Free Republic

It seems that every day brings new claims and counter-claims about who’s spying on whom. Governments are trying to limit the damage, but that damage is not limited to governments, expert Jeremie Zimmermann told DW.… It’s something of historical amplitude and we still need to take some distance to be able to understand what is exactly going on. What we see is the unraveling of the very infrastructure for a total surveillance society that we are realizing, day by day, is already deployed all around the world under our feet. The infrastructure for surveilling everything about everybody all the time....

“It would be a disaster for American-German relations if Snowden came to Germany and publicly testified before the Bundestag.” What Green MP Christian Ströbele ultimately is hoping for after his surprise visit with Edward Snowden in Moscow would be a nightmare for Stephen Szabo of the German Marshall Fund, as well for the Obama administration. The relationship between the two countries is headed towards “a deep, downward spiral,” says Szabo. This must be stopped. If Snowden were to come to Germany with official blessing, the situation would escalate further, warns the long-time Germany expert and vice-president of the German Marshall...

Thousands took to the streets in Berlin Saturday in protests against Internet surveillance activities by the US National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, and the German government’s perceived lax reaction to them. … The protest was organized under the slogan “Freedom Rather Than Fear” and demonstrators carried banners saying: “Stop spying on us” and, more sarcastically: “Thanks to PRISM (the US government’s vast data collection programs), the government finally knows what the people want”. …

German people are flocking to national email providers and demanding encryption services normally reserved for corporate security in the wake of the US spying scandal, German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told journalists in Berlin on Wednesday (28 August). “German users have reacted to the NSA [the US’ National Security Agency] scandal by switching to German email providers … and they are demanding encryption of their emails so far reserved to telecom companies. There is a great opportunity for private encryption,” the minister said. She claimed that “some 80 percent have done so” already. …

With the NSA spying scandal continuing to make headlines in Europe, the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has raised the possibility of new, tangible measures to punish corporations that participate in American spying activities. In an interview with Die Welt, the liberal Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for the creation of EU-wide rules to regulate the protection of information, and said that once those rules are in place, “United States companies that don’t abide by these standards should be denied doing business in the European market.”Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said that a package of EU measures is required in order to fight “the widespread spying of...

Germany has canceled surveillance accords dating from the late 1960s with the United States and Britain in the wake of revelations about vast US online spying. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Friday the move was “necessary and proper” amid the debate on data privacy protection sparked by the snooping scandal which also ignited uproar in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the issue with US President Barack Obama on his June visit and has come under pressure in the run-up to September elections over Germany’s knowledge of it. …

In an interview to be published in this week’s issue of Spiegel, American intelligence agency whistleblower Edward Snowden criticizes the methods and power of the National Security Agency. Snowden said the NSA people are “in bed together with the Germans.” He added that the NSA's “Foreign Affairs Directorate” is responsible for partnerships with other countries. The partnerships are organized in a way that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” in the event it becomes public “how grievously they're violating global privacy.” … Spiegel reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany’s foreign...

Trans-Atlantic relations plunged at the weekend as Berlin, Brussels and Paris all demanded that Washington account promptly and fully for new disclosures on the scale of the US National Security Agency’s spying on its European allies. As further details emerged of the huge reach of US electronic snooping on Europe, Berlin accused Washington of treating it like the Soviet Union, “like a cold war enemy”. … The reports of NSA snooping on Europe—and on Germany in particular—went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organized criminals. Der Spiegel reported that...

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency can keep secret some of its records on Adolf Eichmann, the man known as the architect of the Nazi Holocaust, a court ruled Thursday. The Federal Administrative Court ruled that the intelligence agency was within its rights to black out passages from the files sought by a journalist attempting to shed light on whether West German authorities knew in the 1950s where Eichmann had fled after World War II. Thursday’s ruling followed a decision last year in which the court said the Federal Intelligence Service had to release some files it had previously kept secret. Israeli...

On Tuesday, Barack Obama is coming to Germany. But who, really, will be visiting? He is the 44th president of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. He is an intelligent lawyer. And he is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But is he a friend? The revelations brought to us by IT expert Edward Snowden have made certain what paranoid computer geeks and left-wing conspiracy theorists have long claimed: that we are being watched. All the time and everywhere. And it is the Americans who are doing the watching. … We’re currently in the...

Just a few days ago, the man whom many Germans now see as one of the greatest villains in the world visited Berlin. Keith Alexander, the head of the world’s most powerful intelligence operation, the National Security Agency (NSA), had arranged meetings with important representatives of the German government … Why is the German government reacting so calmly to something that it should find alarming? Perhaps because these revelations are nothing new for it? Because the Germans would like to enjoy the same capabilities that PRISM affords the Americans? Or because our friends from the other side of the Atlantic...

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov on Wednesday played down Russian protests over Sofia's plans to join a United States missile shield in Europe. "This shield is not directed against threats coming from Russia. On the contrary, the threats that exist for us equally exist for our Russian friends," Mladenov told bTV television. "We have to find a way to protect us all," he added. Bulgaria said last week that it favoured new US plans for a shield in Europe to counter missile threat from Iran and the Middle East. But the announcement angered Russia, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanding...

SNIPPET: "BERLIN - Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency believes Iran is capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months, much sooner than most analysts estimate, according to a report in German weekly Stern. The report, which quotes BND experts, says the agency has information supporting the view that Iran has mastered the enrichment technology necessary to make a bomb and has enough centrifuges to make weaponised uranium. “If they wanted to, they could detonate an atomic bomb in half a year’s time,” the story quoted a BND expert as saying. The BND did not return two calls...

How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq Five years ago, the US government presented what it said was proof that Iraq harbored biological weapons. The information came from a source developed by German intelligence -- and it turned out to be disastrously wrong. But to this day, Germany denies any responsibility......(Der Spiegel)   German Intelligence Was 'Dishonest, Unprofessional and Irresponsible' - Interview with David Kay (Der Spiegel)   'The Germans Share in the Responsibility'- Interview with Lawrence Wilkerson (Der Spiegel)

The Kosovo on the way into independence Constitutional state? Rather not! Jürgen Roth The Kosovo is on the way into independence, which cannot please three leaders of the country. The world week is present a secret paper, which occupies, how the Politgrössen dominates the organized crime. They found support for their mafiösen business also in Switzerland. If the negotiations begin shortly over the international-law status of the Kosovo, the most burning problem will not be topic: the connection between political decision makers and powerful criminal clan in the Serbian province, which is administered since 1999 by the UN. So three...

President Bush, enthusiastically welcomed as the first U.S. president in this former communist nation, served notice Sunday he is running out of patience with Russia's objections to independence for neighboring Kosovo. "Sooner rather than later you've got to say 'Enough's enough - Kosovo is independent,'" Bush said, telling Albanians what they wanted to hear. He said independence was a certainty. Nearing the end of an eight-day trip, Bush got a hero's reception in this desperately poor country, still struggling to recover from being cut off from the rest of the world for four decades under the harsh rule of dictator...

Couple pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges Consultants who took Brownsville Navigation District officials to China and paid U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz’s travels to the Far East are facing possible prison time after recently pleading guilty to an immigration plot involving Chinese nationals. Sixty-four-year-old Kenneth D. Cohen, a Houston businessman and board member of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, and his wife, Ping Lee Cohen, 54, pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government in federal court in Houston. “Mr. Ortiz was deeply disappointed that Ken and Ping broke the law, and the judge will decide...

Determined to win the Cold War, the CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday. The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the CIA. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect. The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for...

German spies handed Saddam Hussein's war plans to the Americans while their government was denouncing the planned attack, it was claimed yesterday. The documents were transferred as the coalition completed its invasion plans in February 2003. A month later, American and British forces entered Iraq. The claims, in yesterday's New York Times, were swiftly denied by German officials. The paper said that a classified American military document referred to Saddam and his aides meeting in late 2002 to radically amend Iraq's war plans. They had wanted an invading army slowed and deflected by Iraq's military en route to Baghdad. But...

December 9, 2005 — The Brownsville Navigation District is now saying it lost $9.2 million spent on the failed rail bridge project. The port is now being “brutally honest” to itself, taxpayers, bondholders, creditors and the public, said BND Chairman Peter M. Zavaletta. The board acknowledged the loss Wednesday when it approved the audit of the 2005 fiscal year that accountant Carlos Barrera of Long Chilton LLP presented. “This action rejects the Enron-style of denial and deception and is a continuing attempt on our part to come clean with this entire bridge controversy,” Zavaletta said Thursday. Recognizing the loss, however,...