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.
> The BND helped the NSA to spy on GERMANS and GERMAN companies.
Didn't know that part. Thats an interesting twist. I could understand them working together against someone else but not against themselves. Must be part of that "Five eyes" cooperation thing Snowden was talking about.
Oh, but Germany isn't part of the five eyes alliance. I think that's what hurt us the most. Our government really believed in a German/American alliance. And then we found out we didn't belong into the inner circle.
And now the politicians finally realized what it means to give a foreign power access to your internet nodes. Sure we need the cooperation, but my guess is the politicians and the executive organs could not imagine the NSA would use this to harm our economy.
fiveeyes is hardly a secret. It's existence isn't even classified. For example, I've sat in presentations with nationals from many countries, and the non-fiveeyes members would occassionally be asked to leave the room at the end to allow the fiveeyes nations to divulge some further information. But the other nations were told before leaving that the next part of the presentation was fiveeyes only.
If I understand this correctly, Boeing (US) and Airbus (EU) are competing head to head for extremely valuable contracts. The NSA tasks the BND to spy on Airbus employees and the company in order to maintain Boeing's competitive edge over Airbus. In doing so, threatening the jobs of fellow Germans (and other Europeans).
This is exactly whats going on, the NSA tried to get their selectors inside the BND snooping program and were partly succesful with this.
And when the BND noticed that a few thousand of these selectors were succesfully installed, they informed the german chancellery who miracly done... nothing at all to protect us against industrial spionage.
And they dont care about all the other stuff the US is committing from germany, like conducting their drone wars which make germany a legal war target.
The actual extent is still unknown. There is a possibility that industrial secrets have been transmitted, but there's no proof or even allegations of a particular case which has happened. I'd rather know more details before passing judgement.
There is enough evidence that the NSA does industrial espionage against Germany and Europe. Whether the BND was stupid enough to help them, remains to be seen.
The NSA has given target data to the BND and the BND has then handed over the collected intelligence about these targets to the NSA.
The check who were the targets, was a joke. There were literally millions of selectors and a quick check already delivered thousands of selectors which were directly against German interests.
So get upset with the BND then. That would at least have a chance of your anger actually achieving something, instead of waving your fist at the NSA from across the ocean, because frankly, they don't really care what German citizens think.
And if, because of a giant public outrage, this "cooperation" will be stopped, the NSA will not like this situation. Thus, indirectly, the NSA cares a lot, what the Germans think.
In English, the idiom "Don't care what they think" means "don't care what they feel". Though I understand how that might lead to miscomprehension from non-native speakers ;)
I do understand. My country (Australia) has US spy bases in it too ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap ), which they have also used to spy on Australians. In Australia's case (and I would be willing to bet that it's the same for Germany), it was a quid pro quo arrangement. Australians spy on Americans and pass the information to the NSA. Americans spy on Australians and pass it to the Australian spy agencies - thereby avoiding restrictions on domestic spying. Seriously, your problem is with the BND, not NSA, because NSA is going to spy on you regardless of whether you want them to. It's pretty much their job. You just don't want the BND actively helping them, which is why your energy should be directed towards them.
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.
What I suspect is actually not "helping", but rather "blind trust" -- e.g. just having an arrangement with the US where the US sends in "selectors" and the Germans send over the data; and nobody competent/willing to screen the selectors the US sends in ahead of deploying them.
I think there are strong incentives to turn a semi-blind eye to what the US is sending in (or what is going out) -- until shit hits the fan...
It's presumably the job of the BND to collect information about threats to Germany. If they've determined that the most effective way for them to achieve that is to submit to the NSA completely and beg for whatever scraps USA is willing to leave them, there's a fair chance that is true. If you question that assessment, that means you are questioning their competence at espionage, which doesn't bode well for their ability to collect the information themselves without the NSA's help.
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 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.
Who are they buying from, then? All of Europe is spying on each other. German companies even refer to France as the "evil empire" of industrial espionage - not the USA. And of course many other countries like China are also spying.
When I hear European politicians lobbying for local hosting services and the like, I think it in part has much more to do with getting more negotiating power at the international surveillance table. NSA had hooks directly into various services that other countries had to bargain with the NSA for, if they can get services hosted in their own countries, they can be the go-to organization and have more bargaining chips.
> German companies even refer to France as the "evil empire" of industrial espionage
I've never heard such a statement from German companies (and I live in Germany). Related to industrial espionage are rather China (for obvious reasons) and the United States (the latter even before Snowden: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon#Industriespionage.3F_De...).
> In a 2009 US diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks, an unnamed German CEO of a satellite manufacturer was quoted calling France “the evil empire, stealing technology, and Germany knows this”, adding that French industrial spying was doing as much damage as anything coming from Russia or China
> Colourful stories about the lengths the French secret services would go to emerged in the early 1990s, such as the bugging of seats on Air France planes to eavesdrop on American business leaders.
> At the time, then-CIA director Stansfield Turner qualified French intelligence as “the most predatory service in the world, now that the old Soviet Union is gone”
Every EU country has been playing this game for centuries. It's always stunning to me how much more faith Europeans have in their governments than Americans do, even though they get up to the same kind of shenanigans.
People also seem to forget about major French companies like VUPEN, who research and buy 0-day vulnerabiliies with the express purpose of selling them to French intelligence services (and intelligence services of allied countries).
I have no doubt France's intelligence services are just as bad as NSA.
that's why I stopped buying anything that touched american hand/soil, if possible/reasonable. I like many individuals there, but the idea that even a cent would go to that orwellian system that is a net negative to mankind is a bit too much to handle
I feel similar, but it's not just because of surveillance but also because of torture, war, bullying smaller countries, financing terrorism and more.
In some areas its hard to evade products out of the United States of Central North America and my reaction is to lose interest in these thing altogether.
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.
Spying on other EU nations is not any better. There are strict rules that target selectors used for mass surveillance must obey. Any target selector must be related to the prevention of one of the following:
1. An attack against German territory (i.e. war).
2. International terrorist attacks related to Germany.
3. International arms trafficking.
4. Drug smuggling as part of organized crime.
5. Endangering the stability of the Euro through counterfeiting activities abroad.
6. International money laundering at a large scale.
7. Human trafficking.
Mass surveillance by the BND for purposes outside of these seven areas is not allowed, period; any personal data intercepted that is not related to these areas must be deleted. Most of the target selectors provided by the NSA to the BND did not fall into any of these areas.
Which is probably why they used the NSA to do it. NSA spies on the people and hand the Germans the data. Germans don't technically breach their own laws and both get the intel.
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.
There is nothing to realize. That's known for a long time. Other than GB we have been occupied by the US, we have large US installations here - including the US military central commands for Europe and Africa (!). The situation is understandable, because Germany caused and lost WWII. But after 70 years since the war has ended, many Germans wish that the US stops using Germany as tool.
With the amount that Germany spends on defence, subjugating the entire defense and intelligence community to the US might be the optimal strategy. Defence may be like Facebook - if you won't pay cash you'll have to pay in other ways.
Germany is one of the top defense spending countries.
You may check also a map. Germany is surrounded by friends. Germany also doesn't have an empire to maintain.
We have spend billions on useless adventures like in Afghanistan. Luckily Germany was not stupid enough to take part in other adventures: Iraq, Libya, ...
That the US decides to spend as much as the next twenty countries together is only their problem. But the US politics has made parts of the world a very unsafe place. Check the US politics in north-africa and middle east: toppling regimes and trying to install new regimes. This has created a huge mess and creates problems throughout the region. The rise of ISIS/IS is one of those results.
what you call an adventure is by most muslims percieved as rape and genocide of their homelands. we don't have another world to move to, so we'll have to deal with all the cp US does (and Russia too, I don't see much difference in foregin policies and results nowadays). Have no doubt - legacy of this will be present for generations, and currently we might still not reached the peak of these atrocities.
He was being sarcastic. It was obviously not an adventure in the Famous Five sense.
Europe is really suffering now because of the idiocy of American politicians. There are massive waves of migrants fleeing Syria into Europe via boats. Thousands are dying at sea, hundreds of thousands are arriving or being rescued. There is nowhere to put them all. America and its stooges turned these north African countries into anarchy zones and now Europe is paying the price of taking care of the refugees.
I think its a "trust but verify" mentality. You know that your neighbor is probably trust worthy but you still keep tabs on them to make sure they are not secretly planning something against you.
The issue you have with stopping yourself is that your neighbor may still be doing so, and I'd imagine from a nation's perspective its crucial to have the same kind of info on them that others have on you.
"trust but verify" is an old Russian proverb and was Reagan's line that he used to refer to the USSR WRT a nuclear disarmament treaty.
Are we treating the Germans like the old USSR now? Is having an unfair advantage in commerce as important as knowing where are all of the nuclear missiles that are aimed at us?
I think it is somewhat less "crucial" than you appear to think; and I think that "because fuck you, that's why" is the foreign policy of a thug.
If it's apparently less crucial than I think then why do most major governments have clandestine intelligence services whose sole purpose is to spy on other nations?
Just because you have some paranoid fuckups in your government doesn't mean you should give them all powers unchecked, right? Like all else in hierarchical structures, there should be some proper oversight and control, by unbiased authorities (well, it would be nice at least). Problem seems to be, these services run at free will, they feel above law and constitution, justifying just about everything with "terrorist threat" mantra. Politicians seems weak/corrupt so they don't stand for common citizen's rights. Somebody from Obama's government expressed frustration once how all these services/programs/activities run basically on autopilot, and nobody dares to cut their budget.
Let's take a step back... does anybody truly believe current terrorism can shake foundations of any western society? I don't mean blowing hypothetical nukes in manhattan, but real things that happened. Planes falling, buildings collapsing, very sad events, but nothing major in civilization perspective. Our perception of these events is hugely disproportionate, based on our fears. Yet we are, step by step, losing our freedom like the alternative would be total annihilation and end of the world as we know it. Not even terrorist themselves want that. And they are not winning in any measurable way.
It's natural for any ambitious organisational unit, with strong leader, to try to grab all power, influence etc that's available. Normal comapnies have strict boundaries how far the power can reach, so for example you won't find a single bank that is effectively run by it's head of IT, in fact in contrary (IT is a true backoffice, in the back of the back of the back of the rest). Just set the boundaries and enforce them with budget cuts threat. Now who will do that is the question :)
On a statistical side almost anything else is likely to kill you. There's probably more people killed each year by ladders than some perceived external threat, and I don't see a war on ladders happening anywhere.
I do believe intelligence services are necessary. Essentially a government has two different sources of information: the overt sources, and the covert sources.
Both have their problems. The overt sources are easy for adversaries (in a very broad sense) to manipulate and observe. The covert sources have the inherent problem that less oversight usually means incompetence and abuse.
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.
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.