One of the more "fun" things they use to justify what they do internally: the outer space theory. You have to know that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is (simplified) only allowed to operate outside Germany. Now they have antennas in Germany to monitor communication passively relayed on a satellite. As we all know, the satellite is located outside Germany, so they pretend this is legal.
In a similiar argument, internet exchange points in Frankfurt are declared "effectively outside Germany" and therefore fair game.
If you find that interesting, at last year's 32C3 they had a fun renenactment of some abstruse scenes full of such things[0] from the parliamentary investigation committee on the NSA and its cooperation with the BND (which itself is not filmed publicly). English interpretation is available. https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7225-grundrechte_gelten_nicht_im...
[0]: Did you know that US intelligence interrogated refugees in Germany on "the bread supply situation" in their home countries and used Google Maps for that?
[1]: Sometimes they have English-speaking witnesses. This week it's people from the ACLU but they also had an US drone pilot and a Verizon executive in the past.
Yes, all spy agencies tend to use "technically legal" stuff like that to operate around what the law intended to stop them from doing.
This is why it's so critical to have an oversight committee with deep knowledge of everything that's going on within the agency, regular audits, and a willingness to actually act as supervisors in favor of the law - NOT the agency.
That should be their job. Unfortunately, virtually all such committees tend to act more as cheerleaders for the spy agencies than actual supervisors meant to hold the agencies accountable.
And in the unlikely scenario where Germany or one of the five eyes do get proper controls then they can always just lean on the US, who most definitely wont be getting controls anytime soon as both presidential candidates want more intel gathering (greatly expanding collection is Hillary's primary security strategy). They can just stop storing the data locally and call up the NSA whenever they need anything they can't collect legally themselves.
You all need to understand... in the age of the Internet, every governmental body which deals with computers under any veil of secrecy/classification inevitably uses that veil of secrecy or classification to break the law.
Every. Single. One.
It's just too easy for them not to. The incentives are stacked against them to keep the law. There are too many internal controls that are necessary to pass in order to obey the law, so just like in any other human endeavor, management will follow the path of least resistance. They are protected by national security / classification law from anybody finding out. If it leaks anyway that they broke the law? Nobody will be fired or sent to jail, and the whistle-blower will be tried for treason for leaking classified information.
If we, as citizens, abhor this behavior - we must fix the incentives. There is no other way.
Professional criminals lives depend entirely on their ability to conceal their crimes, or more specially their connection to crimes. It's not surprising that the intel community who are the very best in the world at concealment and containment would use that same skillset to circumvent already ineffective control systems that limit their activity. Which is why they do whatever they want.
For example, Snowden didnt even have access to Tao or high level projects thanks to compartmentalization. Who knows how much deeper this stuff goes. I'd imagine we only got access to the low-hanging fruit of the NSA operations. The real dirty stuff would be in the CNE departments where they get total control of whomevers machines they want.
I've lost general respect for German intelligence and policing apparati after Thuringen willfully destroyed evidence regarding right-wing-terrorists to cover their misdeeds. Happened again later in a murder case in Kassel in the same investigation. It may be isolated incidents, but that this is possible and the fact that there have been no visible consequences to make up for it is telling.
If there are long-term interests/plans and these are games like those played by the CIA, then at least let the public know about this little detail and argue for keeping it confidential and excuse collateral damage. I won't condone it, but it would be an explanation, if it's not brought forward on every 2nd incident.
That said, I do have respect for the foot soldiers in the force, just as I do for hospital staff.
Yes, "it may". German agencies are famous for "isolated incidents". It's only a matter of definition what's to be called "isolated".
Those isolated incidents reach back even to the "Operation Gehlen"[0], the predecessor of the BND which was founded in 1946. One could say that the history of German agencies is the history of isolated incidents. While this may hold true for intelligence agencies all over the world, the historic ties leave a very bad taste regarding right-wing-terror in Germany. The "National Socialist Underground" (NSU)[1] was only the tip of the iceberg.
Regarding NSU, to this day I've failed to figure out how they dubbed their pink panther video with what sounds like the original German dub voice and made it sound good. Searching on the internet is hard because it finds all kinds of irrelevant stuff. Would like to know more and if this is easily possible for extremists with laptops to accomplish in such seamless quality, if it's a stitch-work of existing audio tracks. It's the same level of quality as the Obama video+audio stitch-work in Mr Robot.
If you look at the media coverage of this topic in Germany so far one could come to the conclusion that those mass-surveillance operations which reach the public are considered more harmful when they are carried out by foreign agencies (Surprise!...I know). This report hit the major news front pages for only one day - my guess is that it has been longer if it was the NSA (or at least the GCHQ) instead of the BND.
It surprises me just how quickly the major world governments all started violating sovereign laws and spying on/surveilling their own citizens. Effectively, everyone is now monitored all the time by their own governments bereft of suspicion of having committed a crime - or under the blanket suspicion of everyone being capable of committing a crime (AKA "act of terrorism").
Conspiracy theorists might see the War on Terrorism as a premeditated concoction to justify massive state surveillance, since it's about everyone's justification. That's silly though. We all know they just took advantage of an existing situation, right?
What do you mean "how quickly"? Mass surveillance has been going on for decades. The only new thing is the amount of data the average person has travelling over networks that can be monitored, and the ease of increasing the volume captures.
My favourite example is that in the early 90's, while I was politically active for a period, I met a number of interesting characters, including the ex-editor of a tiny Norwegian communist newspaper. He told me about how he for many years had intelligence agents come up to him on the street to crack jokes about conversations he had with his wife in his own home. While that was outright bugging of his flat, it was part of a many decades long illegal surveillance operation covering pretty much everyone on the political left in Norway (well, to the left of the social democrats who started it) regardless of whether or not they were involved in anything at all.
It was finally rolled up in mid 90's, after the police and parliament had spent several decades ignoring reports from victims of it and insisting that kind of thing didn't happen.
I meant that she lived in the DDR and knew what others were going through. She herself was most likely doing fine, as she was a scientist, which the DDR desperately needed to keep up their fassade of being more progressive than the Western part of Germany.
Actually, not if you're a government. The last time they didn't follow the letter of the law, we started torturing people again because we were really hungry.
Most of our laws that exist at extremes (no torture, Geneva Convention) exist as a reaction against what did happen the last time a stressful situation was lawless, and a rational check against the next time stress brings up a possible irrational reaction.
Stealing food should always be a crime - it let's us then consider the circumstances surrounding the action, and forgive the crime. (This is the basic argument against mandatory sentencing. It removes empathy, which makes us less than human.)
So just because banks have always been robbed we should allow bank robberies to continue?
Intelligence agencies have to obey the law, just like every other government agency. We can make exceptions for them within the law, but that has to go through the usual legislative processes. If they just ignore our laws that's a problem we should attempt to fix.
Out laws are there for a reason: we want the state to run the intelligence service, not the other way around.
In single, extreme cases I can see occasional violations being tolerable. But here we're talking about systematic violations, which are not tolerable on any level.
why do we permit their assault on our democracies?
when was the last time a citizen benefitted from the surveillance of people not suspected of any crime?
if we know abuses are inevitable and will be hidden from us, why not slash their funding/imprison them/restructure their activities to be too compartmentalizad to hurt the public in this fashion?
The new thing is that more people are starting to understand what governments really do. And governments are gonna feel weaker, less in control and would have to resort to more non-"democratic" ways of doing business.
considering in a democratic system the government is a representation of the will of the governed and, you know, us governed types don't expect us to lie to ourselves.
so... why do we need them in a democracy? for everyone else who won't follow the rules, we have prison.... and dont try to tell me that a few terrorist attacks are sufficient cause to allow them to run wild over the public.
Because regular police needs to follow rules that criminals by definition do not.
As such they need a group able to work without scruples outside what the public think as acceptable, so that certain criminals that would never by caught playing by the book, do get caught.
Also no government is going to publically tell the others what is their official agenda.
Again, you need the sort of people able to do the right set of questions.
Yes I am harsh, but real life is harsh. Not all of us get to live in movie sets were the good guys always win at the end.
>so that certain criminals that would never by caught playing by the book, do get caught.
we never get any evidence of this happening, so i'm going to say "citation needed". we also don't get any oversight regarding who they decide are criminals.
>Not all of us get to live in movie sets were the good guys always win at the end.
starting from the assumption that the intelligence agencies are the good guys is very much from a movie set... these agencies exist to effect the will of the state against arbitrary targets by way of power. there's no moral content there until they actually act.
When I was a child the weapons were still hot from the colonial war and through the years I got to learn quite a few PIDE-DGS stories, some from people that lived through it, yet I rather have secret services around than not.
>A democratic system means that 51% of the people can legally deprive the other 49% of basic liberties.
That's an implementation quirk of some democracies, not an inherent feature. Even worse: in first-past-the-post systems like the US and GB you can elect 51% of the representatives with far less than 51% of the people.
On the other hand, "basic liberties" are usually protected by some for of constitution that requires 66% of representatives to change. Sometimes protections are even more extreme: Germany is considered democratic, but its constitution contains two articles that can not be lawfully changed, no matter how large the consens (one about basic rights, one about the form of government).
Democracies can have arbitrarily strong protections for minorities and basic liberties, there is no requirement for democracies to be governed by simple absolute majorities (and few if any are).
A democratic government is the responsibility of the people it governs - even if you didn't elect them, the fact that you choose to continue to be governed by them, and that they gain all their powers from this investment of your own sovereignty into their state, means that you are in fact responsible for your government. Period.
It doesn't change just because you don't like it. American citizens, pro- and anti- the American state, nevertheless gain their protections as citizens from participating in that state, large and small. Citizens are responsible for their governments, who have no powers otherwise.
And we all know: the corruption of government begins with its secrets. That we, citizens, are unwilling to deal with the secrets that corrupt us all, is very telling in this day and age ..
What you describe is "dictatorship of the majority"; at least over here, when people talk about democracy, they mean "liberal democracy", i.e. as Wikipedia puts it, a variant of representative democracy that may include elements such as political pluralism; equality before the law; the right to petition elected officials for redress of grievances; due process; civil liberties; human rights; and elements of civil society outside the government.
So we never had any example of "liberal democracy" in the entire history. I don't know of a single government that hasn't taken money from some citizens against their will to use it in benefit of other citizens.
I don't see how people can be equal if some are taxed and the money is given to others.
I know you must be thinking that "equality before the law" is just to have a clear law like "everybody will be taxed if they meet so and so requirements" and apply that to everybody, but consider that a law could be written in exactly that same way, but instead saying "every people will be taxed if they are black". The distinctions the law make are arbitrary.
Oh, and other countries' intelligence services would never think of violating any laws, heaven forbid...
You know how your government keeps convincing you of the supremacy of the "rule of law" and how "nobody is above the law", etc., etc... I think it's beyond obvious to anyone with half a brain that these are boogie-monster fairy tales.
When most people speak of law, what they mean is "rules that everyone must follow". When the lawmakers speak of law, they mean "rules we've been told to make everyone follow". Of course, the people and entities that these laws come from are above the law almost by definition. The amount of hypocrisy surrounding "justice" systems around the world is tremendous - it has always been. But people mostly like it this way - it's worked for a few thousands of years and is likely to work for a few thousand more.
You're taking the concept of, "knowledge," and the concept of, "government" and mixing them together into a very swirly, confused, nihilistic statement. Are laws written down on paper simply that they will be broken by the government, but not by the people? While that may almost inevitably happen over the decades and centuries of a republic existence, that is certainly not the intent of laws, at least in a western republic such as Germany or the US. Governments breaking laws is not, "above the law," - it is actually, by definition, breaking the law, when the Government breaks the law, which is the opposite of what you're saying. You're saying that everyone knew when those laws were written, that they would actually be breakable by the government. That's not true. The lawyers who bring and win cases against the Government don't know that...in fact, they know the opposite to be true. Now, as to the question of the conduct of individual politicians who believe they can break the law, that is a third question - is it OK for politicians to break the law to achieve a certain end? Well...sometimes yes, sometimes no...you can't just make a blanket statement saying that 100% of the time every time a politician has broken a law that it has been morally corrupt. There is a such thing as bad laws. Overall, I think your heart is in the right place in terms of wanting better moral conduct, but you are very confused on what Governments are, and you should perhaps consider delving further into historical literature on the subject.
There are two sets of laws. One for lawmakers, the ultra-wealthy, politicians, judges, military, and cops (the protected class who can carry weapons); and another one for you and I.
Almost nobody has been indicted from a Senate hearing, whether they were high level bureaucrats like Clapper or ordinary private citizens, and there have been lies and half-truths in almost all of them. In this case, Clapper admitted his mistake answering this question which he likened to many similar questions about whether the NSA was intercepting Americans' communications and creating dossiers on them, which it was not.
I disagree. These are not fairy tales. These are what we shall tend for, even if we live in an imperfect world.
Stating that the constitution is bogus does not imply that we shall throw it out, but that we shall fix it. the NSA should not violate the law to make its job. Maybe the law shall be fixed, maybe behavior of the NSA shall change, probably both.
Had to look this up as it isn’t my core competency. According to current knowledge our sun is too small for a supernova explosion. It might become a red giant (5 to 6 billion years) and then a white dwarf.
Sad faith - get super bloated, kill all the live in vicinity, then shrink to a shadow of former self for the remainder of the life time of the universe.
NO, supernova would be so much more spectacular. At least it might give a standard candle for others observing this galaxy, become a measuring stick for the universe, and spill some heavier elements for whatever comes next.
--
Should privacy laws end where atmosphere of our planet ends?
If the Outer Space take of Bundesnachrichtendienst is true, we would be for an overhaul of quite few laws once more humans get beyond law earth orbit.
We need too make a obelisk, engraved upon which stands:
"Stealing other systems gas-giants and feeding them to your own sun is okay. I spilled some resources at the start."
God
Same different: the inability of our sun to go supernova "works", as does the wilful miscomprehension of my point - the question again is, towards what end.
In a similiar argument, internet exchange points in Frankfurt are declared "effectively outside Germany" and therefore fair game.
If you find that interesting, at last year's 32C3 they had a fun renenactment of some abstruse scenes full of such things[0] from the parliamentary investigation committee on the NSA and its cooperation with the BND (which itself is not filmed publicly). English interpretation is available. https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7225-grundrechte_gelten_nicht_im...
To anyone German-speaking[1] in Berlin I can recommend visiting a session of the committee. It's really illuminating to see those intelligence agents trying to save their face firsthand. https://www.bundestag.de/bundestag/ausschuesse18/ua/1untersu...
[0]: Did you know that US intelligence interrogated refugees in Germany on "the bread supply situation" in their home countries and used Google Maps for that?
[1]: Sometimes they have English-speaking witnesses. This week it's people from the ACLU but they also had an US drone pilot and a Verizon executive in the past.