
US bugged Merkel's phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims - Suraj-Sun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24690055
======
diego_moita
Disclaimer: Brazilian here

Most comments I've seen about this issue seem very American, going along the
lines of "stop the hypocrisy, everybody does it". It is useless to argue
against such view, cynicism is usually unpermeable to arguments.

However, regardless if "everybody does it" or not this story will have
implications. It is a very strong argument for a new kind of walled garden:
the nationally restricted Internet. We should expect a strong growth of the
China-style Internet.

This surveillance is now seen in Latin America as a threat from the classic
"American Imperialism". In the name of "protection" from real or imaginary
dangers politicians, bureaucrats and autocrats will enforce Internet
monitoring within a lot of countries. Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft,
expect a lot of trouble.

~~~
rob05c
I fear Tyrannical Governments will create an "American Internet," a "Chinese
Internet," a "European Internet," and a "Rest-of-the-world Internet."

It will happen quietly, and no one outside the tech community will know until
it's too late.

~~~
bcoates
If that's the worst case scenario we're doing pretty OK. The nationalist
networks will presumably be like the PSTN in the 90s: ubiquitous, reliable,
safe but perceived as safer than it is, overpriced, limited, behind. All the
interesting stuff will happen over tunnels to the Internet Internet.

~~~
rob05c
Well, it depends how they do it, right? If they just block DNS, yeah, people
who care can simply tunnel out. It still hurts, as the average non-caring
citizen's knowledge is stunted. But not as badly.

If they block IPs, and closely monitor outgoing tunnels? Then it's a lot
harder to get out.

I suspect you're right, they'll probably just block DNS and the worst IPs.
It's easier, and DNS gets the 99%. Even The Great Firewall only blocks the
'worst' IPs (like Twitter).

~~~
Volpe
The Great Firewall does a lot more than that. It blocks _new_ IPs by default
(some are later re-enabled after being 'assessed' in some way).

It does some kind of automated crawling and blocking.

It has manual (as in human) blockers, who read content on Weibo and remove it.

It's still horribly crude, and fairly straight forward to route around but
it's more complex than a simple static dns blacklist.

~~~
rob05c
Right. It also does DNS poisoning, URL word analysing, deep packet inspection,
and VPN identification & blocking. I meant it only directly blocks the worst
IPs, as opposed to directly blocking all external IPs.

I do wonder whether a US Firewall will be worse or better than China's. On one
hand, the US is presumably less autocratic. On the other, we have 10x the
defense resources.

------
molecule
> Mrs Merkel - an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of
> Freedom in 2011 - is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in
> the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany.

though she expressed no such outrage when it was revealed that the NSA was
conducting similar surveillance on German citizens.

~~~
growupkids
Or when the Chinese were caught doing the same thing.

~~~
fosap
I don't know what you are referring to. But for a americanophile who sees the
USA as the leader of the free world and protector of human rights that a way
more shocking than if a known police state does it. Et tu, Brute?

~~~
lostlogin
People see America as a protector of human rights? Really? Do these people
read anything?

~~~
grey-area
_People see America as a protector of human rights? Really?_

Many Americans and the American media certainly do.

------
grey-area
It started in 2002, Merkel was elected as Chancellor in 2005, that implies
they are watching for up and coming politicians (she was CDU leader in 2002).
I did find it interesting that the NSA admitted also collecting information
from Washington DC in 2008 (an election year), the assurances that this was an
accident are sounding more and more hollow, and the implications are
frightening for a functioning democracy.

This, along with the Airbus, Petrobras and Belgacom revelations, makes it
clear that surveillance is not targeting terrorists or part of the war on
terror - it is engaged in for economic and political advantage, even against
allies. That's quite a serious breach of trust.

 _" President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged
phone monitoring"_

I can't decide which is more damning, that he know about it, and didn't stop
it, or that he knew nothing about it, and the NSA takes it upon themselves to
monitor the communications of allied politicians and interfere in other
nations. Either way his reputation and his promises are meaningless now.

Along with being used by the US, raw intercept information is also shared with
other allies of the US like Isreal and the UK, potentially damaging its
European allies by giving out secret information to third parties, and I find
it hard to believe given the lack of security the Snowden and Manning leaks
highlighted, that Russia and China also don't have access to much of this
intel through the many private contractors with security clearance.

While it is somewhat hypocritical of Merkel to be outraged by this and not by
the widespread surveillance of her citizens, I'm pleased that this story has
at last triggered such a virulent reaction in European politicians. The best
thing she could do now in response is to offer Snowden asylum in Germany, and
allow him to speak openly about the US security state - I do believe that
would be in the interests of all the citizens of the world, if not of their
leaders.

The blowback from this affair is just starting to pick up pace - it's already
taken US relations with South America to a new low, and is about to do the
same in Europe. Hopefully it will lead to meaningful change.

------
patrickg_zill
Not just USA had access to the info - remember that it came out that the USA
was giving raw feeds to Israel's intelligence service also....
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-
americans-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-
personal-data-israel-documents)

------
sethbannon
As an American, I'm deeply embarrassed by this. Outrage will not stop the
spying program, however. Action will:
[https://stopwatching.us](https://stopwatching.us)

------
0p0p
> President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged
> phone monitoring, the magazine reports. He apologised to the German
> chancellor, it said.

Plausible deniability?!?

Wonder what else he "didn't know" and how he is justified in making sweepings
statements if he is not sufficiently informed. It can't be "Don't worry, trust
me" and "Oops, I didn't know" simultaneously.

~~~
rdtsc
That is not a bad response from his position. From say a game theoretic point
of view.

Imagine is he is not the president but say a mafia boss, maybe a powerful drug
lord. And it turns out one of the drug mules for a competing drug gangs gets
murdered by Obama's men. Now, war is about to start. And all the drug lords
have a meeting. Obama can claim he didn't personally order the murder and he
didn't know it was about to happen. He has men working for him who receive
general instruction like "keep the product flowing no matter what cost" with
specifically no concrete instruction (especially in written form). Now that
protects him. If worse comes to worse, he can simply replace a scapegoat low
level employee and keep the organization going forward. The same modus
operandi is probably at play with regard to a lot of this stuff from the White
House.

~~~
devcpp
On the other hand, the POTUS is at least supposed to look powerful in the eyes
of the citizens. By recognizing that he doesn't know (and can't know) what's
going on, he is announcing to the world that he is a puppet and that the POTUS
is nothing but a servant to higher interests.

Bad move by the puppet masters.

------
frank_boyd
So, this time, at least grammatically speaking, Obama didn't lie when he said
they _were not spying_ on her.

I think we're making real progress here.

On the bright side, it's a good thing she's "on the list" as well, as this
seems to be the only way to get her attention regarding the mass surveillance
issue.

~~~
friendly_chap
Hypocrites indeed.

Hopefully humanity will come up with a way to replace these parasites called
politicians.

I believe not even too many years later we will remember this era of humanity
as the darkest of the dark ages.

~~~
throwaway98789
I made this account entirely to remind you of the goddamn holocaust. Try not
to lose all perspective, eh?

~~~
infinitone
Which holocaust? The one 50 years ago or the one currently happening?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA)

~~~
andy_ppp
I saw this video only the other day - can't actually believe this is happening
- still a bit shocked by it :-/

------
topynate
Having accurately assessed the likely effects of the programme's exposure, it
seems very dumb to proceed with it. What could the NSA learn that would
outweigh having Germany decide that America wasn't actually a friendly,
trustworthy country, as it has presumably now done? Don't ignore either that
by recognizing the programme as a betrayal while proceeding with it, the NSA
admits to being utterly amoral in a way that can't be walked back from. The
only saving grace is that the programme started in 2003; you could almost
plead collective insanity given what American foreign policy looked like at
that time.

------
alexqgb
She's "angry", but not angry enough to grant Snowden asylum.

~~~
growupkids
Think the Russians hope no one notices how quiet they are right now about all
this?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Soviet_and_Russian_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Soviet_and_Russian_espionage_in_the_United_States#Post-
Soviet_period)

According to former GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev, "SVR and GRU (Russia's
external and military intelligence agencies, respectively) are operating
against the U.S. in a much more active manner than they were during even the
hottest days of the Cold War"

~~~
camus2
Russia doesnt boast about being the "Greatest democracy and the Leader of the
free world".

~~~
malandrew
Yup. Russia is extremely candid about its realpolitik approach to geopolitics.

------
lispm
Merkel got the 'freedom' medal from Obama.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2011/06/07/remark...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2011/06/07/remarks-president-obama-and-chancellor-merkel-exchange-
toasts)

~~~
maak
... your point?

~~~
fosap
She got a medal for fighting a surveillance state (historically quite
questionable, btw) by a Obama. And now she has to learn that Obama is no
better.

~~~
acqq
Thanks to you I've read what Obama then said (it's linked above): "Told by the
communists that she couldn’t pursue her love of languages, she excelled as a
physicist. _Asked to spy for the secret police, she refused._ "

Perfect.

------
skidoo
If the shoe were on the other foot, there'd be bloody hell to pay.

~~~
ams6110
I'm quite sure there are many governments spying (or trying to apy) on Obama's
cell phone, including European governments. To expect otherwise is naive and
that's why his personal electronic devices are highly secured.

~~~
skidoo
I'm not naive, but you did misspell "spy".

------
throwaway9848
I'm shocked - shocked - to find that gambling is going on in here!

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
There was an article that made this same comparison recently, and discussed
why it doesn't matter: [http://crookedtimber.org/2013/10/23/the-politics-of-
hypocris...](http://crookedtimber.org/2013/10/23/the-politics-of-hypocrisy/)

> What is interesting is not whether France (or Mexico, or Brazil, or Germany)
> is being hypocritical in pretending to be shocked at what the US is doing.
> It’s whether their response (hypocritical as it may be) has real political
> consequences. And it surely does

~~~
zurn
The UKUSA intelligence aparatus has been long used as a justification to
increase powers of spy agencies in other countries. For allies it's the
perceived political returns when they deliver more intelligence and get in
exchange get on the good side of USA's foreign policy, and for others it's the
perceived need to keep up in the arms race.

------
AustinLin
Sometimes I wish the gov't would just come out and say what everyone is
thinking:

Yep we are spying on you, (insert name of foreign leader), just like you are
trying to spy on our leaders.

There are good arguments to be made against mass surveillance of the internet
at large, but expecting that countries will stop spying on each other anytime
soon is plain stupid.

------
rob05c
As an American, I wish news agencies would stop conflating the US with the
CIA. It suggests US citizens generally approve of their actions.

The "US" did not bug Merkel's phone. An agency under the Executive branch,
which is above the Rule of Law, which is drunk with power and paranoia, who
considers American citizens the enemy as much as foreigners, bugged Merkel's
phone.

It would be like saying "Syria uses chemical weapons." The Syrian people had
little to do with it, and the American people have little to do with this.

~~~
bilbo0s
Well...

we voted in all the Representatives, Senators and Presidents who, in turn,
voted to implement the programs though. We do have some culpability.

~~~
rob05c
The US is a two-party system. First Past The Post voting ensures a vote for a
third party is wasted. No significant percentage of people will ever vote for
a third party (excluding transition periods between party systems).

The current ruling party is widely recognized as less warmongering and less
surveillance-state than the other party.

Americans aren't completely inculpable. Our societal inability to work
together (see: Prisoner's Dilemma), combined with our unwillingness to risk
contentment, contributes.

But I fail to see how American citizens have any real say in the government.
We present a "democracy," but the two-party system is a thinly veiled
autocracy.

------
LekkoscPiwa
The pace at which the USA destroys the remainders of its credibility is
astonishing.

------
csense
It seems naive not to believe that other countries' intelligence services do
the same, or would do so if they had the technology.

This doesn't make it right.

The reason I feel that we're justified in using the "but-everybody-else-does-
it" argument to dismiss it from our concern at the moment, is that it attempts
to redirect the public outrage from a major problem (NSA spying on basically
everyone) to a much more minor problem (NSA spying on head of a foreign
state).

Imagine the (hypothetical) case where a particular state's police force is
taking fire due to the police breaking up a properly permitted, legal,
peaceful rally using excessive force.

It later comes out that the police officers of the department in question
regularly disobey the speed limit and sometimes run stop signs.

To be sure, police officers speeding is not something they should be doing;
it's wrong and unethical to do that.

But police officers speeding is a much less serious problem than police
officers depriving the people of their right to peacefully assemble and
petition their government for redress of grievances.

And if the media and the audience's focus immediately goes from the more
important story (unlawfully breaking up peaceful rallies and excessive use of
force) to the less important story (police officers sometimes exceed the speed
limit when they're not supposed to), it's bad because it means the serious
problem is no longer getting the attention it deserves.

~~~
mahranch
I'm going to go against the grain here and say that it's not just that
"everyone does it", it's more about the fact that everyone _will_ do it,
regardless of the circumstances.

Consider for a moment what would happen if the U.S. stopped all its foreign &
domestic spying. What would happen? Do you think China will stop their spy
programs? How about Russia? The UK? The rest of Europe?

No. The U.S. would be at a severe disadvantage when it comes to intelligence.
It's like an arms race, except instead of weapons, it's knowledge. Just
because one player quits or gets caught, doesn't mean everyone else will stop.
In fact, it would be to their advantage if a few players left the table.

That's why I find this whole spying thing nonsense. It's one thing to spy on
regular citizens, but it's another to spy on targets (like Angela Merkel) who
are political actors and/or heads of state. It should be _expected_.

