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Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA

297 points by Kabukks 12y ago

spindritf 12y ago
Only Snowden really needed to escape the NSA and he didn't go to Germany. By the looks of it, they would turn him over in a heartbeat.
- doorhammer 12y ago
  I've only read about half of the article so far, but it's pretty clear they're not talking about people the US wants extradited; that's a completely different story. These are activists who ostensibly haven't committed any crimes, but suspect they're under surveillance, or get harassed for being activists and want to go somewhere where the culture seems to be deeply and overtly set against state sponsored spying on the populace.
  - csandreasen 12y ago
    Poitras wasn't being stopped at airports because she was an activist - she was stopped because she was under suspicion for allegedly having foreknowledge of a planned insurgent attack against US troops in Iraq and filming it from the rooftops instead of warning them. She initially denied that she was the woman the troops saw filming from the rooftop during the initial military investigation, then later admitted to it in an e-mail to John Bruning, author of The Devil's Sandbox. [1] https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/soldiers-allege-laura-poitras-co-author-nsa-scoop-had-foreknowledge-2004-iraqi-attack-us-troops_735111.html?page=1 https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/soldiers-allege-laura-p...
    - atmosx 12y ago
      "Poitras wasn't being stopped at airports because she was an activist - she was stopped because she was under suspicion for allegedly having foreknowledge of a planned insurgent attack against US troops in Iraq and filming it from the rooftops instead of warning them." Sure, Poitras detention had nothing to do with Snowden, Obama is a pacifist, Ukraine is in Africa, Putin is a democrat and I am Marry Poppins!!!
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        Dude, check the dates - she started complaining about being stopped for questioning at airports in 2006. http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...
        atmosx 12y ago
        Ooops, you're right. I'm not Marry Poppins, after all. Sorry for the outburst.
    - 4bpp 12y ago
      Is there a legal obligation for warzone journalists to disclose such information if they have it? That would seem like a very dangerous provision - for one, it would provide a strong incentive for the opposite party in an armed conflict to actively target them/prevent them from doing their job. Even if there is, I don't see how the circumstance that no charges were filed and apparently the authorities instead chose to take the route of (retaliatory?) extralegal harassment is compatible with the rule of law.
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        I'm not sure on the legality since it happened in a war zone. Over here in a non-war zone, I certainly can be held liable for criminal negligence if I've received credible evidence that someone is going to attacked and I do nothing to report it to the authorities. She was hanging around some questionably dangerous folks, so I'm sure if she did know she could have made an argument that the circumstances prevented her from notifying the troops without putting her own life at risk. And, of course, she might not have known about it to begin with and was just randomly filming. On the other hand, telling the investigators that she wasn't the person filming at the scene of the attack and then later recanting it is certainly enough to raise some eyebrows. Certainly not enough to convict someone of a crime, though, which is likely the reason why she was repeatedly searched and questioned but never arrested or indicted. She might call it harassment, but the authorities call it investigation.
        4bpp 12y ago
        So why search her only at the border then, rather than obtain a warrant to search her domicile? (Please correct me if this in fact did occur as well.) If this was indeed an investigation passing usual legal requirements with the intent to build a case against her, I'd imagine that any responsible investigator would at the very least choose to do that as well. If they repeatedly searched her at the border (thus essentially abusing an avenue which had its legal hurdles significantly reduced for the ostensible sake of national security and being able to deal with external threats that the internal legal system had no time and opportunity to handle through regular channels) but did not choose to obtain a warrant or otherwise start a legal process that comes with the normal set of safeguards, I'd say that strongly seems to indicate they did not have enough of a case against her - or, in other words, that an investigation was perpetuated which according to traditional legal standards should have been discontinued. Now, of course you may argue for the traditional standards/safeguards themselves to be weakened (e.g. by saying that while searches of one's home should remain subject to the same legal restrictions, certain parts of the government now also shall have the privilege to conduct some sort of "preliminary searches" which do not come with the usual safeguards to arbitary ends which might include a more formal investigation being started, at their full discretion), but this is not how I usually see this debate being framed.
    - justcommenting 12y ago
      As someone who believes in the rule of law, I don't find these assertions particularly compelling, or even relevant. If Poitras committed a crime or was suspected of committing a crime, she should be charged and entitled to defend her actions in open court in front of a jury of her peers. But what reportedly happened to her--since we're talking about Germany--reminds me of some of the Stasi's zersetzung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung. Instead of enforcing laws, she was repeatedly harassed, seemingly with the intent to intimidate and destabilize her and her work.
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        > If Poitras [...] was suspected of committing a crime, she should be charged If she was suspected of committing a crime, she should be investigated to determine whether or not there's sufficient evidence to show that she did commit the crime. You don't charge someone with a crime until you're fairly sure they committed it. Questioning her at the airport is one means of investigation. Based on the descriptions given in the two articles I linked to, she traveled out of country 40 times over the course of 6 years, went to places like Iraq and Yemen, and openly hung out with Sunni insurgents and two close associates of Osama bin Laden - on top of already being reported filming at the scene of an ambush on US troops that resulted in multiple casualties. Maybe she didn't do anything, but the border control agents wouldn't have been doing their jobs if they didn't stop her and investigate.
        justcommenting 12y ago
        Unless Poitras committed 40 different crimes or various crimes spanning 6 years, I think there's still something to be said about the rule of law based on what's been reported...which I think we both agree may not be the full story. It's one thing to question/investigate someone in conjunction with specific, credible evidence as part of a larger, legitimate investigation; but having your devices searched or being questioned repeatedly at border crossings dozens of times over six years--especially for someone at least occasionally based in NYC who could have trivially been visited by law enforcement while home--seems a lot more likely to be part of an intimidation strategy than a legitimate investigation.
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      She initially denied that she was the woman the troops saw filming from the rooftop during the initial military investigation, then later admitted to it in an e-mail to John Bruning, author of The Devil's Sandbox. According to the article you cite, she didn't admit to being the person the soldiers saw "filming from the rooftop" during the attack. But rather, to quote the article verbatim, "that she had in fact been on the roof that day." Presumably you understand that these are different things.
    - xnull2guest 12y ago
      To be clear this is an allegation only. Furthermore Poitras believes in a type of journalism that does not interfere with events. She believes in documenting what happens without trying to influence them. But I suppose that there is probably some law, some where that states that in war zones not disclosing information is a crime. Finally if this were true at all we can ask why she hasn't been arrested. Why should she be stopped and harassed but not arrested if the government has evidence that this is true?
- pasbesoin 12y ago
  While I haven't read it, yet, I see film maker and journalist Laura Poitras at the top of the article. One reason she's described in interviews for moving, is that she could not pass through U.S. border control and customs without enduring an extensive search and the likely confiscation of all her digital equipment. Perhaps that's not directly the NSA. But it's a legitimate reason to have a home somewhere that does not constantly put you through such. And she's not the only one in such a position. I agree with your opinion that the German government and agencies may not be the most sympathetic. A significant portion of the German public, on the other hand... The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many.
  - brightsize 12y ago
    >The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many. Including, no doubt, for the chancellor, Angela Merkel. "She is ... the first German Chancellor to be born after World War II, and the first post-reunification Chancellor to be raised in the former East Germany" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel]
    - pasbesoin 12y ago
      My impression is that she was upset about her own phone, but not too much about the rest. Also, as I recall, rumor is that behind the scenes, the German government was already clued in on much of what was going on. And... various aspects of the German governments (Federal as well as the states, etc.) continue to be pretty aggressive about pushing spyware and otherwise insisting a unilateral "right" to do whatever they damn well please. However, they are part of the EU. And border control is thereby not so easy to just zip up. Nor, perhaps, would the population stand for something so overt, as opposed to covert.
      - Amezarak 12y ago
        It's not rumors, Germany has their own full-fledged NSA-equivalent (the BND) spying on the populace cooperating with the NSA as a Tier 2 nation. The German government was not just complicit, they were actively pushing for wider surveillance on their own citizens. Likely this is part of the motivation for the rumblings about European-based Internet services: the BND would have more negotiating leverage and power if they could directly access e.g. Facebook servers rather than having to go through the NSA.
- mwti 12y ago
  That's because the Snowden leaks are not a real threat. None of the documents contained anything about the "real" classified technologies; they only confirmed what everyone knew anyway. If Snowden had leaked usable information about microwave weapons and quantum computers the Russians would not have merely accepted him... they'd be willing to go to war for him. Makes you wonder if the Snowden leaks weren't just a big PsyOp on the BRICS. ;)
  - serf 12y ago
    > That's because the Snowden leaks are not a real threat. None of the documents contained anything about the "real" classified technologies; they only confirmed what everyone knew anyway. This opinion is understated. While I wouldn't go as far as to make guesses as to what the real classified data is now-a-days, I would like to point out that nearly all of the reveals thus far from the recent round of whistleblowers read basically like the transcripts to the cypherpunks mailing list over the past twenty years. My fear is that everyone will gloss over that, and then continue discrediting such lists and their users far into the future as 'tinfoil hattery' and the like.
- qznc 12y ago
  Snowden applied for political asylum in Germany. However, the law says you must be within Germany to do that and Snowden considered that too dangerous. The government can make exceptions to that rule but apparently they considered it too dangerous with respect to the USA relations.
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  Last time I looked there are few places in Germany that are further away than 300km or so from a place that is controlled by the USA or UK. That's a good three hours to essentially get anyone outside Germany's jurisdiction if the USA really wants to force the issue "extraordinary rendition" style. Given how much Germany (both government and populace) cared when it was about a German citizen, I doubt there would be notable outrage when it's about an American.
rdl 12y ago
Fwiw, there are parts of the German government who are really pro liberty, and have been actively seeking security and privacy startups relocating to Berlin. I predict pretty amazing things due to ccc, the general attractiveness of Berlin as a place to live, cost (half of the Bay Area), less crappy immigration policies, and the privacy/security brand due to people like Poitras.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  Also, there is the freedom of movement to consider (traveling between European countries has gotten easier; traveling between North American countries has gotten harder) and universal healthcare.
  - chestnut-tree 12y ago
    Yes, travelling is a lot easier across countries in the EU - but many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. The fact that people consent to this shows that we have a sometimes contradictory stance on matters of privacy and data collection. Back in October 2013, the European Court of Justice ruled that collecting fingerprints was a privacy incursion but that the greater need for security outweighed the privacy concern.
    - smoe 12y ago
      One of the reasons biometric passports spreaded so fast, was because the US required all foreign passport issued after 2006 to be biometric as specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Within the EU (or Schengen Area to be precise) you don't need a passport to travel. An ID which is not biometric in most countries is sufficent.
    - superuser2 12y ago
      What is the threat model for government knowing your fingerprints? There are clear issues with communications - words taken out of context could paint you as all kinds of illegal/disagreeable things and land you in jail and/or destroy your career. Metadata is pretty much exclusively useful for guilt by association. What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. Are we afraid that someone is going to take fingerprints from the passport database and plant them at crime scenes? Use them to unlock your iPhone while you're in custody? If you already warrant that kind of special attention, authorities will have no trouble getting your fingerprints anyway.,
bostik 12y ago
I'm going to quote two paragraphs verbatim, because they distill the practical extent of a universal, collect-it-all surveillance. Anne Roth, a political scientist who’s now a researcher on the German NSA inquiry, tells me perhaps the most chilling story. How she and her husband and their two children – then aged two and four – were caught in a “data mesh”. How an algorithm identified her husband, an academic sociologist who specialises in issues such as gentrification, as a terrorist suspect on the basis of seven words he’d used in various academic papers. Seven words? “Identification was one. Framework was another. Marxist-Leninist was another, but you know he’s a sociologist… ” It was enough for them to be placed under surveillance for a year. And then, at dawn, one day in 2007, armed police burst into their Berlin home and arrested him on suspicion of carrying out terrorist attacks. This is not tinfoilhattery or paranoia, not anymore. Get flagged once for any reason at all, and EVERYTHING in your communication history gets reviewed, re-interpreted, with the already established bias of guilt. This is not even a perversion of justice, because the term implies that justice system was actually involved. And that was in 2007. I once quipped that Orwell was an optimist. In the brave new world we live in, that statement has finally lost its amusement value.
- crimsoneer 12y ago
  I'm a little sceptical. How do they know precisely what was used to identify them and what words triggered this "data mesh"? I'm not completely au fait with counter-terrorism policing, but they don't usually disclose the entirety of the evidence against you. How did they know they were under surveillance etc? The notion that they were subject to surveillance and arrested based on using seven words is a little far-fetched to me. Surveillance is pretty damn expensive, and I'm pretty confident they weren't the only people to use those words. Again, not necessarily saying they're lying, but I'd love to know where the information comes from.
  - Argorak 12y ago
    There was a lawsuit, she's simply talking about what was in the investigative files.
    - 12y ago
igl 12y ago
In what way is Germany more safe? Pretty ridiculous. But if you consider TAZ to be radical ha ha humm... See: Vorratsdatenspeicherung, TED Talk by Malte Spitz, George Maaßen. Laws don't apply here to the intelligence apparatus either.
- orbifold 12y ago
  At least the supreme court overturned Vorratsdatenspeicherung in its former form. Hopefully the Pirateparty will manage to pull itself together and be a good oppositional force in parliament one day.
maaku 12y ago
What a strange world we live in where people escaping surveillance move to Berlin.
- TillE 12y ago
  A lot of modern Germany is defined by backlash against past horrors. Germany's close relationship with Israel, for example.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    But they still have id cards and registering with police when you move :-(
    - pgeorgi 12y ago
      With a county office, not the police. It doesn't matter too much since most people are somewhere "in the system" anyway: pretty much everyone is registered with various social security systems, employed people are known through income tax handling, etc. (We also have rather strict rules on name changes and other means that could allow someone to make themselves disappear)
    - yusyusyus 12y ago
      there are similar mechanisms in the US . in many cities, a landlord is required to register a tenant. similarly, purchase of real property is public record...
      - maaku 12y ago
        Tenant could be an LLC registered in a jurisdiction that doesn't require disclosure of ownership or directors.
doctorstupid 12y ago
I'm sure the NSA has a free-reign there. Even if the BND cannot spy internally, they could just ask the NSA for what they need.
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  You've got a point: Recently found that NSA has full access to my Internet provider https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/
- kopparam 12y ago
  Admire the confidence how you say that. If this is the case, what is use of having the laws that prevent privacy issues?
rurban 12y ago
Very interesting to me that the author heard nothing of Assange hints that Anke Domscheit-Berg is probably a US spy. Guardian, still angry at Julian?
lsiebert 12y ago
A random thought occurred to me while reading this. As soon as we are out in space, surveillance becomes very hard.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  Yeah, but who is "we"? If power structures on Earth keep growing and working hard to sink their fangs deeper into anything that could challenge their power, I'm not really sure people, or even machines, just moving off to live as they please elsewhere will actually be a thing, not if it can be avoided. That's just not in the spirit of things as they are currently going. Oppressive empires aren't keen on letting people escape and regroup elsewhere. On the other hand, sometimes they can't help it, so here's hoping.
cyphunk 12y ago
What the article misses are two important points. 1. Berlin politics is less hyper-media based One of the benefit of Berlin isn't added liberty but a less hyper-media based political environment. One can see this in how the various political "Stiftung" funded and continue to fund open discourse around the issue of the surveillance. This environment may also be part to blame for the lack of strong response, but it may also be partially responsible for Appelbaum and Laura still being able to get their visa's renewed. 2. It's just the better ghetto The truth is there is nowhere safe for digital activists right now. That is to say there is nowhere that any of the people interviewed could live to reduce their need to worry if their house is being monitored. There is no country, of sufficient weight, that has proven they would not bend their will to that of a greater power. With there being no safe place, peace of mind can be found more easily in a ghetto with like minded individuals. And berlin, definitely when it comes to digital rights and privacy, has a very lively ghetto. You may not be safer in Berlin, but at least you are not alone
shitehawk 12y ago
Do these digital exiles go and register with the German police as they are required to by law?
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  They likely register with their county's office (if being a resident for more than 6 weeks), as required by law.

297 points by Kabukks 12y ago

Only Snowden really needed to escape the NSA and he didn't go to Germany. By the looks of it, they would turn him over in a heartbeat.

doorhammer 12y ago
I've only read about half of the article so far, but it's pretty clear they're not talking about people the US wants extradited; that's a completely different story. These are activists who ostensibly haven't committed any crimes, but suspect they're under surveillance, or get harassed for being activists and want to go somewhere where the culture seems to be deeply and overtly set against state sponsored spying on the populace.
- csandreasen 12y ago
  Poitras wasn't being stopped at airports because she was an activist - she was stopped because she was under suspicion for allegedly having foreknowledge of a planned insurgent attack against US troops in Iraq and filming it from the rooftops instead of warning them. She initially denied that she was the woman the troops saw filming from the rooftop during the initial military investigation, then later admitted to it in an e-mail to John Bruning, author of The Devil's Sandbox. [1] https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/soldiers-allege-laura-poitras-co-author-nsa-scoop-had-foreknowledge-2004-iraqi-attack-us-troops_735111.html?page=1 https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/soldiers-allege-laura-p...
  - atmosx 12y ago
    "Poitras wasn't being stopped at airports because she was an activist - she was stopped because she was under suspicion for allegedly having foreknowledge of a planned insurgent attack against US troops in Iraq and filming it from the rooftops instead of warning them." Sure, Poitras detention had nothing to do with Snowden, Obama is a pacifist, Ukraine is in Africa, Putin is a democrat and I am Marry Poppins!!!
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      Dude, check the dates - she started complaining about being stopped for questioning at airports in 2006. http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...
      - atmosx 12y ago
        Ooops, you're right. I'm not Marry Poppins, after all. Sorry for the outburst.
  - 4bpp 12y ago
    Is there a legal obligation for warzone journalists to disclose such information if they have it? That would seem like a very dangerous provision - for one, it would provide a strong incentive for the opposite party in an armed conflict to actively target them/prevent them from doing their job. Even if there is, I don't see how the circumstance that no charges were filed and apparently the authorities instead chose to take the route of (retaliatory?) extralegal harassment is compatible with the rule of law.
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      I'm not sure on the legality since it happened in a war zone. Over here in a non-war zone, I certainly can be held liable for criminal negligence if I've received credible evidence that someone is going to attacked and I do nothing to report it to the authorities. She was hanging around some questionably dangerous folks, so I'm sure if she did know she could have made an argument that the circumstances prevented her from notifying the troops without putting her own life at risk. And, of course, she might not have known about it to begin with and was just randomly filming. On the other hand, telling the investigators that she wasn't the person filming at the scene of the attack and then later recanting it is certainly enough to raise some eyebrows. Certainly not enough to convict someone of a crime, though, which is likely the reason why she was repeatedly searched and questioned but never arrested or indicted. She might call it harassment, but the authorities call it investigation.
      - 4bpp 12y ago
        So why search her only at the border then, rather than obtain a warrant to search her domicile? (Please correct me if this in fact did occur as well.) If this was indeed an investigation passing usual legal requirements with the intent to build a case against her, I'd imagine that any responsible investigator would at the very least choose to do that as well. If they repeatedly searched her at the border (thus essentially abusing an avenue which had its legal hurdles significantly reduced for the ostensible sake of national security and being able to deal with external threats that the internal legal system had no time and opportunity to handle through regular channels) but did not choose to obtain a warrant or otherwise start a legal process that comes with the normal set of safeguards, I'd say that strongly seems to indicate they did not have enough of a case against her - or, in other words, that an investigation was perpetuated which according to traditional legal standards should have been discontinued. Now, of course you may argue for the traditional standards/safeguards themselves to be weakened (e.g. by saying that while searches of one's home should remain subject to the same legal restrictions, certain parts of the government now also shall have the privilege to conduct some sort of "preliminary searches" which do not come with the usual safeguards to arbitary ends which might include a more formal investigation being started, at their full discretion), but this is not how I usually see this debate being framed.
  - justcommenting 12y ago
    As someone who believes in the rule of law, I don't find these assertions particularly compelling, or even relevant. If Poitras committed a crime or was suspected of committing a crime, she should be charged and entitled to defend her actions in open court in front of a jury of her peers. But what reportedly happened to her--since we're talking about Germany--reminds me of some of the Stasi's zersetzung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung. Instead of enforcing laws, she was repeatedly harassed, seemingly with the intent to intimidate and destabilize her and her work.
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      > If Poitras [...] was suspected of committing a crime, she should be charged If she was suspected of committing a crime, she should be investigated to determine whether or not there's sufficient evidence to show that she did commit the crime. You don't charge someone with a crime until you're fairly sure they committed it. Questioning her at the airport is one means of investigation. Based on the descriptions given in the two articles I linked to, she traveled out of country 40 times over the course of 6 years, went to places like Iraq and Yemen, and openly hung out with Sunni insurgents and two close associates of Osama bin Laden - on top of already being reported filming at the scene of an ambush on US troops that resulted in multiple casualties. Maybe she didn't do anything, but the border control agents wouldn't have been doing their jobs if they didn't stop her and investigate.
      - justcommenting 12y ago
        Unless Poitras committed 40 different crimes or various crimes spanning 6 years, I think there's still something to be said about the rule of law based on what's been reported...which I think we both agree may not be the full story. It's one thing to question/investigate someone in conjunction with specific, credible evidence as part of a larger, legitimate investigation; but having your devices searched or being questioned repeatedly at border crossings dozens of times over six years--especially for someone at least occasionally based in NYC who could have trivially been visited by law enforcement while home--seems a lot more likely to be part of an intimidation strategy than a legitimate investigation.
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    She initially denied that she was the woman the troops saw filming from the rooftop during the initial military investigation, then later admitted to it in an e-mail to John Bruning, author of The Devil's Sandbox. According to the article you cite, she didn't admit to being the person the soldiers saw "filming from the rooftop" during the attack. But rather, to quote the article verbatim, "that she had in fact been on the roof that day." Presumably you understand that these are different things.
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    To be clear this is an allegation only. Furthermore Poitras believes in a type of journalism that does not interfere with events. She believes in documenting what happens without trying to influence them. But I suppose that there is probably some law, some where that states that in war zones not disclosing information is a crime. Finally if this were true at all we can ask why she hasn't been arrested. Why should she be stopped and harassed but not arrested if the government has evidence that this is true?
pasbesoin 12y ago
While I haven't read it, yet, I see film maker and journalist Laura Poitras at the top of the article. One reason she's described in interviews for moving, is that she could not pass through U.S. border control and customs without enduring an extensive search and the likely confiscation of all her digital equipment. Perhaps that's not directly the NSA. But it's a legitimate reason to have a home somewhere that does not constantly put you through such. And she's not the only one in such a position. I agree with your opinion that the German government and agencies may not be the most sympathetic. A significant portion of the German public, on the other hand... The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many.
- brightsize 12y ago
  >The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many. Including, no doubt, for the chancellor, Angela Merkel. "She is ... the first German Chancellor to be born after World War II, and the first post-reunification Chancellor to be raised in the former East Germany" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel]
  - pasbesoin 12y ago
    My impression is that she was upset about her own phone, but not too much about the rest. Also, as I recall, rumor is that behind the scenes, the German government was already clued in on much of what was going on. And... various aspects of the German governments (Federal as well as the states, etc.) continue to be pretty aggressive about pushing spyware and otherwise insisting a unilateral "right" to do whatever they damn well please. However, they are part of the EU. And border control is thereby not so easy to just zip up. Nor, perhaps, would the population stand for something so overt, as opposed to covert.
    - Amezarak 12y ago
      It's not rumors, Germany has their own full-fledged NSA-equivalent (the BND) spying on the populace cooperating with the NSA as a Tier 2 nation. The German government was not just complicit, they were actively pushing for wider surveillance on their own citizens. Likely this is part of the motivation for the rumblings about European-based Internet services: the BND would have more negotiating leverage and power if they could directly access e.g. Facebook servers rather than having to go through the NSA.
mwti 12y ago
That's because the Snowden leaks are not a real threat. None of the documents contained anything about the "real" classified technologies; they only confirmed what everyone knew anyway. If Snowden had leaked usable information about microwave weapons and quantum computers the Russians would not have merely accepted him... they'd be willing to go to war for him. Makes you wonder if the Snowden leaks weren't just a big PsyOp on the BRICS. ;)
- serf 12y ago
  > That's because the Snowden leaks are not a real threat. None of the documents contained anything about the "real" classified technologies; they only confirmed what everyone knew anyway. This opinion is understated. While I wouldn't go as far as to make guesses as to what the real classified data is now-a-days, I would like to point out that nearly all of the reveals thus far from the recent round of whistleblowers read basically like the transcripts to the cypherpunks mailing list over the past twenty years. My fear is that everyone will gloss over that, and then continue discrediting such lists and their users far into the future as 'tinfoil hattery' and the like.
qznc 12y ago
Snowden applied for political asylum in Germany. However, the law says you must be within Germany to do that and Snowden considered that too dangerous. The government can make exceptions to that rule but apparently they considered it too dangerous with respect to the USA relations.
pgeorgi 12y ago
Last time I looked there are few places in Germany that are further away than 300km or so from a place that is controlled by the USA or UK. That's a good three hours to essentially get anyone outside Germany's jurisdiction if the USA really wants to force the issue "extraordinary rendition" style. Given how much Germany (both government and populace) cared when it was about a German citizen, I doubt there would be notable outrage when it's about an American.

rdl 12y ago

Fwiw, there are parts of the German government who are really pro liberty, and have been actively seeking security and privacy startups relocating to Berlin. I predict pretty amazing things due to ccc, the general attractiveness of Berlin as a place to live, cost (half of the Bay Area), less crappy immigration policies, and the privacy/security brand due to people like Poitras.

spiritplumber 12y ago
Also, there is the freedom of movement to consider (traveling between European countries has gotten easier; traveling between North American countries has gotten harder) and universal healthcare.
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  Yes, travelling is a lot easier across countries in the EU - but many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. The fact that people consent to this shows that we have a sometimes contradictory stance on matters of privacy and data collection. Back in October 2013, the European Court of Justice ruled that collecting fingerprints was a privacy incursion but that the greater need for security outweighed the privacy concern.
  - smoe 12y ago
    One of the reasons biometric passports spreaded so fast, was because the US required all foreign passport issued after 2006 to be biometric as specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Within the EU (or Schengen Area to be precise) you don't need a passport to travel. An ID which is not biometric in most countries is sufficent.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    What is the threat model for government knowing your fingerprints? There are clear issues with communications - words taken out of context could paint you as all kinds of illegal/disagreeable things and land you in jail and/or destroy your career. Metadata is pretty much exclusively useful for guilt by association. What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. Are we afraid that someone is going to take fingerprints from the passport database and plant them at crime scenes? Use them to unlock your iPhone while you're in custody? If you already warrant that kind of special attention, authorities will have no trouble getting your fingerprints anyway.,

bostik 12y ago

I'm going to quote two paragraphs verbatim, because they distill the practical extent of a universal, collect-it-all surveillance. Anne Roth, a political scientist who’s now a researcher on the German NSA inquiry, tells me perhaps the most chilling story. How she and her husband and their two children – then aged two and four – were caught in a “data mesh”. How an algorithm identified her husband, an academic sociologist who specialises in issues such as gentrification, as a terrorist suspect on the basis of seven words he’d used in various academic papers. Seven words? “Identification was one. Framework was another. Marxist-Leninist was another, but you know he’s a sociologist… ” It was enough for them to be placed under surveillance for a year. And then, at dawn, one day in 2007, armed police burst into their Berlin home and arrested him on suspicion of carrying out terrorist attacks. This is not tinfoilhattery or paranoia, not anymore. Get flagged once for any reason at all, and EVERYTHING in your communication history gets reviewed, re-interpreted, with the already established bias of guilt. This is not even a perversion of justice, because the term implies that justice system was actually involved. And that was in 2007. I once quipped that Orwell was an optimist. In the brave new world we live in, that statement has finally lost its amusement value.

crimsoneer 12y ago
I'm a little sceptical. How do they know precisely what was used to identify them and what words triggered this "data mesh"? I'm not completely au fait with counter-terrorism policing, but they don't usually disclose the entirety of the evidence against you. How did they know they were under surveillance etc? The notion that they were subject to surveillance and arrested based on using seven words is a little far-fetched to me. Surveillance is pretty damn expensive, and I'm pretty confident they weren't the only people to use those words. Again, not necessarily saying they're lying, but I'd love to know where the information comes from.
- Argorak 12y ago
  There was a lawsuit, she's simply talking about what was in the investigative files.
  - 12y ago

igl 12y ago

In what way is Germany more safe? Pretty ridiculous. But if you consider TAZ to be radical ha ha humm... See: Vorratsdatenspeicherung, TED Talk by Malte Spitz, George Maaßen. Laws don't apply here to the intelligence apparatus either.

orbifold 12y ago
At least the supreme court overturned Vorratsdatenspeicherung in its former form. Hopefully the Pirateparty will manage to pull itself together and be a good oppositional force in parliament one day.

maaku 12y ago

What a strange world we live in where people escaping surveillance move to Berlin.

TillE 12y ago
A lot of modern Germany is defined by backlash against past horrors. Germany's close relationship with Israel, for example.
- walshemj 12y ago
  But they still have id cards and registering with police when you move :-(
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    With a county office, not the police. It doesn't matter too much since most people are somewhere "in the system" anyway: pretty much everyone is registered with various social security systems, employed people are known through income tax handling, etc. (We also have rather strict rules on name changes and other means that could allow someone to make themselves disappear)
  - yusyusyus 12y ago
    there are similar mechanisms in the US . in many cities, a landlord is required to register a tenant. similarly, purchase of real property is public record...
    - maaku 12y ago
      Tenant could be an LLC registered in a jurisdiction that doesn't require disclosure of ownership or directors.

doctorstupid 12y ago

I'm sure the NSA has a free-reign there. Even if the BND cannot spy internally, they could just ask the NSA for what they need.

BillFranklin 12y ago
You've got a point: Recently found that NSA has full access to my Internet provider https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/
kopparam 12y ago
Admire the confidence how you say that. If this is the case, what is use of having the laws that prevent privacy issues?

rurban 12y ago

Very interesting to me that the author heard nothing of Assange hints that Anke Domscheit-Berg is probably a US spy. Guardian, still angry at Julian?

lsiebert 12y ago

A random thought occurred to me while reading this. As soon as we are out in space, surveillance becomes very hard.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
Yeah, but who is "we"? If power structures on Earth keep growing and working hard to sink their fangs deeper into anything that could challenge their power, I'm not really sure people, or even machines, just moving off to live as they please elsewhere will actually be a thing, not if it can be avoided. That's just not in the spirit of things as they are currently going. Oppressive empires aren't keen on letting people escape and regroup elsewhere. On the other hand, sometimes they can't help it, so here's hoping.

cyphunk 12y ago

What the article misses are two important points. 1. Berlin politics is less hyper-media based One of the benefit of Berlin isn't added liberty but a less hyper-media based political environment. One can see this in how the various political "Stiftung" funded and continue to fund open discourse around the issue of the surveillance. This environment may also be part to blame for the lack of strong response, but it may also be partially responsible for Appelbaum and Laura still being able to get their visa's renewed. 2. It's just the better ghetto The truth is there is nowhere safe for digital activists right now. That is to say there is nowhere that any of the people interviewed could live to reduce their need to worry if their house is being monitored. There is no country, of sufficient weight, that has proven they would not bend their will to that of a greater power. With there being no safe place, peace of mind can be found more easily in a ghetto with like minded individuals. And berlin, definitely when it comes to digital rights and privacy, has a very lively ghetto. You may not be safer in Berlin, but at least you are not alone

shitehawk 12y ago

Do these digital exiles go and register with the German police as they are required to by law?

pgeorgi 12y ago
They likely register with their county's office (if being a resident for more than 6 weeks), as required by law.