Free Republic

German security authorities are increasingly using mobile phones to secretly locate suspects, according to a media report published on Tuesday. More and more, in order to determine the location of suspects, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) are using mobile phones to send out hidden text messages, according to a report in Handelsblatt. In the second half of 2017 alone, the BfV sent out around 180,000 such messages. In the same period the previous year, the BfV did this about 144,000 times. By using this technique, security authorities can...

A German federal court has ruled that the country’s spy agency is under no obligation to divulge to the media a list of names compiled from search terms provided to it by the U.S. National Security Agency. A newspaper publisher sought an injunction forcing the Germany agency, the BND, to disclose information about what German companies and citizens were on the list after the spy agency refused to answer questions. …

The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data. The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape. “You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at...

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...

European lawmakers threatened on Tuesday to unpick data-sharing agreements with the United States, reacting furiously to reports that U.S. authorities have accessed emails and other personal data from leading Internet companies. The news has forced European governments to explain whether they let Washington spy on their citizens or benefited from snooping that would be illegal at home. In a heated debate in the European Parliament, lawmakers complained that for a decade they had yielded to U.S. demands for access to European financial and travel data and said it was now time to re-examine the deals and to limit data access....