16

Jul

Als Quellen benutzt

Used as sources.

On Sunday, 13 Jul 2014, it was revealed that the C.I.A. had used more than a dozen German government employees in four ministries “as sources.” Also that there had been hacking attacks on the phones on members of the Bundestag’s N.S.A. investigation committee.

Although the Bundestag is in its summer recess, its N.S.A. investigation committee met on 15 Jul 2014. The heads of all three German intelligence agencies attended. Most of the meeting was secret.

The heads of the intelligence agencies praised their organizations for finding all these U.S. spies in the German government. The opposition said the spies were found accidentally and wondered how many more spies haven’t been found yet.

(Awls   KVELL en   ben OOTS t.)

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06

Jul

Maulwurf

Mole.

It was announced on July 4 that a U.S. spy was caught in the German foreign intelligence service (BND).

The federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe are investigating a 31-year-old BND employee for selling secret documents to an American contact man. The BND employee also offered his services to the Russians. It’s still not clear whether the person he thought was his American contact man was actually American and from a U.S. intelligence agency.

Update on 05 Jul 2014: Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Verfassungsschutz, is responsible for protecting the country from foreign spies. Apparently when Verfassungsschutz started investigating this mole they asked the U.S. for help.

Update on 09 Jul 2014: Military Intelligence (MAD) may have found a second U.S. spy inside the Defense Ministry.

(M OW! L voorf.)

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02

Jun

G10-Kommission

A Bundestag committee whose four members, not mandatorily Bundestag members, are appointed by the Bundestag’s intelligence-agencies-monitoring parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium. The G10 committee monitors compliance with the German constitution’s requirement for individuals’ rights to letter secrecy [Briefgeheimnis], postal secrecy [Postgeheimnis] and telecommunications secrecy [Fernmeldegeheimnis].

The G10 committee supposedly must approve each surveillance or search of German citizens’ phones or computers by Germany’s intelligence agencies, which can only be possible if such surveillance is done on a very small scale. In July 2013, Spiegel-Online wrote that only 156 surveillance actions were approved by the G10 committee in 2011. And that the foreign intelligence service BND is permitted to ask for broadly-defined surveillance that is not however allowed to exceed 20% of the information out there and usually supposedly hovers at only 5%.

(Gay TSAYN comb eess y own.)

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01

Jun

SFÜ

Strategische Fernmeldeüberwachung, “strategic telecommunications monitoring,” what Germany’s foreign intelligence service is calling its dragnet surveillance of international telecommunications transmissions. Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that Germany’s “G10 law” prevents the BND from accessing more than 20% of communications data traveling outside Germany’s borders, but even the BND does not verify the BND’s compliance with that limit.

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31

May

Verfassungsbeschwerde

Constitutional complaint, to be heard by Germany’s supreme Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe [Verfassungsgericht].

A Berlin attorney announced he will file a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe after his lawsuit was rejected by the supreme Administrative Court [Oberstes Verwaltungsgericht] in Leipzig. He is suing against the German foreign intelligence service, BND‘s, monitoring of international email, which he considers excessive and illegal.

Leipzig’s supreme Administrative Court had said they would not hear his complaint because he could not prove that he himself was directly affected by the BND’s dragnet surveillance. Merely saying that he had foreign clients and communicated with them by email did not suffice for that court.

(Fair FOSS oongs beh SHWEAH dah.)

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06

Apr

NSA-Untersuchungsausschuss

N.S.A. investigative committee of the Bundestag, which began meeting on 03 Apr 2014.

The committee’s chair is Clemens Binninger (C.D.U.), a former policeman.

It is tasking itself with investigating the involvement of German police and intelligence agencies—domestic, foreign and military—in the massive spying on people and companies that is now known to have been done by the U.S. and U.K. governments and their contractors.

Also it will now be investigating Germany’s culpability in the U.S.’s drone wars. Since the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) reported that the U.S. is using its Ramstein airbase inside Germany to support drone attacks in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, violating international law while killing hundreds of civilians, Germany’s government (C.D.U./C.S.U. + S.P.D.) can no longer pretend they don’t know this is happening.

The committee repeated that they would like Edward Snowden and other informed whistleblowers to give statements and answer questions for these Bundestag inquiries. Journalists repeated that the whole world will be watching this inquiry to see what the committee discovers and which stones they leave unturned.

Update on 09 Apr 2014: Clemens Binninger stepped down as chair of the N.S.A. investigative committee after only six days. He said he was resigning from the position because he felt people from the opposition parties were too interested in hearing from N.S.A. whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Update on 10 Jul 2014: A Spiegel article about Germans’ angry responses to spying by the U.S. mentioned that Clemens Binninger is chairing the Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, the secret Bundestag committee supposed to monitor Germany’s intelligence agencies.

(Enn ess ah   oon tah ZOO chh oongs OW! ss shoes.)

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22

Mar

Kanzleramtschef, ChefBK, Kanzleramtsminister

“Chief of the chancellory,” Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, whose duties include coordinating and controlling/monitoring Germany’s secret services as the boss of the federal government’s intelligence agencies officer [of the person with the job title Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für die Nachrichtendienste].

Update on 25 Jul 2013: After Bundeskanzleramtschef Ronald Pofalla testified secretly before the Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, the parliamentary committee that is pro forma in charge of Germany’s intelligence services, he made a statement to the press saying absolutely everything done so far by Germany’s spy agencies had been legit and in compliance with German law. Also that German data protection law had not been reinterpreted. Supervisory committee members from opposition parties (parties that were in the ruling coalition when the information exchange began between German and U.S. intelligence agencies, as far as we know so far) gave counterstatements to the press indicating they were not satisfied with Mr. Pofalla’s responses to their catalog of questions about the U.S.A.’s Prism program.

Amusingly, artists at one news show edited Mr. Pofalla’s sound bite into their report to begin just he was saying “This statement is clearly false…”

(KANT’s lah omts chef,   CHEF bay kah,   KANT’s lah omts minn iss tah.)

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22

Mar

Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, PKG

“Parliamentary supervisory committee” whose eleven Bundestag members are said to supervise Germany’s intelligence agencies Bundesnachrichtendienst, Militärischer Abschirmdienst and federal Verfassungsschutz. The P.K.G. is a German parliamentary committee presumably similar to e.g. the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Its meetings are secret, held in a supposedly unsnoopable room, and its members cannot discuss what they learn, even with other Bundestag members.

This committee is the nominal control of Germany’s intelligence agencies. Spiegel.de wrote there can be disagreement between the eleven committee members and the intelligence agencies about what is worth reporting to the committee about the activities of the agencies’ tens of thousands of employees, quoting P.K.G. member the excellent Christian Ströbele (Green party) as saying in frustration “How are we supposed to control the secret services when we get no information?”

Update on 10 Jul 2014: Clemens Binninger (C.D.U.), a former policeman, is apparently chairing the PKG.

(Pah lah men TAH rish ess   con TROLL gray me oom,   pay kah gay.)

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11

Feb

Doch drohnenfähige Handydaten!

Cell phone data are droneable after all!

Last summer Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, admitted they’d been sharing phone data with U.S. intelligence agencies for years but said it was okay because cell phone data couldn’t be used to locate people and something about the N.S.A. promised not to use German-supplied phone data to kill anyone. Regarding the first claim, whistleblowers from U.S. drone programs have now explained to reporters how phone data were used for targeting assassinations around the world.

One whistleblower, describing countermeasures persons of interest have taken to keep using phones while evading geolocation and how these countermeasures can deliberately or accidentally increase the drone strikes’ already terrible civilian casualties, called the U.S. drone programs “little more than death by unreliable metadata.”

Details from the article and online discussions included:
“Pods” on U.S. drones (and presumably on urban utility poles because this might be what police have been quietly installing in U.S. cities using Dept. of Homeland Security funds) can spoof cell phones into providing data and can vacuum information off wifi networks from altitudes of four miles. Telecommunications standards in some “countries of interest” make it possible for many users there to share data the U.S. uses to identify targets’ cell phones. Wireless “party lines” quietly shared by pools of low-income civilians increase the chances that countries indulging in drone assassinations will accidentally kill party line participants and their families and neighbors, or be tricked into killing their enemies’ enemies, such as by firing missiles at wedding parties or legislatures after someone hides a cheap phone there.

(Daw chh   drone nen fey igga   HEN dee dotten.)

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17

Aug

Das SIGAD-Sharing

Signals intelligence activity designator sharing, i.e. data-collection-site data sharing between intelligence agencies from different countries.

Germany: Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst or B.N.D., has been sharing on a massive scale communications data collected at e.g. its Bavarian Bad Aibling S.I.G.A.D. site with the U.S.A.’s National Security Agency. The data include mobile phone numbers that the B.N.D. admitted they’ve been passing on to the N.S.A. for years now supposedly under the strict condition that said phone numbers must not be used to kill people (e.g. via phone towers triangulation + drone strike); the B.N.D. also denied that it’s technologically possible to use for location purposes the G.S.M. mobile phone numbers they’ve been passing on (“G.S.M.-Mobilfunknummern sind für eine zielgenaue Lokalisierung nicht geeignet”). The German foreign intelligence agency furthermore is said to have given software it developed to the N.S.A. And the N.S.A. gave the B.N.D. its X-Keyscore software and X-Keyscore software training, including in “behavior detection.”

In an interesting parallel, the Washington Post report on 15 Aug 2013 about an audit of just a few N.S.A. branch offices which found thousands of violations of U.S. privacy rules each year also included a similarly scarcely credible excuse saying phone technology limitations were keeping the N.S.A. from snooping more: “One major problem is largely unpreventable, the audit says, because current operations rely on technology that cannot quickly determine whether a foreign mobile phone has entered the United States.”

England: The N.S.A. has apparently been paying money, such as 100 million pounds, to Britain’s G.C.H.Q., a disproportionately über-representational intelligence-gathering partner for a country of that size. The N.S.A. receives so much communications data from the U.K. that reporters said “it’s almost the same thing” whether G.C.H.Q. or the N.S.A. initially collects it.

(Doss   ZIG odd   CHER ingk.)

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14

Sep

Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND

“Federal news service,” the German foreign intelligence agency. Wikipedia said maybe 6500 employees, with maybe 100 domestic offices (of which ~70 have been captured by Bavaria, i.e. Merkel’s Texan sister party the CSU) and perhaps 100 offices abroad. In 2011 the domestic German offices were all supposed to move to new premises in Berlin, but the CSU managed to wrangle some remaining presence in Bavaria.

The predecessor “Gehlen organization,” formed in 1945 in a hurry by the Allies under Wehrmacht spymaster Reinhard Gehlen, became the BND in 1956 but no law was created regulating it until 1990.

There has been an interesting tango between the BND and renowned historians for the past few years, in which historians with good reputations have been invited to view the BND’s records and write up its history but were then ultimately blocked from doing so.

(BOON dess NOCK rick ten DEENST.)

12 years ago Short URL 9 Comments

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13

Sep

MFGBND, Mitteilungen der Forschung- und Arbeitsgruppe ‚Geschichte der BND’

In 2010 a committee of four history professors from the universities of Cologne, Marburg, the Technical University of Dresden and Humboldt University of Berlin was commissioned to spend four years studying the history of Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst foreign intelligence service, originally assembled under the head of the post-Nazi German army Reinhard Gehlen by the Allies in 1945 in a hurry for Cold War purposes. This committee’s results will be published under “Reports by the Research and Work Group ‘History of the BND’” (MFGBND).

There are probably other issues, but the initial haste that led to many former Nazis and worse being hired and given new identities by the Gehlen organization that became the BND ultimately became a security weakness when at least one former SS officer was blackmailed for his nazi past into turning into a double agent by the KGB. A CIA report, fwiw, from the early 1950’s estimated that the BND contained around 25% former Nazis, and it said a similar percentage had been voted into the second Bundestag. Good thing the former Nazis’ children started posing hard questions in ~1968.

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16

Jul

Verfassungsschutz

“Constitution Protection.” The name for a federal German police agency that has state branches. I don’t know much about it. The name might be intended to convey the idea that federal police are needed to keep a democracy from falling into dictatorship.

Wikipedia says the Verfassungsschutz offices are responsible for domestic intelligence, the Bundesnachrichtendienst for foreign intelligence, and the Militärischer Abschirmdienst for military intelligence.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung said federal Verfassungsschutz is responsible for defending Germany against spying.

Update on 28 August 2012: Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU) has announced that he would like to reform the Verfassungsschutz, including a mandate that all state-level Verfassungsschutz organizations would have to send all their information to a central federal office (some state offices have already protested this) and that a central federal list be kept of all Verfassungsschutzmänner and -frauen who are providing information to these police in return for money. See V-Mann, V-Frau.

Update on 29 August 2012: The state and federal reps supposedly only discussed for one hour before agreeing on a framework for reform, which even the opposition SPD party now supports. Not only will state Verfassungsschutz offices be required to share all information with the federal office, but the federal office will be required to share all information with state offices as well (there are currently a total of 17 Verfassungsschutz offices). The state reps negotiated away Hans-Peter Friedrich’s proposal that the federal office be made the sole boss of  investigations of (potentially) violent groups. Angela Merkel’s libertarianesque coalition partner, the FDP, criticizes that these changes are just moving furniture around and the old system, with its redundancies, remains the same.

Update on 03 July 2013: Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU) and the head of federal Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maaßen, announced the Verfassungsschutz agencies will undergo fundamental reforms of structures and procedures, imposing uniform standards on the state and federal offices. The changes are to include: new guidelines for the use of V-people (“persons who have committed the most serious crimes are not to be acquirable as V-people” —Maaßen; informants are no longer to receive fees high enough that they could live on that income alone; handlers are to be swapped every five years at the latest to prevent friendships and Seilschaften; and a central file of state and federal V-people is to be created e.g. to prevent multiple Verfassungsschutz offices from paying the same informant); new rules for working with state Verfassungsschutz agencies (which will have to send the knowledge they acquire in unfiltered form to the federal office) and in future files are only to be destroyed after multiple-step reviews (with destruction training and a “file destruction officer” appointed for each department). “Cross-thinkers” [Querdenker] in the offices are supposed to observe, question and criticize what they see, hopefully spotting real trends and catching when departments are on wrong or slow tracks. These initial reforms are said to be in response to the failures discovered in the investigations of Germany’s decade-long serial-killing bank-robbing neonazi terror cell, not to the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Because there is a German election in two months it’s possible these announced reforms will not be enacted and/or funded, as has apparently been the case with some of Health Minister Daniel Bahr (FDP)’s pre-election reform announcements. The opposition criticized them as purely cosmetic and piecemeal anyway. Thomas Oppermann (SPD) called for a mentality change at these agencies and training employees so that they “have a sense of where the real dangers to our democracy lurk.” Hans-Christian Ströbele (Green party) said Verfassungsschutz should be eliminated “such as it is. We can’t let people just continue on who failed like that.”

Update on 19 Sep 2013: A state Verfassungsschutz office (Lower Saxony’s) was caught collecting and keeping information on at least seven journalists. Federal-level Verfassungsschutz was also caught cooperating with the C.I.A. and the Bundesnachrichtendienst to spy on a journalist, though Hans-Georg Maaßen issued a denial; the NDR journalist‘s name, passport number, mobile phone number and date of birth were on a U.S. list of names and data given to the German domestic and foreign intelligence agencies in 2010 with a request for more information about those people.

These reports showed that the German domestic intelligence Verfassungsschutz (state and federal) and foreign intelligence Bundenachrichtendienst agencies are supplying information for databases (now including ones named “Project 6,” “P6” and/or “PX”) that should have been inspected by data protection officers and subject to German data protection rules regulating among other things what information they can contain and for how long, after which the data must be deleted. However, the German data protection officers did not know about these databases, said Peter Schaar. He said this is no minor infraction, and “anyone running such a project absolutely must guarantee that all activities are completely documented and subjected to data protection control/inspection.”

The excuse for Lower Saxony Verfassungsschutz’s spying on journalists was fighting neonazis and the excuse for federal Verfassungsschutz’s spying on journalists was fighting terror. In his 2007 book Das Ende der Privatsphäre [“The End of Privacy”], Mr. Schaar said in the 1990’s the excuse tended to be fighting organized crime.

Update on 14 Mar 2014: New Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière announced the Verfassungsschutz will stop watching members of the Leftists party, which many S.E.D. politicians from the former East Germany joined twenty years ago, “unless they have good grounds for surveillance.” It will also “in general” stop watching Bundestag members, no matter what party they belong to. He said they reserved the right to investigate resumption of surveillance if they received new knowledge. Such as, that Bundestag members had connections to extreme milieux willing to do violence. Süddeutsche.de said this change of policy is in response to a case Bodo Ramelow (Leftists, and kept under observation for decades) brought to the supreme court, Bundesverfassungsgericht, in Karlsruhe. The court decided in October 2013 that “parliamentarians could only be watched who abused their mandate to fight against the free democratic basic order.” Süddeutsche.de said Mr. de Maizière’s formal statement did not say members of state parliaments would generally no longer be watched, and it noted that formally that his statement only commits the federal Bundesverfassungsschutz to suspend operations, not the 16 state offices.

Update on 08 Apr 2014: A company that represents companies in the Maschinenbau industry [“machine building,” industrial engineering] signed an agreement with federal Verfassungsschutz at this year’s trade show in Hanover. The agreement is supposed to encourage more German companies to consult Verfassungsschutz about suspected cases of industrial espionage. FAZ.net: “But Verfassungsschutz’s advantage is that unlike police they do not have to follow up on a crime, said the association. That is to say, the intelligence agency can pass on information to a company that’s affected; what happens with it after that is the management’s decision.”

(Fer FOSS oongs shoots.)

12 years ago Short URL 10 Comments

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