German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

http://www.dw.de/german-intelligence-agency-halts-internet-monitoring-for-nsa/a-18435768

by mattjaynes • 11 years ago

120 32 11 years ago

dw.de

urlwolf• 11 years ago

Happy to hear this, as an expat living in Berlin and being very concerned with the current NSA situation.

madez5• 11 years ago

I'm also happy to hear this.

If another spy agency wants to know something they always have to state exactly what and why. Then, for each case, can be decided if help is given or not.

Foreignly spying is a criminal offence and must be prosecuted.

If it was ever different then there are serious fundamental problems that must be fixed.

odiroot2• 11 years ago

Same here. Privacy issues are something that boosted Berlin's (and German in general) startups or at least gave them an opportunity for easy marketing -- "we are not in five eyes". Now it's kind of awkward.

By the way, the pictured building (new BND headquarters) is in my neighborhood; I cycle past it nearly every day.

On the other side of the building there are two conspicuous palm trees; really tall and green, they even survived winters. I always joke these are actually antennas in disguise but who knows.

allendoerfer• 11 years ago

You might be right:

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/#/beitrag/video/2396252/Van-R...

aw3c2• 11 years ago

I wonder what the fee for is for intentional damage of a public tree (hoping it would not be a "good tree, that would not be nice to damage). Worth trying? :)

cryoshon2• 11 years ago

Good, the more political fallout, the better.

These kinds of cold shoulders are the language of diplomacy and power. In some small abstract way, the US's ability to defend itself has been reduced by this action-- power has been reduced. The power players in the government will take note of this, and ultimately tiny intangible reductions will be unsustainable and policy will have to change.

madez5• 11 years ago

Yes, vulnarabilities are corrective measures.

This becomes clear when official are too safe in their seat. Power corrupts.

Nothing should be undefeatable. In this context, making a country vulnarable - to some degree - can be good.

DamnYuppie2• 11 years ago

While I don't disagree that it is a strong political move, and an appropriate one, I have seen no proof that any of the NSA's operations have made the USA materially safer.

aylons• 11 years ago

"Being safe" does not matter as much as "having power" does.

cryoshon2• 11 years ago

I agree, but I like to think about these things in the terms the government does, which includes a lot of paranoid fear produced by false and frequently cynically malicious assumptions.

Like I said, the difference in actual security here is abstract, difficult to quantify, and potentially nothing practically speaking.

saiya-jin• 11 years ago

there has been an attack - look how understaffed we are! we need more budget! and more control and surveillance!

there has been no attack - look at how good we're doing our job of protecting you. but just to be sure, we need more surveillance.

viccuad• 11 years ago

this game is not about being safer (that's what the USA government sells to their citizens), it's about political and industrial espionage, and building a database of dissenters for the future.

PythonicAlpha4• 11 years ago

The question here is, if it is only a temporary halt until the dust has settled. As much I read in the source, phone calls and faxes are still submitted, so it appears to me very half-hearted.

I know, that the German intelligence agency "BND" always wanted to have a more tight corporation with the NSA.

madez5• 11 years ago

There is a significant difference between the collaboration of surveillance of fax and telephone on one side and the internet on the other side. In the former case, specific justification was and is needed for each selector. In the latter, case that was not the case.

PythonicAlpha4• 11 years ago

Are you sure? I'm not. Who controls what the BND is doing? Oh, yes, I know, they report to a group of politicians, right. They already admitted, that they are overworked and have not the facilities to check up the BND. Also, the BND already lied to parliament ... I guess, the BND is likely worse controlled than the NSA and the NSA has still more control over the BND than our own parliament, since the NSA is in the same building as the BND surveillance team, the politicians from parliament are not (they are hundreds of miles away in Berlin).

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

Now on to UK, Sweden, Spain, France, etc to make them do the same.

valevk• 11 years ago

Yeah, just because it's a major topic in German media...

thesimon• 11 years ago

German Spiegel reports, that mostly European agencies and diplomats were being spied on by the NSA with the help of the German Intelligence Agency, but

"Schindler [Head of Germany intelligence agency] tries to play it down: Most european agencies and most diplomats from the EU don't communicate through unsecure emails. Connections over a Vpn would prevent the capturing of emails by the BND [German intelligence agency]"

And obviously, no terrorists would ever use a Vpn.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bnd-kann-daten-wei...

spacefight• 11 years ago

Over VPN - but is that key exchange safe? Is that proprietary crypto system in use at $diplomacy backdoored with a weak RNG?

PythonicAlpha4• 11 years ago

Newest news from Germany: An important information artifact that was needed to illuminate this topic, was deleted. So, it should be clear, that the BND did not change, but somebody is now hushing up the whole topic.

(German) Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-Ausschuss-BND-hat...

infinity• 11 years ago

"it's a good rule never to leave documentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know when it may be put in."

    - from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

revelation• 11 years ago

This seems like a common theme with intelligence agencies, building datacenters to store petabytes, but no one can spare a 2TB external to store the list of selectors that were queried.

(I mean, there really aren't too many options here. Either they did store the data and deleted it, in which case the person in question and everyone up the chain in command committed treason, or they just don't store queried selectors, in which case 1) the program is probably illegal, 2) they are incompetent if they don't monitor what the 'allies' query. Intelligence agencies have no allies, that is the whole point of their existence.)

junto• 11 years ago

Right at the end of the article is an interesting statement:

  The report said the NSA had equipped the listening station 
  in Bad Aibling with sophisticated technical equipment. A 
  number of NSA personnel are believed to work there together 
  with some 120 BND personnel.

The point here is that NSA personnel are on secondment or implants to use another term. Having implants encourages complacency. You end up with scenarios like:

   Bob (NSA): hey Klaus, can you add these new selectors to the filters please?

   Klaus (BND): Ja, when do you want that? Tomorrow ok? I'll get Alice to run them tomorrow. You still want to come to the summer party this weekend?

Familiarity in security scenarios is dangerous. Implants breed familiarity.

German intelligence agency halts Internet monitoring for NSA

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