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The news that the American spy organisation NSA has targeted the major German magazine Der Spiegel are serious and disturbing. But it is just the tip of the iceberg.
As it turns out the German government knew. But it did nothing to stop it. It didn’t report the issue to relevant democratic oversight bodies. And even worse — it lied about the matter to the German parliament.
To make things even worse it’s still unclear if the NSA obtained it’s information by spying on the newspaper, the Chancellors Office or the entire German political apparatus.
Der Spiegel writes…
“It remains unclear just who US intelligence originally had in its scopes. The question is also unlikely to be answered by the parliamentary investigative committee, because the US appears to have withheld this information from the Chancellery. Theoretically, at least, there are three possibilities: The Chancellery — at least in the person of Hans Josef Vorbeck. SPIEGEL journalists. Or blanket surveillance of Berlin’s entire government quarter. The NSA is capable of any of the three options. And it is important to note that each of these acts would represent a violation of German law.”
In Germany the constitution and the freedom of the press is taken seriously. What has been going on is in direct conflict with principles clearly laid out by the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
“If it is true that a foreign intelligence agency spied on journalists as they conducted their reporting in Germany and then informed the Chancellery about it, then these actions would place a huge question mark over the notion of a free press in this country. Germany’s highest court ruled in 2007 that press freedom is a “constituent part of a free and democratic order.” The court held that reporting can no longer be considered free if it entails a risk that journalists will be spied on during their reporting and that the federal government will be informed of the people they speak to.”
This affair is now snowballing, putting the Chancellors Office under serious pressure. In a special editors note, Der Spiegel notes…
“The fact that the press no longer has a special protected status and can be spied upon in the same way as corporations, associations or government ministries, lends a new quality to the spying scandal. That the press appears to have been betrayed by its own government is outrageous. For this reason, SPIEGEL decided this week to file a complaint with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of intelligence agency activity.”
It seems that the German intelligence services and the Chancellors Office have neglected both democratic and judicial requirements to keep good working relations with the Americans.
This leading up to a situation where leading German officials appears to have sided with US intelligence services — rather than with the German constitution, German law, the German parliament and the German people.
Read more: An Attack on Press Freedom: SPIEGEL Targeted by US Intelligence »
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So, the German Intelligence Service (BND) lied to Parliament and the democratic oversight body about its cooperation with the NSA. And the NSA has lied to the US Congress about mass surveillance. In Sweden the surveillance institution, the FRA, has lied to Parliament about (possibly illegal) IT-attacks carried out together with the British GCHQ and the NSA. And in the European Parliament hearings on mass surveillance several prominent European surveillance and intelligence bodies declined participating…
Can we trust the Intelligence Community? Seriously. It ought be under some sort of democratic control or oversight.
There is a view that our elected representatives are powerless against the intelligence organisations — simply because the latter knows too much about the former. If that is to be true, we have some serious problems. In that case democracy has been overridden.
But it doesn’t have to be that bad. It could be a matter of sheer political incompetence. (The politicians do not know what questions to ask, as they do not know what they do not know. And there is a thin line between telling lies and not telling the whole truth.)
It can also be the case that some things, politicians do not want to know.
OK, the intelligence community is supposed to keep us all safe, right? And politicians are not known for keeping that kind of secrets. Maybe it’s better not to let the peoples elected representatives in on everything? Who knows, they might be spies? Or some sort of collaborators? Or they might just fuck things up. (Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.)
Well… No.
In a democracy the power emanate from the people. The intelligence bodies are branches of government, who should defend the democratic system and carry out the tasks presented to them by our democratically elected representatives. Frankly, it’s up to the people. If we elect unreliable, psychotic maniacs — that is what our different branches of government have to work with. Sorry to say. But to countermand general elections would be nothing less than a coup d’état.
However, I’m not sure that is how the intelligence community perceive things.
This is a complete mess, isn’t it? A minefield.
My personal favourite theory is that most western intelligence organisations feel that they have more in common with each other than with their respective governments (and parliaments). Many screw-ups could be explained by this theory. And it’s not that far fetched. They know things. (At least they think they do.) They share sensitive information. They do things together. And sometimes shit happens. (To get a grip of this theory, I would recommend you to turn to John le Carrés all too realistic novel A most wanted man. And it’s very possible that reality outmatches fiction.)
So? I guess we need our intelligence services. Even if they sometimes get out of control and do stupid, silly or outright dangerous stuff. The only way I can think of to handle this is to elect better politicians. That, however, is not as easy as it sounds.
Until then: More lies ahead…
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From Wikileaks…
“Today, Tuesday 12 May, WikiLeaks releases ten months of transcripts from the ongoing German Parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in Germany. Despite many sessions being technically public, in practice public understanding has been compromised as transcripts have been withheld, recording devices banned and reporters intrusively watched by police.”
“WikiLeaks is releasing 1,380 pages of transcripts from the unclassified sessions, covering 34 witnesses – including 13 concealed witnesses from Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The transcripts cover from the start of the inquiry in May 2014 through to February 2015.” (…)
“One of the biggest scandals to emerge from the inquiry so far is the recent “selector” spy target list scandal where a BND official revealed that the agency was expected to spy on thousands of targets at the instruction of the NSA. These targets included members of the French government and European industry. This put into question Germany’s suitability in taking a leadership role in the European Union. It also showed that international co-operation on mass surveillance, which has been marketed in public as a counter-terrorism measure, is in practice also used by the United States for the purposes of industrial espionage and geopolitical advantage vis-a-vis members of the European Union.”
Glyn Moody at TechDirt: Wikileaks Releases Transcript Of German Inquiry Into Growing NSA Spy Scandal »
The German BND-NSA scandal seems to snowball. Focus is now shifting towards Chancellor Angela Merkel.
German Intelligence, BND — acting directly under the Chancellor Office — is accused for spying on European political and economical targets on behalf of the American surveillance authority NSA. Now the question is: What did Merkel know?
Chancellor Merkel is known for taking moral high ground when it turned out that she had been under NSA surveillance, stating that “you do not spy on your friends”. And now it turns out Germany did. (If we assume that e.g. France and the EU are Germanys “friends”.)
On top of all this, there are the (allegedly 12,000) cases where Germany did not assist the NSA. All documentation about these cases seems to have been deleted.
It seems that the German government and/or the Chancellor Office might have been missleasing the Reichstag (parliament). If so, the question is if the Reichstag can trust the highest political leaders of the country. This is a very serious question of confidence.
From another perspective, the BND/NSA affair underpins the notion that whatever politicians tell the people — the transatlantic intelligence cooperation continues unmoved.
The Local: Pressure on Merkel rises over BND affair »
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