Bundestag grills Merkel subordinates on NSA spying | Deutsche Welle – Feb. 13, 2017 |
The German parliament is asking tough questions about what the Chancellery knew about US spying. Members of Angela Merkel’s staff are on the spot this week. Merkel will be questioned on Thursday.
What did the German chancellor’s office know? That’s what’s a parliamentary investigative committee is looking into as it conducts its final public interviews in the aftermath of the the whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations that the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on German and EU citizens – including Angela Merkel – with the cooperation of the foreign intelligence service, the BND.
On Monday, the committee questioned the state secretary for intelligence affairs in the chancellor’s office, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, for over four hours. In some respects, the session was a warmup for Thursday, when Merkel herself will appear before Bundestag deputies. All indications are that she’s in for a rough ride.
“So, who dropped the ball?” committee chairman Patrick Sensburg, a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, pointedly asked Fritsche. “My impression is that our conglomeration of search terms wasn’t adequately maintained at all.”
In 2013, it emerged that the NSA was using so-called selectors targeted at EU citizens in data that the BND had helped procure. That, critics say, violated Germany’s constitutionally guaranteed individual right to privacy of communication. Fritsche passed the blame on to the BND, saying there had not been adequate checking of the hundreds of thousands of selectors the NSA had presented to their German colleagues.
Fritsche repeatedly answered questions by saying he hadn’t been in his current office at the time of the spying. His position within the chancellor’s office was specially created in March 2014, and he said things had gotten better since. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy parliamentarians.
German court’s ruling on mass spying is a victory for the BND and NSA | DW – Nov. 2016 |
Judges in Karlsruhe have ruled out access to a list of search parameters Germany’s foreign spy agency used to track millions of targets worldwide. What does the verdict mean for state-sponsored mass surveillance?
In June 2013, media reports based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of global surveillance programs conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The leaks had a massive impact in Germany, especially after it was found that the NSA was spying on European leaders and heads of government, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The findings prompted the “Bundesnachrichtendienst” (BND), Germany’s foreign spy agency, to deactivate around 40,000 of several million “selectors” – a collection of search parameters, including telephone numbers, keywords, URLs and addresses.
On Tuesday, Germany’s constitutional court ruled that the government was not obliged to transfer this secret list of selectors to a special parliamentary fact-finding commission on the NSA revelations.The judges justified their decision by saying that the government’s need to keep certain data confidential was more important than the commission’s desire for extensive details on the selectors list. Releasing the list without US approval could also endanger the functioning of intelligence agencies and jeopardize Germany’s effectiveness in matters of national security, they added.
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One of the commission’s main tasks was to look into the selectors list, which included search parameters from the NSA that the German spy agency used to track millions of surveillance targets around the world, Anna Biselli of the digital research organization “Netzpolitik” told DW. In the course of its investigation, it was found that the BND monitored sensitive targets, including European governments, institutions and corporations.
More below the fold …
Traditionally an “analytic” service that supported US intelligence agencies, the BND now operates independently around the world, in particular the Middle East and regions where the German army, the Bundeswehr, is deployed.
It has had a chequered past. Curveball – the Iraqi defector whose false claims about a biological weapons programme the then US secretary of state Colin Powell used at the UN in February 2003 to justify invading – was a BND source. The Germans gave US intelligence agencies reports about Curveball’s claims but refused to allow the Americans to interview him and judge his credibility for themselves. Curveball, whose real name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan, recently told the Guardian he had lied.
Germany opposed the Iraq war, but, with the approval of the then chancellor, Gerhard Schröder’s chief of staff, two BND agents remained in Baghdad and provided information to the headquarters of General Tommy Franks, the US commander of the invasion, in Qatar. Franks later said they were “invaluable”, but a German parliamentary investigation found that they had not assisted US military operations in Iraq.
Suspected Double Agent Further Strains German-US Ties | Der Spegel – July 2014 |
The BFV’s counterespionage is also in place. BFV staff tap phones lines, take aerial photos and recruit informants among Russian employees so as to have some idea as to what is happening behind the closed doors of these offices.
Their efforts helped to uncover an email sent a few weeks ago to a Russian diplomatic outpost in Germany that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. The sender had sought to offer his services as an informant to the Russians. To prove he wasn’t setting a trap, the man also used Gmail to enclose classified documents from his employer, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). If needed, he wrote, he’d be happy to deliver even more. The letter sent shockwaves through the BFV as it became apparent that, once again, the country had been struck by another wave of spying, this time involving Russia.
The German intelligence agencies prepared a trap to snag the suspect. Under a forged Russian email address, they made it look like they were taking him up on the deal and offered a meeting with him. He refused, forcing them to come up with another idea. In their desperation, they even turned to US agencies to ask if the Gmail account was familiar to them. They didn’t get any response. Instead the secretive informant closed his email account a short time later. Investigators smelled something fishy.
Brazen
German authorities first succeeded in detaining the man. And if what the 31-year-old BND employee told investigators is true, it’s actually the Americans, not the Russians, who are at the center of the latest spying scandal to strike Germany. And it would further demonstrate the Americans’ sheer brazenness in spying on what is supposedly one of Washington’s closest partners.
The man, who federal prosecutors arrested on suspicion of being a foreign spy, told astounded officials that it hadn’t only been representatives of Moscow to whom he had offered his services. He also claims to have contacted the US Embassy in Berlin by email two years ago and to have offered his services as an informant. He apparently had success, too, and has since completed a number of assignments for US agents. Most recently, he received an order to pass along any information available on the special committee in Germany’s federal parliament investigating NSA spying in Germany. The suspect claims to have met three times with his American contacts in Austria and to have obtained payments numbering in the five digits from them. Sources have indicated the amount to be around €25,000 ($34,000).
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EU legislators try to keep Trumpist out of Brussels | DW |
EU leaders hope to keep Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, a potential US ambassador to the bloc, out of Brussels. The businessman has compared the EU to the Soviet Union and called for its downfall and for its single currency, the euro, to fail.
“I am strictly against conferring Ted Malloch accreditation as ambassador,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, one of the European Parliament’s 14 vice presidents and a member of Germany’s Free Democrats.In an interview with the BBC last week, Malloch cheered the looming Brexit as a way for the United Kingdom to get around “the bureaucrats in Brussels” and said EU interference in free trade negotiations between Britain and the United States would be like a husband “trying to stop his wife having an affair.” And, said the man who could represent the United States in Brussels, “I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped bring down the Soviet Union – so maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming.”
EU’s Mogherini warns US not to ‘interfere’ in European politics | DW – Feb. 10, 2017 |
As Trump re-evaluates NATO, NATO must rethink Russia
With tensions running high in NATO, it seems the alliance is in sore need of a fresh course on Russia and a new deal on security. A former US ambassador to Moscow and an ex-German envoy to NATO gave their takes to DW.
‘An insane idea’
Political turmoil between the United States, the EU and Russia comes at a strange time, with US troops stationed near Russia’s borders and both countries building up their nuclear arsenals. Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea sounded alarm within NATO, and Russia has also been accused of sending troops to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Last month, the United States positioned hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers in the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary and Romania to serve as a deterrent to possible “Russian aggression.”
Both Joachim Bitterlich and ex-US ambassador Matlock, however, reject fears that Russia might turn aggressive toward NATO.
“Russia is not going to attack a small NATO neighbor, and the US should under no circumstances go to war with Russia,” Matlock said. “This is an insane idea.”
When it comes to fighting in Ukraine, Moscow’s actions of are damaging Russia’s “true interests,” Matlock said. However, if there had been “no Western or US involvement in Ukraine during the Maidan uprising, there would probably have been no Russian annexation of Crimea or support for the insurrection in the Donbass.”
Jack Matlock also said the alliance’s setting up of bases on its eastern flank “violates the spirit” of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which states that the US will not keep troops in Eastern Europe.
An updated approach
“To Putin, the Baltic is already gone,” Bitterlich said. “He doesn’t really care about it, and the same goes for Poland.”
Instead, the Russian president sees the Caucasus and the Ukraine as his “red line,” a point completely misunderstood by the US and its European allies, Bitterlich said.
Russian President Putin in Budapest to discuss sanctions, energy
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said his country wants to protect its economic links with Russia. Talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin focused on trade and energy, as well as EU sanctions against Moscow.
Following his meeting with Putin in the Hungarian capital, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary, an EU and NATO member, was striving for “open and transparent” relations with Russia.
Trade between the two countries has suffered since the European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow in mid-2014 over Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis. The Kremlin denies backing pro-Moscow insurgents in eastern Ukraine.
“Hungary maintains its stance that non-economic problems cannot be handled with economic means … we very much hope that soon we will see good Russian-European cooperation,” Orban told reporters at a joint news conference with Putin.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Hungary had lost out on $6.7 billion in exports since the bloc imposed the sanctions, which he said had failed to achieve their objectives.
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Orban denounced what he labeled “a strong anti-Russian atmosphere” in the West.Putin called Hungary an “important and reliable European partner for Russia.”
With Trump in the White House, Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto told Reuters he expected a “massive improvement” in US-Hungarian relations. Szijjarto has also criticized the Obama administration for trying to prevent Hungary warming up to Moscow.
EU’s Orban and ally Putin cement closer ties | EurActiv / AFP |
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