8 ms·

Der Spiegel Targeted by US Intelligence

194 points by cyphunk 11y ago

tosseraccount 11y ago
Spiegel targets me by loading up a bunch of cookies. Sounds like pot calling the kettle black.
psykovsky 11y ago
Why do I smell politics all around? Is it cynicism, or?...
jotm 11y ago
Assange was denied asylum in France, continues living in the Ecuador embassy in the UK. You go, Ecuador! Fuck the system!
h4x3r 11y ago
Any one else see all this news as; "Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes." Swordfish @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxTHeyKuXGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxTHeyKuXGw
GabrielF00 11y ago
>The fact that the CIA and NSA were prepared to reveal an ongoing surveillance operation to the Chancellery underlines the importance they attached to the leaks, say sources in Washington. The NSA, the sources say, were aware that the German government would know from then on that the US was spying in Berlin. I'm sure that the Germans were shocked, shocked, to find that an intelligence agency was spying in Berlin.
- lispm 11y ago
  Well, given that Germany officially hosts huge amounts of NSA and CIA staff, US military, US Airbases, US military commands, ... nobody is shocked. The US lost a lot support in public opinion and people are increasingly demanding that the US removes these installations, troops and intelligence groups from Germany. Also the US will have a hard time to sell communication services, IT services and IT hardware in Germany (and Europe). Why host the NSA in Germany, when it acts against our interests? What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'.
  - allendoerfer 11y ago
    >What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'. That does not shock me at all. It makes me sad, that these days, there is simply no time for justice. There are so many complex scandals the average citizen cannot understand coming up after each other, by the time a scandal is investigated it is not interesting any more. So the public has largely just given up caring. There is some outrage but overall the sentiment seems to be: "Well, that's what politicians do." Merkel hired those genius consultants, who taught her how to act, dress and hold her hands so that she is immune to public outcry. We know she is brilliant but she comes across as being just as stupid as we are but totally upright. She would never enrich herself or get caught being openly corrupt. She is just to boring for that, which is exactly what the German people want their leader to be. Every other politician would have lost his job so many times by now, but that woman can get away with everything. She is made out of teflon, these scandals just bounce of of her. And it is not, that we do not notices this: She famously destroyed all her political enemies a few years ago - after all the number two is 72 years old now. It makes me sad, that it works nevertheless. The biggest political scandal in recent years was the fall of president Wulff [0]. There have been minor but simple accusations that the public could understand and was outrageous about. No complex monetary system, no difficult cold-war conflict, no highly technical espionage stuff. He was corrupt, but on a scale that the average person is corrupt. Take a small present here and there, take photos with people you should not take photos with. You cannot get away with something simple like that, especially when you handle the crisis badly. The logical conclusion is, that we get borderline psychopaths and/or actors as politicians, who manage to build up an image of total boringness. They cannot be educated in any field, because their field actually is managing their own image. It makes me sad, that you are more likely to stay in office when you seem boring and stupid instead of intelligent and innovative. We ended up with a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where everybody just maintains the status quo and tries to separate him- or herself as much from actual politics as possible. This of course leaves the actual decisionmaking to institutions like the intelligence agencies or big corporations and is how we end up with stuff like this. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_Wulff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_Wulff
- sarnowski 11y ago
  Almost all discussions are focused inwards. That a foreign agency is trying to spy is no surprise. The big shock* comes from the details how german agencies were not only incapable of protecting anything but even helped foreign agencies to spy on our government and industry (obviously, spying on all citizens was not even a real topic for the governemt). *) Unfotunatly, its mostly some media who even care about this stories. Most citizens are too lazy to even admit that this is a big scandal and Merkel uses her strategy of just doing nothing until media cannot earn enough money with the stories so that everyone just forgets. The only bigger outcry came from the industrial spionage allegations (media were like 2-3 weeks on it) because $$$.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- andreyf 11y ago
  > Whenever there is one of those types of articles there is always several people claiming that whatever NSA is doing is exactly what they should be doing, and at any point its what everyone else is doing too. It's not that what intelligence agencies do is morally OK, it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically. > So is there something which would not be appropriate if NSA did? Assassinate leaders, murdering school children, causing nuclear meltdowns... where is the line so we in the future can point to that whenever this kind of news pops up? NSA does signals intelligence, not assassinations. I don't know what rules are in place as to what's OK in spying/sabotage and what isn't, but I imagine it's something not super unreasonable...
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    * it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically.* Fair enough. That means we should never have to take any talk of "free market" or its merits seriously. The whole "magic of the free market" always irritated me anyway, since there's never any account of information asymmetry. Clearly, large, multi-national corporations have a better idea of supply and demand than an isolated consumer does, even without help from a government spy agency.
    - andreyf 11y ago
      Well, there can be a free market within a state and enforced by the state. Not free in the anarchy "do anything you want" sense, but in the sense that people are free to enter into contracts and make decisions within a framework where the restrictions are well justified and often reviewed.
      - bediger4000 11y ago
        That's a legally free market, but if the NSA is pirating "intellectual property" and someone in the government is deciding to give that information to particular entities in the market, it's not economically free. It's exactly the same as a government propping up some corporation because that corporation is part of the "defense base", or fixes prices or something.
andreyf 11y ago
Well, German intelligence can't spy on Der Spiegel legally, so getting tips from a friendly intelligence agency as to who is leaking info to the press seems to make a lot of sense.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  No for fucks sake, it does not make a lot of sense. If we allow this shit to happen, we lose as a democracy. How on earth do you think it could be even remotely acceptable to spy on a journalistic outlet? /rant
  - istvan__ 11y ago
    You mean we already lost.
  - carbocation 11y ago
    I don't see andreyf's comment as being supportive; rather, it comes across as sardonic but lucid.
    - chinathrow 11y ago
      I hope OP will reply - stating that some totally unacceptable thing "makes sense" does indeed sound supportive, at least to my naive soul.
      - carbocation 11y ago
        It's written in a wry, underhanded way, invoking the mindset of someone at the intelligence agencies. I really see no need for the OP to clarify. But if I'm wrong, and OP's true position differs from ours, what of it? Edit: chinathrow is actually correct, I thought OP was being sardonic but they seem to be sincere based on their follow-up comments.
        task_queue 11y ago
        Poe's law at work.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
Interesting article. In the last several years I have been surprised how many Der Spiegal articles accurately (apparently) documented things that embarrassed the U.S. government. Too bad U.S. news media does not do as thorough of a job with their reporting.
- carboncopy 11y ago
  You must be joking. The Pentagon Papers were broken by the New York Times. The "Deep Throat" espionage controversy with President Nixon's administration was broken by the Washington Post. American filmmaker Linda Poitras introduced the person responsible for the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history (Snowden) to an American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who previously wrote opinion pieces for various American newspapers, including the Cato Institute. At the time, Greenwald was writing for UK newspaper The Guardian, which at the time and still does maintain a significant office in the U.S. [1] Further pieces based off of the NSA leaks were written by journalists at the Washington Post. Only after a few months did Der Spiegel write any articles. Oh, and the source of Der Spiegel's leaked documents? American software developer and activist Jacob Appelbaum. Hell, he even wrote their most prominent NSA articles. [2] American journalism is the most robust source of sunlight for U.S. government secrets. I get it, one can find all sorts of individual cases of American news outlets letting the public down. But in aggregate, no other country's news organization comes close. [1] (March 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact [2] (July 2013) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whistleblower-edward-snowden-on-global-spying-a-910006.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whi...
  - lispm 11y ago
    The US press lately was a propaganda instrument for the war machine. See the NYTimes. Then this: 'As of February 12, 2014, the United States is ranked 46th in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index.'
    - hackuser 11y ago
clamprecht 11y ago
The thing that I realized when reading this article title today is that my internal reaction was something like "Ok, nothing new." Whereas 10 or 15 years ago, my reaction would have been, "another tinfoil hat article."
- refurb 11y ago
  I get your point, but all you need to do is take a look at the FOIA releases from the CIA to see they've always been doing this.[1] http://www.foia.cia.gov/historical-collections http://www.foia.cia.gov/historical-collections
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    10 years ago people would call those conspiracy theories.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      The next scary thought is how many other theories are not theories at all. They say every lie has some basis in truth. Reptilians anyone ;D
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
camhenlin 11y ago
It makes sense that US Intelligence is spying on foreign entities -- that's their job. Foreign entities are not protected by the US constitution and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment and have no right to privacy from the NSA, CIA, etc.
- richmarr 11y ago
  According to the US constitution, foreigners don't have any rights at all. In other news, foreigners don't look to the US constitution before deciding whether to be cross about being spied on.
  - user 11y ago
    >According to the US constitution, foreigners don't have any rights at all. Legal scholars disagree with you: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1302&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
    - csandreasen 11y ago
      Reading through that paper, it seems pretty clear that the author is discussing the rights of foreigners inside the US. The idea that the US should be upholding US constitutional rights for non-US citizens residing in another country's sovereign territory is not something that legal scholars are arguing.
      - user 11y ago
        I posted paper to answer blatant "according to Constitution foreigners don't have any rights at all". Regarding other countries - they obviously have their own bills, laws and regulations. The idea that US citizens residing in other countries are exempt from local laws just on the basis that they are doing service to US is ridiculous.
        richmarr 11y ago
mineshaftgap 11y ago
Some day the people of Germany will rise up.
csandreasen 11y ago
A couple of things... 1) The first half of the headline reads "An Attack on Press Freedom". How exactly was freedom of the press attacked? Did the US or German governments stop Der Spiegel from publishing something? Were they blackmailed into suppressing a story (but for some reason not so for this one)? As far as the story indicates, the only action that was taken was to move the person accused of leaking from one department to another. But, hey, "An Attack on Press Freedom" gets more people to view those 9 ad banners scattered throughout the article... 2) I just read this article twice over, and I can't actually see any evidence that US intelligence services were targeting Der Spiegel. Somehow the CIA station chief finds out that someone in the German Department Six is passing information to Der Spiegel, and informs the head of Department Six. They don't actually give any indication as to how the CIA got that information, but just state that it was most likely the NSA spying on Der Spiegel as if it were a foregone conclusion. How do they know this? I can think of a number of other situations where the CIA may have received this information... - The CIA had a source inside Der Spiegel - The CIA was spying on their source (not Der Spiegel) - The NSA was spying on their source - The CIA/NSA was spying on a third party that knew of the leaks - The source was drunk at a bar and bragged about it to or within earshot of a CIA agent - One of the journalists was drunk at a bar and bragged about it. - The CIA/NSA was spying on Russian intelligence (or any other country in the region) and that foreign intelligence service was doing any of the above - etc. ... I accept that they don't want to reveal their source, but there's no mention of an anonymous source, or documents acquired by Der Spiegel, or anything else substantiate the US targeting the news outlet. As far as I can tell, this is the extent of their attribution: Research conducted by SPIEGEL has determined the existence of CIA and NSA files filled with a large number of memos pertaining to the work of the German newsmagazine. Really? That's it? They somehow know that documents exist which somehow make reference to a global news outlet known for breaking headlines concerning the work of these intelligence agencies? What kind of research was conducted, and what do these documents actually say? For god's sake - Der Spiegel is one of the few news agencies that has the whole Snowden trove and regularly releases documents from it, but they can't show anything from there proving their claim? Not too long ago, the Sunday Times in England ran a story claiming that documents stolen by Edward Snowden were in the hands of Chinese and Russian intelligence services, relying solely on anonymous sources in the British government. They were rightly lambasted for it in a number of other media outlets. Der Spiegel is now doing almost the exact same thing.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
Now that the entire planet is under East Germany style surveillance, I have only one question: where do I go to turn my neighbors in? They really piss me off with their loud music and I'm pretty sure they say forbidden jokes meant to undermine the establishment.
- junto 11y ago
  I believe that you just report them to the police and say that they are armed and dangerous. The police army then storm their house and throw stun grenades into the beds of toddlers. Nah, would never happen in real life....

194 points by cyphunk 11y ago

tosseraccount 11y ago

Spiegel targets me by loading up a bunch of cookies. Sounds like pot calling the kettle black.

psykovsky 11y ago

Why do I smell politics all around? Is it cynicism, or?...

jotm 11y ago

Assange was denied asylum in France, continues living in the Ecuador embassy in the UK. You go, Ecuador! Fuck the system!

h4x3r 11y ago

Any one else see all this news as; "Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes." Swordfish @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxTHeyKuXGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxTHeyKuXGw

GabrielF00 11y ago

>The fact that the CIA and NSA were prepared to reveal an ongoing surveillance operation to the Chancellery underlines the importance they attached to the leaks, say sources in Washington. The NSA, the sources say, were aware that the German government would know from then on that the US was spying in Berlin. I'm sure that the Germans were shocked, shocked, to find that an intelligence agency was spying in Berlin.

lispm 11y ago
Well, given that Germany officially hosts huge amounts of NSA and CIA staff, US military, US Airbases, US military commands, ... nobody is shocked. The US lost a lot support in public opinion and people are increasingly demanding that the US removes these installations, troops and intelligence groups from Germany. Also the US will have a hard time to sell communication services, IT services and IT hardware in Germany (and Europe). Why host the NSA in Germany, when it acts against our interests? What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  >What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'. That does not shock me at all. It makes me sad, that these days, there is simply no time for justice. There are so many complex scandals the average citizen cannot understand coming up after each other, by the time a scandal is investigated it is not interesting any more. So the public has largely just given up caring. There is some outrage but overall the sentiment seems to be: "Well, that's what politicians do." Merkel hired those genius consultants, who taught her how to act, dress and hold her hands so that she is immune to public outcry. We know she is brilliant but she comes across as being just as stupid as we are but totally upright. She would never enrich herself or get caught being openly corrupt. She is just to boring for that, which is exactly what the German people want their leader to be. Every other politician would have lost his job so many times by now, but that woman can get away with everything. She is made out of teflon, these scandals just bounce of of her. And it is not, that we do not notices this: She famously destroyed all her political enemies a few years ago - after all the number two is 72 years old now. It makes me sad, that it works nevertheless. The biggest political scandal in recent years was the fall of president Wulff [0]. There have been minor but simple accusations that the public could understand and was outrageous about. No complex monetary system, no difficult cold-war conflict, no highly technical espionage stuff. He was corrupt, but on a scale that the average person is corrupt. Take a small present here and there, take photos with people you should not take photos with. You cannot get away with something simple like that, especially when you handle the crisis badly. The logical conclusion is, that we get borderline psychopaths and/or actors as politicians, who manage to build up an image of total boringness. They cannot be educated in any field, because their field actually is managing their own image. It makes me sad, that you are more likely to stay in office when you seem boring and stupid instead of intelligent and innovative. We ended up with a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where everybody just maintains the status quo and tries to separate him- or herself as much from actual politics as possible. This of course leaves the actual decisionmaking to institutions like the intelligence agencies or big corporations and is how we end up with stuff like this. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_Wulff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_Wulff
sarnowski 11y ago
Almost all discussions are focused inwards. That a foreign agency is trying to spy is no surprise. The big shock* comes from the details how german agencies were not only incapable of protecting anything but even helped foreign agencies to spy on our government and industry (obviously, spying on all citizens was not even a real topic for the governemt). *) Unfotunatly, its mostly some media who even care about this stories. Most citizens are too lazy to even admit that this is a big scandal and Merkel uses her strategy of just doing nothing until media cannot earn enough money with the stories so that everyone just forgets. The only bigger outcry came from the industrial spionage allegations (media were like 2-3 weeks on it) because $$$.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

andreyf 11y ago
> Whenever there is one of those types of articles there is always several people claiming that whatever NSA is doing is exactly what they should be doing, and at any point its what everyone else is doing too. It's not that what intelligence agencies do is morally OK, it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically. > So is there something which would not be appropriate if NSA did? Assassinate leaders, murdering school children, causing nuclear meltdowns... where is the line so we in the future can point to that whenever this kind of news pops up? NSA does signals intelligence, not assassinations. I don't know what rules are in place as to what's OK in spying/sabotage and what isn't, but I imagine it's something not super unreasonable...
- bediger4000 11y ago
  * it's that it's practically necessary for a country not to be at a terrible disadvantage economically.* Fair enough. That means we should never have to take any talk of "free market" or its merits seriously. The whole "magic of the free market" always irritated me anyway, since there's never any account of information asymmetry. Clearly, large, multi-national corporations have a better idea of supply and demand than an isolated consumer does, even without help from a government spy agency.
  - andreyf 11y ago
    Well, there can be a free market within a state and enforced by the state. Not free in the anarchy "do anything you want" sense, but in the sense that people are free to enter into contracts and make decisions within a framework where the restrictions are well justified and often reviewed.
    - bediger4000 11y ago
      That's a legally free market, but if the NSA is pirating "intellectual property" and someone in the government is deciding to give that information to particular entities in the market, it's not economically free. It's exactly the same as a government propping up some corporation because that corporation is part of the "defense base", or fixes prices or something.

andreyf 11y ago

Well, German intelligence can't spy on Der Spiegel legally, so getting tips from a friendly intelligence agency as to who is leaking info to the press seems to make a lot of sense.

chinathrow 11y ago
No for fucks sake, it does not make a lot of sense. If we allow this shit to happen, we lose as a democracy. How on earth do you think it could be even remotely acceptable to spy on a journalistic outlet? /rant
- istvan__ 11y ago
  You mean we already lost.
- carbocation 11y ago
  I don't see andreyf's comment as being supportive; rather, it comes across as sardonic but lucid.
  - chinathrow 11y ago
    I hope OP will reply - stating that some totally unacceptable thing "makes sense" does indeed sound supportive, at least to my naive soul.
    - carbocation 11y ago
      It's written in a wry, underhanded way, invoking the mindset of someone at the intelligence agencies. I really see no need for the OP to clarify. But if I'm wrong, and OP's true position differs from ours, what of it? Edit: chinathrow is actually correct, I thought OP was being sardonic but they seem to be sincere based on their follow-up comments.
      - task_queue 11y ago
        Poe's law at work.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

Interesting article. In the last several years I have been surprised how many Der Spiegal articles accurately (apparently) documented things that embarrassed the U.S. government. Too bad U.S. news media does not do as thorough of a job with their reporting.

carboncopy 11y ago
You must be joking. The Pentagon Papers were broken by the New York Times. The "Deep Throat" espionage controversy with President Nixon's administration was broken by the Washington Post. American filmmaker Linda Poitras introduced the person responsible for the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history (Snowden) to an American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who previously wrote opinion pieces for various American newspapers, including the Cato Institute. At the time, Greenwald was writing for UK newspaper The Guardian, which at the time and still does maintain a significant office in the U.S. [1] Further pieces based off of the NSA leaks were written by journalists at the Washington Post. Only after a few months did Der Spiegel write any articles. Oh, and the source of Der Spiegel's leaked documents? American software developer and activist Jacob Appelbaum. Hell, he even wrote their most prominent NSA articles. [2] American journalism is the most robust source of sunlight for U.S. government secrets. I get it, one can find all sorts of individual cases of American news outlets letting the public down. But in aggregate, no other country's news organization comes close. [1] (March 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact http://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us/contact [2] (July 2013) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whistleblower-edward-snowden-on-global-spying-a-910006.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whi...
- lispm 11y ago
  The US press lately was a propaganda instrument for the war machine. See the NYTimes. Then this: 'As of February 12, 2014, the United States is ranked 46th in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index.'
  - hackuser 11y ago

clamprecht 11y ago

The thing that I realized when reading this article title today is that my internal reaction was something like "Ok, nothing new." Whereas 10 or 15 years ago, my reaction would have been, "another tinfoil hat article."

refurb 11y ago
I get your point, but all you need to do is take a look at the FOIA releases from the CIA to see they've always been doing this.[1] http://www.foia.cia.gov/historical-collections http://www.foia.cia.gov/historical-collections
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  10 years ago people would call those conspiracy theories.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    The next scary thought is how many other theories are not theories at all. They say every lie has some basis in truth. Reptilians anyone ;D

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

camhenlin 11y ago

It makes sense that US Intelligence is spying on foreign entities -- that's their job. Foreign entities are not protected by the US constitution and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment and have no right to privacy from the NSA, CIA, etc.

richmarr 11y ago
According to the US constitution, foreigners don't have any rights at all. In other news, foreigners don't look to the US constitution before deciding whether to be cross about being spied on.
- user 11y ago
  >According to the US constitution, foreigners don't have any rights at all. Legal scholars disagree with you: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1302&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
  - csandreasen 11y ago
    Reading through that paper, it seems pretty clear that the author is discussing the rights of foreigners inside the US. The idea that the US should be upholding US constitutional rights for non-US citizens residing in another country's sovereign territory is not something that legal scholars are arguing.
    - user 11y ago
      I posted paper to answer blatant "according to Constitution foreigners don't have any rights at all". Regarding other countries - they obviously have their own bills, laws and regulations. The idea that US citizens residing in other countries are exempt from local laws just on the basis that they are doing service to US is ridiculous.
      - richmarr 11y ago

mineshaftgap 11y ago

Some day the people of Germany will rise up.

csandreasen 11y ago

A couple of things... 1) The first half of the headline reads "An Attack on Press Freedom". How exactly was freedom of the press attacked? Did the US or German governments stop Der Spiegel from publishing something? Were they blackmailed into suppressing a story (but for some reason not so for this one)? As far as the story indicates, the only action that was taken was to move the person accused of leaking from one department to another. But, hey, "An Attack on Press Freedom" gets more people to view those 9 ad banners scattered throughout the article... 2) I just read this article twice over, and I can't actually see any evidence that US intelligence services were targeting Der Spiegel. Somehow the CIA station chief finds out that someone in the German Department Six is passing information to Der Spiegel, and informs the head of Department Six. They don't actually give any indication as to how the CIA got that information, but just state that it was most likely the NSA spying on Der Spiegel as if it were a foregone conclusion. How do they know this? I can think of a number of other situations where the CIA may have received this information... - The CIA had a source inside Der Spiegel - The CIA was spying on their source (not Der Spiegel) - The NSA was spying on their source - The CIA/NSA was spying on a third party that knew of the leaks - The source was drunk at a bar and bragged about it to or within earshot of a CIA agent - One of the journalists was drunk at a bar and bragged about it. - The CIA/NSA was spying on Russian intelligence (or any other country in the region) and that foreign intelligence service was doing any of the above - etc. ... I accept that they don't want to reveal their source, but there's no mention of an anonymous source, or documents acquired by Der Spiegel, or anything else substantiate the US targeting the news outlet. As far as I can tell, this is the extent of their attribution: Research conducted by SPIEGEL has determined the existence of CIA and NSA files filled with a large number of memos pertaining to the work of the German newsmagazine. Really? That's it? They somehow know that documents exist which somehow make reference to a global news outlet known for breaking headlines concerning the work of these intelligence agencies? What kind of research was conducted, and what do these documents actually say? For god's sake - Der Spiegel is one of the few news agencies that has the whole Snowden trove and regularly releases documents from it, but they can't show anything from there proving their claim? Not too long ago, the Sunday Times in England ran a story claiming that documents stolen by Edward Snowden were in the hands of Chinese and Russian intelligence services, relying solely on anonymous sources in the British government. They were rightly lambasted for it in a number of other media outlets. Der Spiegel is now doing almost the exact same thing.

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

Now that the entire planet is under East Germany style surveillance, I have only one question: where do I go to turn my neighbors in? They really piss me off with their loud music and I'm pretty sure they say forbidden jokes meant to undermine the establishment.

junto 11y ago
I believe that you just report them to the police and say that they are armed and dangerous. The police army then storm their house and throw stun grenades into the beds of toddlers. Nah, would never happen in real life....