0] from the parliamentary investigation committee on the NSA and its cooperation with the BND (which itself is not filmed publicly). English interpretation is available. https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7225-grundrechte_gelten_nicht_im...

To anyone German-speaking[1] in Berlin I can recommend visiting a session of the committee. It's really illuminating to see those intelligence agents trying to save their face firsthand. https://www.bundestag.de/bundestag/ausschuesse18/ua/1untersu...

[0]: Did you know that US intelligence interrogated refugees in Germany on "the bread supply situation" in their home countries and used Google Maps for that?

[1]: Sometimes they have English-speaking witnesses. This week it's people from the ACLU but they also had an US drone pilot and a Verizon executive in the past.




Yes, all spy agencies tend to use "technically legal" stuff like that to operate around what the law intended to stop them from doing.

This is why it's so critical to have an oversight committee with deep knowledge of everything that's going on within the agency, regular audits, and a willingness to actually act as supervisors in favor of the law - NOT the agency.

That should be their job. Unfortunately, virtually all such committees tend to act more as cheerleaders for the spy agencies than actual supervisors meant to hold the agencies accountable.


And in the unlikely scenario where Germany or one of the five eyes do get proper controls then they can always just lean on the US, who most definitely wont be getting controls anytime soon as both presidential candidates want more intel gathering (greatly expanding collection is Hillary's primary security strategy). They can just stop storing the data locally and call up the NSA whenever they need anything they can't collect legally themselves.




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