Germany Abandons Investigation Into NSA Spying on Chancellor Merkel 81
After the purported eavesdropping by the NSA on German chancellor Angela Merkel's telephone commnunications, the German government opened an investigation. However, writes Bruce66423: A lack of evidence means that the investigation has now ended. Our congratulations to the NSA for covering their tracks so well. Note that it was announced on a Friday evening, which is universally recognised as the time to release the news you don't want to get attention.
Also at The Guardian and the BBC; from the Guardian's version: The investigation came after Der Spiegel reported in October 2013 that the NSA had a database containing Merkel’s personal phone number. Merkel publicly expressed outrage and dispatched a team of senior German intelligence officers to Washington, supposedly to extract a ”no spy” agreement. When the row was its height, the chancellor said: “The charges are grave and have to be cleared up.” ... The White House, responding to the Der Spiegel story in 2013, said it was not spying on Merkel at present and nor would it in the future, but refused to say whether it had in the past, which was interpreted by some as an admission of guilt.
Missleading (Score:2, Insightful)
The german government did not open an investigation. It was the attorney general who finally couldn't avoid to open an "investigation". Of course they didn't do a real investigation since they don't really care. There is a still ongoing investigation by a so called "Untersuchungsausschuss" of the parlament which is hindered by the government and the fucking guys of the BND which are more loyal to the NSA then to their own country and parlament.
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That was in fact the specific reason why they ended the investigation. They found strong circumstantial evidence, but because of lack of cooperation from NSA, they could not get any direct evidence. So the case was closed, as NSA was unlikely to change its stance.
Considering the BND scandal, it's pretty likely that no political pressure was put on NSA to compromise. They were simply going to sweep this under the rug.
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I never understood the point of the investigation. Germany does not have jurisdiction over the spy agencies of foreign countries, which means that they can't charge the NSA with a crime. That's how sovereignty works. In terms of non-criminal penalties they don't need an investigation to say "we think you did a bad thing to us, therefore we are retaliating by banning travel from this dude, withdrawing from this agreement you really wanted, and freezing negotiations on this other agreement you really want." T
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Quite a few spies who have been jailed and/or executed will be surprised to learn that.
Nation S will undoubtedly refuse to honor extradition agreements with Nation V for prosecution of S's spies, even if V is an ally, but V is certainly entitled to arrest, prosecute, and punish spies of all nations caught within its borders (and if the th
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I think you'll find that every single one of those had unusual circumstances. Two nations, at peace, who recognize each-other's sovereignty, will almost never charge official (and open) agents of each-other with any crime for their official actions, and if they try it's likely to not to work very well (as the Italians have found out in their so-far fruitless attempts to try a CIA guy for an extraordinary rendition).
There are a few exceptions, but in general when V finds out a registered Agent of S has been
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The problem being that Germany is one of the key nerve hubs of most of electronic spying activity in Europe and Middle East as many of the recent leaks have shown.
While relevant people may or may not be there, they could search the relevant hardware which is in fact on their soil.
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And then what?
That little question is the problem I have with all these investigations. They know it happened. Everybody knows it happened. If they want to respond using their sovereign rights, the whole point of sovereign rights is that you don't have to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt before you use the damn things. You're sovereign, you're pissed off, that's enough. They can't really respond with their Court system because the actual NSA is nowhere near their jurisdiction. They don't have the m
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And then you use that as leverage to force NSA to give relevant people up. It really isn't hard on state level. US does this kind of "soft blackmail" all the time, as do other large states. Freeze key assets in "investigation" and require extensive cooperation from target state to expedite unfreezing.
It's not that I don't agree with your assessment for most part. I am just pointing out that if there was a political will to get to the bottom of this, Germany does have legal means to do so. I.e. the part of y
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Gee, I thought I made a long response to this. I guess I forgot that Slashdot requires you preview and then submit.
But the gist was that Germany doesn't have the power to do that effectively They're not a finance hub, so there aren';t a lot of assets to freeze, and if you tried it's likely Obama would just Congress to authorize buying different assets in Belgium. The entire EU does have the authority to make that kind of strategy work, but much of the EU is not gonna antagonize the US Security state while P
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I'm not talking about current security situation in Eastern Europe, and as a Finn, I find your attempt to pretend we're allied with hysterical extremely right wing Poland distasteful at best. Pretty much the only ones we can see ourselves allied with and are in actual talks with on the topic is Sweden. We're not in NATO, not feeling threatened by Russia and mostly worried about the fact that worsening security situation is going to squeeze our finances even further.
Germany on the other hand houses the singl
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I didn't say you were allied with anybody. I said you had a strategic interest in appeasing the Poles (or at least in ensuring the Poles remain appeased). And you do. Whether it's filtered down to the level of the populace at large or not, your government and military knows that it's much better off if there's a strong US Security presence in Europe to counter-balance Putin and is therefore unlikely to support anything that reduces that presence. Moreover you've also got a pretty strong interest in placatin
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Considering the recent treatment Polish gastarbeiters got, or the fact that we have long standing conflict with them that had to be sorted out on governmental level about their waste issues in Gulf of Finland, I'm extremely confused where you got that idea.
Finland has a long standing history of neutrality, similar to Switzerland. We have no fight with Russians, and Russians are desperate enough to get us on their good side that they are willing to sell us cheap technology just to keep us neutral. Last news
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I got the idea that you guys are not entirely cool with Russia from Finnish history. Last time I checked Karelia and Petsamo were ex-Finnish territory.
And none of the things you mention change the strategic calculation: Finland is peaceful with Russia today partly because it can play the US off of Russia (as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price). It has his
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You seem to think we are a part of NATO, or that we are relying on NATO to defend us.
This argument is straight up idiotic. We are neutral, overwhelmingly anti-NATO in stance, and we maintain a huge reserve and universal conscription for all men, with army branches that specialize in both frontal warfare and guerrilla warfare. We specifically geared the entire military for fight against something like Soviet or NATO assault where we would get little to no outside help. Country is awash in weapons, most of wh
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To quote myself:
(as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price)
So I'm perfectly aware you're not in NATO. I'm aware that during the 60s and 70s you were so anti-NATO that most US policy-makers thought you were de facto Russian puppets. Thus the assumption that if the Soviets vaporized 100 million+ Americans with nukes we'd need to take out Helsinki same a
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An interesting but understandable angle. I would however point out the counterpoint as to why this would actually be overwhelmingly positive for us.
We have been among the few nations calling for European, rather than Atlantic defence forces. Essentially none of the "project force in far away lands to help with US foreign policy" and full focus on securing Europe itself. Due to heavy presence of NATO in Europe, the only support so far came from Sweden. The rest are too invested in NATO at the moment.
If Germa
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That's a mighty high-risk strategy. OTOH, if Putin actually invaded Finland after a split between the EU and the US it's likely the EU would swallow it's pride and beg the US to come back.
If it worked it'd be great. But the problems are two-fold:
1) The people of Europe are extreme cheap-skates militarily. The Germans are probably the worst, apparently they are too cheap to let their troops fire off multiple rounds because it has an extreme overheating [wikipedia.org] problem they didn't notice for 17 years. In case you're
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You seem to be unable to answer this question: Why would "Putin" invade Finland (in more rational minds, it's usually countries, not leaders that invade)? What is the strategic reason for this action? Because right now, it's literally the dumbest move Russia could make in terms of offensive actions - all other borders are far more dangerous to defend and most are far easier to attack.
Yet you keep insisting he would. Why? Countries don't invade without strategic reasons. Even US military policy, as nuts as i
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So you're creating a Defense Union of European Democratic states tight on Putin's border, Russia is clearly not gonna be a member of the club, and even if it was asked to join it wouldn't be important enough to dominate the club, and he's not gonna try to stop that shit? Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying invasion would be inevitable, or that you guys would lose. But even a 10% chance of an invasion that cost you as much as the Winter War did is the kind of risk Finns don't take very often. And to be honest
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Again, you suggest the arbitrary percentage of attack. And again, I go back to asking you: what is the Russia's strategic interest in such an attack? Why would it want to effectively surrender all its NATO borders and its extremely difficult Chinese borders to engage all of its military in a single northern campaign against a neutral state that has shown remarkable resilience to that kind of attack in the past. And even if such a campaign were to be successful, what is the benefit to Russia and why would it
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Your scenario is that NATO is so weakened European states think they need to band together to replace it. Under those circumstances Russia is likely to consider NATO weakened, and also has an interest in ensuring nothing replaces it, or that what replaces it is more analogous to the Warsaw pact then the EU. If the Finns are trying to start a new EU Alliance the Russians have a clear interest in stopping them, and the ability to do so because there's no NATO. The 10% number is a guess that's supposed to refl
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That is a massively convoluted logic. "If this multinational organisation collapses and this single small state attempts to replace it with large multinational organisation".
Do you realise just how self-contradictory your suggestion is? Alliances among smaller states by their nature are not started by single small states, but by collaboration between them. This is because alliances need significant political force behind them to be pushed through, and unlike large hegemonic states, smaller states do not wie
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On the odds of Russia attacking Finland, the issue isn't about what you think or what I think. It's what Putin thinks. And Putin does not think of himself as leader of a small unimportant state that has to take the hand it's dealt by the world. If the US declines, and Finland starts talks with lots of other European states to form a defensive alliance, he could very well try to take it out.
1. It's pitiful. The Airbus 400M is a glorified tactical transport, and it's not in service. Your EU Defense Force woul
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Again, your first suggestion is absurd. How would Finland pose a strategic threat to Russia that would be greater than that of China in the South-East, or NATO in the West? Do you have any idea what kind of a tectonic shift in security climate this kind of shift would require?
This is not 10%. This is not even 0.1%. We're talking about likelihood like that of a comet wiping out humanity. Even Stalin didn't see Finland as important enough to take back in the days of USSR being extremely powerful. All he neede
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Why would Russia need to worry about the Chinese? China has no territorial ambitions in North Asia, and their territorial ambitions in the South China Sea don;t threaten Russia. Moreover, why would Russia's response to a new threat in the West be "oh shit, we can't do anything about it or we'll be weak in the East," and not "let's kill this sucker fast?"
And I think you're under-stating the magnitude of the strategic shift if the US was thrown out of Germany and Europe responded by beginning to form an EUDF.
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On your last note, which I just realized I forgot to respond to, I have to say conversations like this are one of the reasons I stay on Slashdot.http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7546871&cid=49982255#
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There are multiple extremely serious reasons why Russia is extremely worried about China. First there's the territorial dispute that they more or less settled in 2004 over islands on Amur river. Russia was effectively forced to cede a significant chunk of territory to Chinese.
Second is the general state of border regions. I've read some studies that suggest they are now around 90% ethnic Han and 10% everyone else. That is on Russian side. Once you look at the region as a whole, you start seeing the severe s
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On the China border, you're still thinking like a Finn. Large Central and Eastern European states afraid of invasion from the East typically act more aggressively on their western border in hopes that will convince everyone to leave them alone. remember: the Kaiser was worried about Russia, so he invaded Belgium in hopes of knocking out the French. If an anti-Russian alliance was developing there's a real chance they'd deal with it pre-emptively, particularly if they were worried about the Chinese in the Ea
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I think I didn't make my point, because your answer appears to suggest a different problem.
Russia has a serious medium to long term problem on its south-eastern border. As in a problem that is liable to blow in its face in a decade or two. This is not an immediate threat, nor is there a potential for "anti Russian alliance". This would be a Sino-Russian event. I will readily agree that there is no immediate threat there after 2004 solution. Both Russia and China have other problems in short term to deal wit
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remember not so long ago when Russia deported a student because they suspected her of spying, and the ensuing diplomatic ruckus that caused? Sure, you do [telegraph.co.uk]. She was supposedly researching early 20th Century history, but I can see that being turned into 21st Century military deployments and other locally-gathered coffeeshop intelligence...
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Do you mean those chinese peasants from the biggest economy in the world, whose government recently hacked yours and retrieved the personal details of 4 million public employees, including the clearance data of thousands of american intelligence agents abroad, many of whom are presumably going to die very soon as a result of that? Are those the peasants that you're talking about? Because those peasants appear to have ridiculously outsmarted your country and made it a worldwide laughing stock. If they are pe
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I got news for you, nobody is stopping Russian, Chinese, or Iranian spying either. Western Europe is full of their spies, and more and more nations of in danger of having their territory taken by them. The US has been a significant factor in resisting that. The biggest dick I see here is you.
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*slowly sliding a pen and paper across the table* (Score:1)
Lack of evidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The NSA covered its tracks too well" is one theory.
Another theory is that maybe the investigation learned that Germany's own intelligence services were complicit in the "NSA" spying, [spiegel.de], possible to the extent that they participated in the operation against their own Chancellor, and they shut the investigation down to save face.
I have, of course, no evidence that this in fact was the case, but it's hardly implausible.
P.S. God bless the NSA for making pretty much any nutty theory "hardly implausible."
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Or maybe they just bought the information from the Chinese.
They have all our spy information now anyway, probably cheaper and definitely more reliable.
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who're they going to buy it from? Norway? Their book is full.
There is a European pipeline from Russia for a reason, and that reason is that Russia supplies a significant chunk of Eastern Europe with oil and gas. If Putin wanted to be the bastard Western media are making him out to be, he could divert the flow to China (who would gladly pay in gold) and let Eastern Europe fucking freeze to death next winter.
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If?
Europeans shiver as Russia cuts gas shipments [nbcnews.com] - updated 1/7/2009
Russia shut off all gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine on Wednesday — leaving more than a dozen countries scrambling to cope during a winter cold snap. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin publicly endorsed the move and urged that international observers be brought into the energy dispute. ....
As of Wednesday, nations including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey all reported a halt in Russian gas shipments. Others — including Austria, France, Germany, Hungary and Poland — reported substantial drops in supplies.
You may recall that Putin is a former KGB officer. It was his job to be a bastard. He doesn't seem to be able to fully shake the habit.
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interesting that you missed out the part where Putin demanded the presence of international observers to the cutoff and to the negotiating table to mediate between the two parties. Was that a politically motivated decision?
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LOL .... no, I didn't miss that. Did they cut off the shipments? Yes. The "presence of international observers" would report the same thing - they cut off shipments. How do you think that makes a difference? "It was reported today that Russia cut off shipments of gas to Europe. International observers confirm the cut off." Yep, they really weren't getting gas. Was there doubt? We people without gas less cold because of the international observers?
There were diplomatic efforts to resolve the situa
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Putin.
Pfft.
Andropov, now HE was a KGB officer.
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Here, let me explain why no one will sell them oil in Euros:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
They are hiding the truth... (Score:3)
A lack of evidence means that the investigation has now ended.
I find it hard if not impossible to believe the Germans could not find any evidence. Heck, we aren't talking about some banana republic here. Or are we?
The more plausible reason is that they, (the Germans), didin't want what they have done displayed out in the open for all to see. Think of this as the "discovery phase" in a US court trial.
What sometimes toubles me is the we (read the USA), then attribute henious, undemocratic, autocratic, dictatorial, tyrannical, despotic behaoiurs to "those other regimes" around the world.
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The timing of this is curious. Right after Merkel and Obama were talking at the G7.
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Although Germany is not member of the 5 Eyes, the US are the most important partner of Germany's secret service. Merkel cannot risk losing that partnership, so she must avoid any accusations. It's in her interest to quietly suspend all ongoing investigations. And it seems like she gets through with it, since a lot of debates end with "think about who the good guys are". Yes, the Germans still believe in you!
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Heck, we aren't talking about some banana republic here. Or are we?
I see you're not up to date with current german politics. We are.
Merkel doesn't give a flying fuck because she really doesn't give a fuck about anything. She was trained very well how to get into and stay in power, and that's the only thing she's doing. Every move of her makes sense if you analyze it from that perspective. This is no different - big trouble with the USA is not a career-improving path, but the people of Germany are too forgiving and will let her and her party get away with all this shit.
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I think the whole thing was a distraction.
Germany is an important country. It will be spied upon. Period. End of story. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Spying on Germany means spying on their Head of Government. Period. they can complain about it, and as a sovereign state even respond, but even military action wouldn't stop the spying it would only make the spies much more careful.
She knows this, she's pretty sure she's convinced Obama to stop spying on her personally, all things considered she'd actua
Other fish to fry (Score:5, Insightful)
Angela Merkel's phone was being listened in on by FIVE foreign powers [theregister.co.uk]
If your spooks aren't tapping Merkel, you should fire them really
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Next version of iPhone adds a feature that will allow up to 10 foreign powers to listen to your phone calls at the same time.
The NSA didn't spy. (Score:2)
The BND did the spying, and the NSA legally got from them everything they cared about. That's completely different :)
Bigfoot Sights UFO. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, writes Bruce66423: "A lack of evidence means that the investigation has now ended. Our congratulations to the NSA for covering their tracks so well."
I am old-school enough to prefer fact-based news to snark and innuendo. Tell me what you can prove, not what you think I want to hear.
It's also possible that Der Spiegel was wrong (Score:3)
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They didn't just "have" her number, it was on a list of numbers being tapped.
Also, the US admitted it and then said they weren't doing it anymore. That's kind of odd - normally a public admission backed by documentary evidence would be sufficient for a criminal prosecution, no? Certainly it often happens with less (like almost any rape case).
Sounds more like the powers that be didn't want to disturb the intelligence agencies cosy little setup. And let's face it, the BND were not exactly going to co-operate
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Also, the US admitted it and then said they weren't doing it anymore. That's kind of odd - normally a public admission backed by documentary evidence would be sufficient for a criminal prosecution, no?
No the US never admitted it. The White House said it wasn't being done at present (in 2013) and wouldn't do it in the future, but refused to comment on whether it had been done in the past.
Also, it's not a crime for countries to spy on other countries. More precisely, there is no international law making it illegal. Countries have laws against spying, but German courts can't usefully prosecute the the United States. Germany could prosecute the specific people who installed the taps, assuming they could id
NWO (Score:2)
What's a little national sovereignty between friends? Why get all bent out of shape because of a little spying?
Don't think Angela Merkel isn't wetting her beak a little bit in the NSA's sweet sweet data pool. Next time they're all in a conga line up in Davos, I hope a meteor wipes the whole place out.
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When you punch holes in computers system to enable spying, you have punched holes in the security of those system. When you use those tools against perceived enemies, you inevitably gives those tools to them and of course if you used that tool against pretend friends, those perceived enemies now have those tools to use against pretend friends. It is a criminal act that requires a custodial sentence. They often use criminal organisation in target countries to facilitate spying and work to protect those crim
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NSA is Like the Stasi .. (Score:1)
'The exchange, as reported by the New York Times December 16, occurred after reports surfaced of the NSA’s nearly decade-long surveillance of Merkel’s cellphone' ref [thenewamerican.com]."
Of course the real story is that the NSA is also spying on Ob
Case dismissed... (Score:1)