7 ms·

Germany Minister of Justice demands immediate response to US spying on Germany

175 points by oellegaard 13y ago

virtu 13y ago
It will be interesting to see if this dele ted Guardian article holds some water, then the Minister of Justice will have a long face too: http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  I also have to wonder how much of this is posturing for the German public. As long as they stomp their tiny feet a little, who can blame them, right? They have nothing to do with this, they're just as outraged as everybody. And then they can use all this for new, even better election promises. Am I too cynical? I think what I am asking is, does she demand an explanation like Obama demanded Guantanamo to be closed and whistleblower laws to be strengthened?
  - Udo 13y ago
    You're not wrong. Our current ruling party has never been actually opposed to surveillance and is not really strong on privacy (to say the least). However, I think besides collecting cheap points with the German public, there is another factor behind this "stomping of tiny feet" as you call it: Germany is somewhat of an economic powerhouse, but paradoxically radical innovation is culturally frowned-upon. This means that German tech is usually not ground-breaking but incrementally-improved-to-death (by heavyweight scientists with a lot of clout). Since there is reason to believe that a large part of all this spying is simply industrial espionage on behalf of big US companies, I believe the German government is afraid the local industry will quickly lose even more ground than it already has. Since innovation in this country doesn't move very fast, the damage would be long-lasting and potentially devastating.
    - blablabla123 13y ago
      My forecast is that many tech people will move away from public Cloud and host stuff themselves. Also German Cloud service provider will have an easier life getting customers... Eventhough this is private usage, in the long run it will also affect how people choose technical solutions in their day to day jobs. Therefore I think the U.S. has an interest to seek a solution that Germany and other countries with significant economy are happy with.
  - AlexeiSadeski 13y ago
    It's 100% posturing for the German public.
rtpg 13y ago
Is there really anything surprising with the notion that the US is spying on other country's official businesses? Did people think that the surveillance apparatus just disappeared with the Berlin wall? I also wonder why people who are committing to official business aren't having everything encrypted anyways. I don't know how technically difficult it is to encrypt phone calls, but I can't imagine it being that hard.
- JoeCoo7 13y ago
  Are you serious? This is not wiretapping a single individual or group. They are spying on ALL people in Germany and violate the German constitution, and if the gov of Germany is involved (which is probably the case) this gets even worse. I wonder about all those people which think its normal/not surprising. I bet you had not the slightest idea about the scale of NSA spying. NSA even compromised EU offices and there is probably more to come. This reminds me of Cold War and allies should not be treated like that. By the way the German federal prosecution office has now stated its collecting data about the NSA spying (http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesanwaltschaft-ueberprueft-nsa-ueberwachung-a-908617.html http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesanwaltschaft...). NSA spying gets lots of media coverage now, this might also turn the tides in the upcoming election. Good luck pirate party!
  - AlexeiSadeski 13y ago
    Of course it's normal, and of course "we" are not surprised y the scale of NSA spying. What did you think the NSA did if not this? Have all of their 40,000 employees listening in on Bin Laden's phone calls?
- abraininavat 13y ago
  Every time something is released, people like you come on HN to say, "Really, you're all so naive, were you really surprised?" Would you mind please telling us the next big development before it happens so that we can get a jump-start on being so surprised?
  - 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ExpiredLink 13y ago
He pretends he didn't know?
qwertzlcoatl 13y ago
I'll repeat a comment I just made in another thread but find to be fitting here too. For the sake of awareness: It's funny to see all this railing up against NSA and PRISM, while tomorrow, the first of July 2013, the "Bestandsdatenauskunft" will be implemented as law in Germany. A commentator from Die Zeit newspaper tersely summed up the intentionally abstruse wording of the new rules. The law means, “that police and intelligence services will in the future be allowed to obtain extremely personal information about mobile phone users, and do so with the press of a button and without having to face any major legal hurdles”. Crudely translated it would mean something similar to "Inventory Data Information Act". Parts of the new law are the following: > With respect to the obligations of the access providers, ISPs with more than 100,000 customers are now required to maintain a “secure electronic interface” in order to minimise the time needed for certain agencies to retrieve information. The innocuous sounding term, “inventory data”, should not detract from the fact that the issue involves direct access to people’s private lives. “Not only names, addresses and bank account details will be sent to the police. But also the PINs of the mobile phones, and passwords blocking e-mail inboxes and accessing services like Dropbox and dynamic IP addresses”, warned Die Zeit . Proper english article (I don't know about this source in general, but this one is accurate): https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/11/germ-a11.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/11/germ-a11.html Google translated german articles: Die Zeit: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2Fdigital%2Fdatenschutz%2F2013-03%2Fbestandsdaten-breyer-bundestag http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_... Der Spiegel: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fnetzwelt%2Fnetzpolitik%2Fnrw-beschwor-horrorszenarien-fuer-bestandsdatenauskunft-a-899421.html http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt... Netzpolitik.org: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Fwie-fur-die-bestandsdatenauskunft-getrickst-wurde%2F http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt... The debate about this is astonishing mute on its own, but compared to the NSA, PRISM and TEMPORA public outcry, the debate about the Bestandsdatenauskunft is basically non-existent at the moment.
- ics 13y ago
  What's the fiber situation in Germany? Seems like a good opportunity for the sub-100,000 customer ISP market to light up (despite the other challenges one assumes would come with running any small/regional ISP). Is there any incentive for large or midsize ISPs to divide themselves up or does the law account for that as well?
Create 13y ago
US to access Europeans' bank data in new deal The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006. The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily. A German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro, said the deal "will ensure that terrorist financing can be traced back to its sources, but it will not affect day-to-day bank transfers of EU citizens". And the leader of the UK Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope, said it "sends the right signals about our resolve in fighting terrorism and our commitment to remaining a strong partner of the United States". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630
OGC 13y ago
As a German, tell me when there's a statement saying "We are doing this, this and that" instead of "we demand".

175 points by oellegaard 13y ago

virtu 13y ago

It will be interesting to see if this dele ted Guardian article holds some water, then the Minister of Justice will have a long face too: http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ

PavlovsCat 13y ago
I also have to wonder how much of this is posturing for the German public. As long as they stomp their tiny feet a little, who can blame them, right? They have nothing to do with this, they're just as outraged as everybody. And then they can use all this for new, even better election promises. Am I too cynical? I think what I am asking is, does she demand an explanation like Obama demanded Guantanamo to be closed and whistleblower laws to be strengthened?
- Udo 13y ago
  You're not wrong. Our current ruling party has never been actually opposed to surveillance and is not really strong on privacy (to say the least). However, I think besides collecting cheap points with the German public, there is another factor behind this "stomping of tiny feet" as you call it: Germany is somewhat of an economic powerhouse, but paradoxically radical innovation is culturally frowned-upon. This means that German tech is usually not ground-breaking but incrementally-improved-to-death (by heavyweight scientists with a lot of clout). Since there is reason to believe that a large part of all this spying is simply industrial espionage on behalf of big US companies, I believe the German government is afraid the local industry will quickly lose even more ground than it already has. Since innovation in this country doesn't move very fast, the damage would be long-lasting and potentially devastating.
  - blablabla123 13y ago
    My forecast is that many tech people will move away from public Cloud and host stuff themselves. Also German Cloud service provider will have an easier life getting customers... Eventhough this is private usage, in the long run it will also affect how people choose technical solutions in their day to day jobs. Therefore I think the U.S. has an interest to seek a solution that Germany and other countries with significant economy are happy with.
- AlexeiSadeski 13y ago
  It's 100% posturing for the German public.

rtpg 13y ago

Is there really anything surprising with the notion that the US is spying on other country's official businesses? Did people think that the surveillance apparatus just disappeared with the Berlin wall? I also wonder why people who are committing to official business aren't having everything encrypted anyways. I don't know how technically difficult it is to encrypt phone calls, but I can't imagine it being that hard.

JoeCoo7 13y ago
Are you serious? This is not wiretapping a single individual or group. They are spying on ALL people in Germany and violate the German constitution, and if the gov of Germany is involved (which is probably the case) this gets even worse. I wonder about all those people which think its normal/not surprising. I bet you had not the slightest idea about the scale of NSA spying. NSA even compromised EU offices and there is probably more to come. This reminds me of Cold War and allies should not be treated like that. By the way the German federal prosecution office has now stated its collecting data about the NSA spying (http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesanwaltschaft-ueberprueft-nsa-ueberwachung-a-908617.html http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesanwaltschaft...). NSA spying gets lots of media coverage now, this might also turn the tides in the upcoming election. Good luck pirate party!
- AlexeiSadeski 13y ago
  Of course it's normal, and of course "we" are not surprised y the scale of NSA spying. What did you think the NSA did if not this? Have all of their 40,000 employees listening in on Bin Laden's phone calls?
abraininavat 13y ago
Every time something is released, people like you come on HN to say, "Really, you're all so naive, were you really surprised?" Would you mind please telling us the next big development before it happens so that we can get a jump-start on being so surprised?
- 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ExpiredLink 13y ago

He pretends he didn't know?

qwertzlcoatl 13y ago

I'll repeat a comment I just made in another thread but find to be fitting here too. For the sake of awareness: It's funny to see all this railing up against NSA and PRISM, while tomorrow, the first of July 2013, the "Bestandsdatenauskunft" will be implemented as law in Germany. A commentator from Die Zeit newspaper tersely summed up the intentionally abstruse wording of the new rules. The law means, “that police and intelligence services will in the future be allowed to obtain extremely personal information about mobile phone users, and do so with the press of a button and without having to face any major legal hurdles”. Crudely translated it would mean something similar to "Inventory Data Information Act". Parts of the new law are the following: > With respect to the obligations of the access providers, ISPs with more than 100,000 customers are now required to maintain a “secure electronic interface” in order to minimise the time needed for certain agencies to retrieve information. The innocuous sounding term, “inventory data”, should not detract from the fact that the issue involves direct access to people’s private lives. “Not only names, addresses and bank account details will be sent to the police. But also the PINs of the mobile phones, and passwords blocking e-mail inboxes and accessing services like Dropbox and dynamic IP addresses”, warned Die Zeit . Proper english article (I don't know about this source in general, but this one is accurate): https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/11/germ-a11.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/11/germ-a11.html Google translated german articles: Die Zeit: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2Fdigital%2Fdatenschutz%2F2013-03%2Fbestandsdaten-breyer-bundestag http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_... Der Spiegel: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fnetzwelt%2Fnetzpolitik%2Fnrw-beschwor-horrorszenarien-fuer-bestandsdatenauskunft-a-899421.html http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt... Netzpolitik.org: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Fwie-fur-die-bestandsdatenauskunft-getrickst-wurde%2F http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt... The debate about this is astonishing mute on its own, but compared to the NSA, PRISM and TEMPORA public outcry, the debate about the Bestandsdatenauskunft is basically non-existent at the moment.

ics 13y ago
What's the fiber situation in Germany? Seems like a good opportunity for the sub-100,000 customer ISP market to light up (despite the other challenges one assumes would come with running any small/regional ISP). Is there any incentive for large or midsize ISPs to divide themselves up or does the law account for that as well?

Create 13y ago

US to access Europeans' bank data in new deal The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006. The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily. A German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro, said the deal "will ensure that terrorist financing can be traced back to its sources, but it will not affect day-to-day bank transfers of EU citizens". And the leader of the UK Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope, said it "sends the right signals about our resolve in fighting terrorism and our commitment to remaining a strong partner of the United States". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630

OGC 13y ago

As a German, tell me when there's a statement saying "We are doing this, this and that" instead of "we demand".