
World's largest Internet exchange sues Germany over mass surveillance - Sami_Lehtinen
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/16/ixp_sues_german_govt_surveillance/
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3ot
It's interesting to note that DE-CIX, before filing this lawsuit, hired the
former President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany Hans-Jürgen
Papier, who is very respected, to evaluate the legality of BND's practice at
the DE-CIX. His findings were crushing. Now going into court against the
foreign-intelligence agency with the assessment of such a highly respected
judge is probably the best strategy you could come up with. I wish them best
luck!

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hrrsn
Wow. Good on DE-CIX.

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mysterypie
Meanwhile in the U.S., AT&T executives have permitted mass governmental
surveillance through their network for _decades_ , even before the Patriot
Act, even before national security letters. AT&T never made a single public
complaint about the surveillance, and for all we know, they were eager
participants.

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hackuser
A minor detail: The name AT&T applies to three different companies:

* 1885-1983: Generally known today as the monopoly phone company for the United States. (I don't know when the monopoly began or its geographic extent.)

* 1983-2005: Long distance company, after the breakup of the monopoly. AFAIK, it had been one small part of the much larger former monopoly.

* 2005-present: The former Southwestern Bell Corp (SBC), which bought the above company and took on its name and branding.

~~~
mysterypie
You're right that the name AT&T has undergone big changes in what it refers
to, esp. with the breakup of the Bell System in 1983/1984\. But the old AT&T
set the culture for all of the present day phone companies in dealings with
the government.

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sergj
Has anyone more information on the german secret court referenced in the
article? As a german this is my first time hearing about that.

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mtmail
It's said to be a new control/review committee, probably without the rule to
be transparent, and hasn't been created yet. As the article says it's already
deemed unconstitutional before it even started.

German source: "Die Kontrolle soll stattdessen nur noch nachlaufend durch ein
neues Spezialgremium erfolgen." [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-
Skandal-und-BND-...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-Skandal-und-
BND-Ueberwachung-Internet-Knoten-De-CIX-klagt-gegen-die-
Bundesrepublik-3325186.html)

Update: the existing control committees for G10 (article 10 of Grundgesetz =
German constitution) are staffed with members of the parliament and one has to
be lawyer. I don't think that makes it a court, maybe it's just a matter of
translation.

German source on G10 committees
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artikel_10-Gesetz#Verfahren](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artikel_10-Gesetz#Verfahren)

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dogma1138
If the committee performs a judicial review which in this context I am
understanding it does it is technically a "court".

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pgeorgi
It's not a judicial review, the PKG (parliamentary control committee) and the
G10 Kommittee, which is a subset of the PKG, both consist of members of
Parliament, and they do the same work (keeping an eye on the executive
branch's work) - just for efforts whose information is considered too
sensitive for wider distribution.

~~~
dogma1138
My german is a bit rusty but doesn't "gerichtlicher prüfung" translates into
"court examination" or more precisely "judicial review"?

~~~
pgeorgi
"Die anstelle gerichtlicher Prüfung des Sachverhalts vorgesehenen politischen
Kontrollgremien haben sich in der Vergangenheit aber oft als unzulänglich
erwiesen:"

translates to (while keeping the sentence structure the same as much as
possible, even if that sounds a bit off in english):

"The, in place of judicial review of the factual matter, arranged political
control committees have shown in the past to often be insufficient:"

