It looks like Brazil has a grow­ing anar­chist prob­lem although, as the arti­cle below points out, the rise of anar­chist move­ments can be viewed, in part, as emblem­at­ic of the grow­ing frus­tra­tions of Brazil’s new mid­dle-class. And that makes it a much larg­er prob­lem for the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment than just a bunch of protest­ing anar­chists. Solu­tions are being found. Qui­et solu­tions:

Insight: Brazil spies on pro­test­ers, hop­ing to pro­tect World Cup

By Bri­an Win­ter

SAO PAULO Wed Feb 5, 2014 12:47pm EST

(Reuters) — Brazil­ian secu­ri­ty forces are using under­cov­er agents, inter­cept­ing e‑mails, and rig­or­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing social media to try to ensure that vio­lent anti-gov­ern­ment pro­test­ers do not ruin soc­cer’s World Cup this year, offi­cials told Reuters.

Demon­stra­tions in recent months have been much small­er than those last June when Brazil host­ed a dress rehearsal tour­na­ment for the World Cup, shak­ing Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­ef­f’s gov­ern­ment and con­tribut­ing to an eco­nom­ic slow­down.

But they have still result­ed in van­dal­ism of banks and par­a­lyzed parts of major cities as a hard core of per­haps a few thou­sand pro­test­ers nation­wide, some of whom wear masks and call them­selves “Black Blocs,” clash with police.

Rouss­ef­f’s gov­ern­ment fears the protests, the most recent of which car­ried the slo­gan “There Will Be No World Cup,” could severe­ly dis­rupt the tour­na­ment, which kicks off on June 12 in Sao Paulo and ends with the final on July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.

Wide­spread images of shat­tered store­fronts, fright­ened tourists and injured police and pro­test­ers — all of which have occurred already — could tar­nish an event that will attract an esti­mat­ed 600,000 for­eign vis­i­tors and is meant to dis­play Brazil’s emer­gence as a glob­al pow­er. Protests are being planned in all 12 cities that will host match­es.

The recent fragili­ty of Brazil’s econ­o­my, plus a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Octo­ber in which Rouss­eff will run for a sec­ond four-year term, have raised the stakes even fur­ther.

The media office at Brazil’s SESGE, a divi­sion of the jus­tice min­istry charged with World Cup secu­ri­ty, referred ques­tions about gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance ini­tia­tives to the defense min­istry, which declined com­ment.

But offi­cials speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty described wide­spread and grow­ing sur­veil­lance of Black Bloc mem­bers, the extent of which has not been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

In addi­tion to mon­i­tor­ing the group’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions on Face­book and oth­er social media, intel­li­gence agents have infil­trat­ed the move­ment and passed along infor­ma­tion to police before and dur­ing recent demon­stra­tions, two offi­cials said.

Author­i­ties have also used advanced tech­nol­o­gy to locate the com­put­ers of vio­lent pro­test­ers and gain access to their com­mu­ni­ca­tions, with the intent of iden­ti­fy­ing lead­ers and mon­i­tor­ing their activ­i­ties, one offi­cial said.

The offi­cials empha­sized that such efforts were not being direct­ed toward the Brazil­ian pub­lic at-large, but at mem­bers of vio­lent groups. They declined to spec­i­fy which agen­cies or police forces were con­duct­ing the sur­veil­lance, or pro­vide more details about how the infor­ma­tion was being used.

The tac­tics reflect the Rouss­eff admin­is­tra­tion’s belief that, unlike last year’s most­ly peace­ful, polit­i­cal protests involv­ing the mid­dle class, the Black Blocs are a crim­i­nal prob­lem and should be treat­ed as such.

“Last year every­body thought this was the 1960s. But now it’s just Seat­tle,” one senior offi­cial said, ref­er­enc­ing protests that famous­ly turned vio­lent at the 1999 meet­ing of the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion.

INTERNATIONAL ORIGINS

The sur­veil­lance risks prompt­ing a back­lash in a coun­try with bad mem­o­ries of a 1964–85 mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that spied exten­sive­ly on sus­pect­ed left­ists includ­ing Rouss­eff her­self, who was then a mem­ber of a Marx­ist guer­ril­la group.

Fer­nan­do Grel­la Vieira, who over­sees state police in Sao Paulo, declined to com­ment on intel­li­gence pro­ce­dures but said secu­ri­ty forces “com­plete­ly respect the right of peo­ple to protest in peace.”

“We are act­ing to ensure the safe­ty of the peo­ple against those who seek vio­lence,” Grel­la said.

A protest in Sao Paulo on Jan­u­ary 25 offered a vivid exam­ple of the kind of dis­or­der that could poten­tial­ly spoil the World Cup.

Fol­low­ing a peace­ful demon­stra­tion of about 1,500 peo­ple, a few dozen pro­test­ers split away to cut off major down­town avenues, set fires and try to top­ple a police car.

When police pur­sued a group of pro­test­ers into a hotel lob­by, pan­ic ensued among guests, some of whom were ordered to sit on the floor as offi­cers tried to iden­ti­fy the pro­test­ers and arrest them, accord­ing to local media. Oth­er guests, ter­ri­fied, sought refuge in their rooms.

The pro­test­ers, and those who have stud­ied them, say such inci­dents have been aggra­vat­ed by the gov­ern­men­t’s response — which they say fun­da­men­tal­ly miss­es what the move­ment is about.

Black Blocs are an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non, hav­ing first appeared in Europe in the 1980s dur­ing protests against nuclear pow­er and oth­er issues. Some aca­d­e­mics have com­pared them to ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry anar­chists, not­ing their key role in anti-glob­al­iza­tion protests like the 1999 event in Seat­tle.

In some cas­es, the groups have been lead­er­less and bereft of any orga­ni­za­tion, unit­ed only by their tac­tics and the way they dress — typ­i­cal­ly in all black. In oth­ers, some coor­di­na­tion does take place.

In Sao Paulo, the Black Blocs have tak­en on a local fla­vor. Adher­ents are most­ly males between the ages of 15 and 23, and are mem­bers of the new low­er-mid­dle class that blos­somed when Brazil’s econ­o­my boomed last decade, said Rafael Alcadi­pani, a pro­fes­sor at the Getulio Var­gas Foun­da­tion busi­ness school who has researched the group and inter­viewed its mem­bers.

That demo­graph­ic has made big strides in con­sump­tion, able to afford wash­ing machines, flat screen TVs and oth­er goods for the first time. But many of these peo­ple also suf­fer from poor health-care facil­i­ties, bad pub­lic schools and long com­mutes as the gov­ern­ment has not been able to match their ris­ing income — and expec­ta­tions — with bet­ter ser­vices.

The Black Blocs “believe that the Brazil­ian polit­i­cal sys­tem is bro­ken and that it does­n’t rep­re­sent them,” Alcadi­pani said.

...

Black Blocs in Octo­ber severe­ly beat a police colonel, break­ing his col­lar­bone and steal­ing his hand­gun. Pro­test­ers counter that the Sao Paulo police have also used bru­tal tac­tics, point­ing to the shoot­ing of a sus­pect­ed pro­test­er on Jan­u­ary 25. Police say they act­ed in self-defense.

The gov­ern­men­t’s biggest fear is that the size and vio­lence of the protests will explode again as the World Cup kicks off.

Whether that will hap­pen is any­body’s guess, as it depends on fac­tors rang­ing from the econ­o­my to the per­for­mance of the Brazil team, which has the most World Cup tro­phy wins with five. Many believe that, if the hosts are oust­ed ear­ly, Brazil­ians will be less engaged in games and more like­ly to take to the streets.

The Black Blocs’ tac­tics have fright­ened many in the mid­dle class, a major rea­son why demon­stra­tions have shrunk, fail­ing to attract more than a few thou­sand peo­ple since last July.

How­ev­er, if police go too far in their repres­sion, it could have the oppo­site effect. A heavy-hand­ed response to small demon­stra­tions last June enraged many Brazil­ians, and was a major rea­son why protests mush­roomed in num­bers at the time.

That tricky bal­ance helps explain why author­i­ties are eager to embrace intel­li­gence and oth­er new tac­tics.

Grel­la, the Sao Paulo police chief, said police have stud­ied how oth­er coun­tries such as France han­dled Black Blocs. Com­ing weeks will see the debut of a new “Cap­ture Brigade” of uni­formed police with­out firearms that will be charged with detain­ing vio­lent pro­test­ers, he said.

Police efforts to detain pro­test­ers and reg­is­ter their names, and in some cas­es press charges, have also had an effect. The 200 or so Black Blocs who have been iden­ti­fied by police in Sao Paulo most­ly stayed away from the Jan­u­ary 25 protest because of fears they would be pros­e­cut­ed, said Esther Solano, anoth­er aca­d­e­m­ic who has stud­ied the group.

Nev­er­the­less, new mem­bers have appeared to take their place — a fore­bod­ing sign for lat­er this year.

“As long as the gov­ern­ment does­n’t address the main issues, peo­ple are going to keep protest­ing,” said Alcadi­pani, the pro­fes­sor. “Noth­ing has changed since last June.”

Well this is inter­est­ing: Snow­den has refused to meet with Ger­man law­mak­ers in Moscow. Instead, Snow­den and his Ger­many lawyer are of the view that this tes­ti­mo­ny can only take place in Ger­many:

The Wall Street Jour­nal
Snow­den Rejects Ger­man Request for Meet­ing in Moscow
Snow­den’s Lawyer Says There’s Nei­ther Scope Nor Need for Meet­ing In Moscow

By Har­ri­et Tor­ry
June 20, 2014 1:34 p.m. ET

BERLIN—Edward Snow­den has reject­ed Ger­man par­lia­men­tar­i­ans’ request that he answer ques­tions on for­eign spy­ing on Ger­mans at a meet­ing in Moscow, a law­mak­er said Fri­day.

In a let­ter to the head of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the affair seen by The Wall Street Jour­nal, Mr. Snow­den’s lawyer in Ger­many wrote that there was “cur­rent­ly nei­ther scope nor need” for an “infor­mal meet­ing” between the law­mak­ers and Mr. Snow­den in Moscow.

Ger­man law­mak­ers who sit on par­lia­men­t’s eight-mem­ber inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee into for­eign intel­li­gence activ­i­ties had planned to trav­el to Rus­sia, where Mr. Snow­den has tem­po­rary polit­i­cal asy­lum, to quiz the for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor on leaked infor­ma­tion about the agen­cy’s sur­veil­lance pro­gram.

“The [par­lia­men­tary] inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee must respect Edward Snow­den’s deci­sion not to make him­self avail­able as a wit­ness, even for an infor­mal meet­ing,” Roderich Kiesewet­ter, a law­mak­er on the com­mit­tee, said in a state­ment.

“It’s sur­pris­ing that Mr. Snow­den does­n’t want to respond to the inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee’s ques­tions in detail, but rather just sees his role as one of an expert with spe­cial­ist knowl­edge,” Mr. Kiesewet­ter, a mem­ber of Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s Chris­t­ian Demo­c­rat Union, said in the state­ment.

Wolf­gang Kaleck, Mr. Snow­den’s lawyer in Ger­many, wrote in the let­ter that the law­mak­ers’ request to have Mr. Snow­den tes­ti­fy before the com­mit­tee would go much fur­ther than pre­vi­ous state­ments his client had giv­en since seek­ing refuge in Rus­sia. Since the “legal and prac­ti­cal basis” for such a tes­ti­mo­ny had­n’t been met, there was no ground for an infor­mal meet­ing in Moscow either, he wrote. Both Mr. Snow­den and his lawyer are of the view that the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans’ desired tes­ti­mo­ny can only take place in Ger­many, the let­ter said.

...

Ger­many’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry just sev­ered its con­tract with Ver­i­zon and gave it to Deutsche Telekom.

The Wall Street Jour­nal
Ger­man Gov­ern­ment Ends Ver­i­zon Con­tract
Inte­ri­or Min­istry Cites Secu­ri­ty Con­cerns Amid U.S. Spy­ing Dis­clo­sures

By Anton Troianovs­ki in Berlin and
Dan­ny Yadron in San Fran­cis­co

Updat­ed June 26, 2014 2:54 p.m. ET

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment on Thurs­day said it would end a con­tract with Ver­i­zon Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc. VZ because of con­cerns about net­work secu­ri­ty, one of the most con­crete signs yet that dis­clo­sures about U.S. spy­ing were hurt­ing Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies over­seas.

Ger­many will phase out Ver­i­zon’s exist­ing busi­ness pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices to gov­ern­ment agen­cies by 2015, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry said. The win­ner in the deci­sion: Deutsche Telekom AG, Ver­i­zon rival and Ger­man phone giant, which will take on those ser­vices.

The Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s move under­scores the con­tin­u­ing polit­i­cal headaches for U.S. tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es oper­at­ing abroad, more than a year after for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den start­ed reveal­ing the reach of Amer­i­ca’s elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance pro­grams and the alleged coop­er­a­tion with some U.S. firms.

A Ver­i­zon spokes­woman in Ger­many declined to com­ment direct­ly on the gov­ern­men­t’s announce­ment. She pro­vid­ed a state­ment say­ing Ver­i­zon’s Ger­man sub­sidiary com­plied with Ger­man law, and that the U.S. gov­ern­ment did­n’t have access to cus­tomer data stored out­side the U.S.

An Inte­ri­or Min­istry spokesman declined to spec­i­fy the size of the Ver­i­zon con­tract. He said Ver­i­zon ran the net­work inter­con­nect­ing some gov­ern­ment agen­cies, though not min­istries or secu­ri­ty agen­cies. Par­lia­ment was expect­ed to sev­er its rela­tion­ship with Ver­i­zon as well, he added.

To crit­ics in Europe and else­where, the NSA leaks showed that U.S. com­pa­nies weren’t to be trust­ed with sen­si­tive data. Non‑U.S. tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have tried to cap­i­tal­ize on the rev­e­la­tions to gain mar­ket share. Increas­ing­ly, there are signs that U.S. com­pa­nies face real prob­lems.

Microsoft Corp. Gen­er­al Coun­sel Brad Smith said last week the busi­ness trou­bles stem­ming from the Snow­den leaks were “get­ting worse, not bet­ter.” Cis­co Sys­tems Inc. Chief Exec­u­tive John Cham­bers has said the dis­clo­sures have hurt sales in Chi­na. AT&T Inc. exec­u­tives have said some of their inter­na­tion­al cus­tomers were being urged by over­seas com­peti­tors to use non-Amer­i­can ser­vice providers.

But with the Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion, Ver­i­zon is tak­ing a more direct, pub­lic hit. The New York-based com­pa­ny has played a cen­tral role in the past year’s gov­ern­ment snoop­ing debate. The first reports based on the Snow­den doc­u­ments, pub­lished in June 2013, said Ver­i­zon was pass­ing along the phone records of mil­lions of U.S. cus­tomers to the NSA under a secret court order.

Those dis­clo­sures resur­faced in recent days as Ger­man media report­ed that Ver­i­zon had been pro­vid­ing Inter­net ser­vice to the Ger­man par­lia­ment. The new reports touched a nerve in Ger­many, a coun­try whose expe­ri­ence with Nazi and Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ships has made peo­ple par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to spy­ing and where furor over the NSA dis­clo­sures has been rag­ing for a year. Snow­den leaks made pub­lic last fall indi­cat­ed the NSA was mon­i­tor­ing Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s cell­phone.

On Thurs­day, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry said the Ger­man gov­ern­ment would stop buy­ing ser­vice from Ver­i­zon and cit­ed the NSA rev­e­la­tions in its expla­na­tion.

“The rela­tion­ships between for­eign intel­li­gence agen­cies and com­pa­nies revealed in the course of the NSA affair show that espe­cial­ly high demands must be made of fed­er­al gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture that is crit­i­cal for secu­ri­ty,” the min­istry said.

The Inte­ri­or Min­istry had been plan­ning to reor­ga­nize the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices since at least 2010. But Mr. Snow­den’s dis­clo­sures “cer­tain­ly did­n’t slow” the deci­sion to stop doing busi­ness with Ver­i­zon, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry spokesman said.

Ver­i­zon makes most of its mon­ey pro­vid­ing land­line and mobile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice in the U.S. But it also has been look­ing to expand by pro­vid­ing ser­vice to com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments over­seas, a busi­ness that last year gen­er­at­ed $14.7 bil­lion in rev­enue, rough­ly 8% of the com­pa­ny’s total. Ver­i­zon spent $1.4 bil­lion to buy inter­na­tion­al data cen­ter oper­a­tor Ter­re­mark World­wide Inc. in 2011 and has been expand­ing its glob­al net­work aimed at large orga­ni­za­tions.

The U.S. tele­com giant has been try­ing to head off a Snow­den back­lash from over­seas cus­tomers since at least last fall, when its U.S. staff cre­at­ed NSA talk­ing points for its off­shore sales team, two peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said. The talk­ing points includ­ed asser­tions the U.S. gov­ern­ment did­n’t have direct access to Ver­i­zon’s off­shore data cen­ters, that Ver­i­zon obeys local laws in what­ev­er coun­try it oper­ates and that NSA data requests go through Amer­i­can judi­cial review, the peo­ple said.

Ger­many’s deci­sion to can­cel the con­tract is one of the most vis­i­ble effects on a U.S. fir­m’s busi­ness as a result of the leaks. Until now, Amer­i­can exec­u­tives have issued lit­tle more than gen­er­al warn­ings of a fall­out or giv­en non­spe­cif­ic exam­ples of for­eign cus­tomers get­ting skit­tish.

“It is not blow­ing over,” said Microsoft­’s Mr. Smith, dur­ing a tech­nol­o­gy con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co last week. He added that it’s dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy the cost to the Red­mond, Wash., soft­ware giant.

This year, Microsoft said it would open a “trans­paren­cy cen­ter” in Brus­sels where for­eign gov­ern­ment cus­tomers could check soft­ware code for secu­ri­ty holes that, in the­o­ry, U.S. spies could exploit. In Jan­u­ary, a Microsoft exec­u­tive said the cen­ter should be open by year-end. Matt Thom­lin­son, Microsoft­’s vice pres­i­dent of secu­ri­ty, said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to “make progress on open­ing trans­paren­cy cen­ters.”

...

Since it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment was very aware of the NSA’s capa­bil­i­ties and pro­grams (since they are inti­mate part­ners), it’s inter­est­ing that no one seems to be ques­tion­ing why this was­n’t done before. And as the arti­cle points out, the Ger­man par­lia­ment is also using Ver­i­zon. So could there have been a domes­tic spy­ing capac­i­ty that Ver­i­zon and the NSA pro­vid­ed to the Ger­man intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty that some in the Ger­man gov­ern­ment appre­ci­at­ed? And might sim­i­lar capac­i­ties be planned for the new Deutsche Telekom-run sys­tems? These seem like ques­tions Ger­mans might want to ask.

You also have to won­der if this is now going to be the trend across the EU, where domes­tic tele­com providers exclu­sive­ly get the con­tracts for gov­ern­ment tele­com ser­vices. It’s a rea­son­able approach so it seems like a trend we can expect....except for the fact that tele­com con­sol­i­da­tion across the EU is still one of the top pri­or­i­ties for the incom­ing EU gov­ern­ment. So it rais­es the ques­tion of mow many of the small­er EU nations are going to have a domes­tic tele­com provider with the capac­i­ty to build a Deutsche Telekom-style anti-NSA tele­com sys­tem for gov­ern­ment use once this cycle of con­sol­i­da­tion is com­plet­ed? Maybe they’ll have to out­source that ser­vice.

LOL. Look who’s a tar­get of Ger­many’s “new” counter-espi­onage pro­gram that was announced in response to the new CIA spy scan­dal: France:

The Inde­pen­dent
Ger­many to spy on US for first time since 1945 after ‘dou­ble agent’ scan­dal
Tony Pater­son

Berlin

Mon­day 07 July 2014

Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to scrap a no-spy agree­ment Ger­many has held with Britain and the Unit­ed States since 1945 in response to an embar­rass­ing US-Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice scan­dal which has deeply soured rela­tions between Berlin and Wash­ing­ton.

The unprece­dent­ed change to Berlin’s counter-espi­onage pol­i­cy was announced by Ms Merkel’s Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter, Thomas de Maiz­ière. He said that Berlin want­ed “360-degree sur­veil­lance” of all intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing oper­a­tions in Ger­many.

The intel­li­gence ser­vices of the Allied vic­tors, the Unit­ed States, Britain and France, have hith­er­to been regard­ed as “friend­ly” to Ger­many. Their diplo­mat­ic and infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing activ­i­ties were exempt­ed from sur­veil­lance by Berlin’s equiv­a­lent of M15 – the Bun­desnachrich­t­en­di­enst (BND).

But Mr de Maiz­ière told Bild that he was now not rul­ing out per­ma­nent Ger­man counter-espi­onage sur­veil­lance of US, British and French intel­li­gence oper­a­tions. His remarks were echoed by Stephan May­er, a domes­tic secu­ri­ty spokesman for Ms Merkel’s rul­ing Chris­t­ian Democ­rats. “We must focus more strong­ly on our so-called allies,” he said.

The plan is in response to the scan­dal result­ing from last week’s arrest of a 31- year-old BND “dou­ble agent” who spent at least two years sell­ing top-secret Ger­man intel­li­gence doc­u­ments to his US spy­mas­ters in return for cash pay­ments of €10,000 (£7,940) per doc­u­ment.

Chan­cel­lor Merkel inter­rupt­ed a cur­rent trade vis­it to Chi­na on Mon­day to describe the scan­dal as a “very seri­ous devel­op­ment”. She added: “It is a clear con­tra­dic­tion of the notion of trust­wor­thy co-oper­a­tion.” Ger­man politi­cians have been shocked that the Amer­i­cans not only failed to report the “dou­ble agent” but recruit­ed him.

Sev­er­al Ger­man MPs on Mon­day demand­ed the expul­sion of the Amer­i­can agents in Ger­many who recruit­ed the “dou­ble agent”. Hans-Peter Uhl, a lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tive, told Der Spiegel: “ It goes with­out say­ing that the [US] intel­li­gence offi­cial respon­si­ble should leave Ger­many.”

The dou­ble agent is report­ed to have sim­ply emailed Berlin’s Amer­i­can embassy and asked whether offi­cials were inter­est­ed in “co-oper­a­tion”. He sub­se­quent­ly down­loaded at least 300 secret doc­u­ments on to USB sticks that he hand­ed to his Amer­i­can spy­mas­ters at secret loca­tion in Aus­tria.

He was caught by Ger­man counter-espi­onage agents only after he was found offer­ing sim­i­lar BND doc­u­ments to Berlin’s Russ­ian embassy. The Ger­mans had con­sid­ered it “impos­si­ble” that one of their own intel­li­gence men could be work­ing as a “ dou­ble agent” for the Amer­i­cans.

New Ger­man counter-espi­onage mea­sures would almost cer­tain­ly result in the mon­i­tor­ing of “lis­ten­ing posts”, which both the Amer­i­can Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency (NSA) and its British equiv­a­lent, GCHQ, run from the roofs of their respec­tive Berlin embassies.

...

Grant­ed, it would be com­i­cal­ly absurd for Ger­many not to include the French in their coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence actions, so, on one lev­el, the French can’t be sur­prised. But, on anoth­er lev­el, they must be at least a lit­tle sur­prised by this announce­ment. What on earth did France have to do with this lat­est spy scan­dal?

At the same time, we have to won­der what oth­er coun­tries just got added to the “we’re watch­ing you watch­ing us” list because Ger­many’s inte­ri­or min­is­ter called for “360-degree sur­veil­lance” of all intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing oper­a­tions in Ger­many. Does that now include all of Ger­many’s allies? Maybe the US, UK, and France were the only coun­tries in the world that pre­vi­ous­ly had this alleged “no-counter-spy” Ger­man arrange­ment and now every coun­try is offi­cial on the list? Who knows at this point. So, it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing to see France on this list, but it’s most­ly just com­i­cal.

Did the Five Eyes hack Deutsche Telekom and did the BND know about it? Ger­many inves­ti­ga­tors want to know:

Bloomberg Busi­ness­week
Ger­man Pan­el to Ques­tion Exec­u­tives Over NSA Spy Report
By Patrick Don­ahue, Cor­nelius Rahn and Nao­mi Kres­ge Sep­tem­ber 14, 2014

Ger­man par­lia­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tors plan to ques­tion exec­u­tives of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors about reports that U.S. and U.K. intel­li­gence gained direct access to net­works of com­pa­nies includ­ing Deutsche Telekom AG. (DTE)

Man­agers of net­work providers since 2001 will be asked to tes­ti­fy because the report­ed acts, if con­firmed, would con­sti­tute statu­to­ry offens­es, said Chris­t­ian Flisek, a Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­er who sits on the par­lia­men­tary inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee in the low­er house. Roderich Kiesewet­ter, a com­mit­tee mem­ber from Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s Chris­t­ian Democ­rats, said the reports have to be tak­en “very seri­ous­ly.”

The U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and its U.K. coun­ter­part GCHQ tar­get­ed Ger­man providers as part of an effort to peer into com­put­ers and mobile devices all over the world, Der Spiegel report­ed Sept. 13, cit­ing doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by Edward Snow­den. Both Deutsche Telekom and region­al provider Net­Cologne said they hadn’t found any evi­dence that their net­works were manip­u­lat­ed.

“If this turns out to be true, then this is cer­tain­ly a new dimen­sion,” law­mak­er Kon­stan­tin von Notz said in an inter­view today. “It shows that Merkel’s foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple, that for­eign secu­ri­ty ser­vices have to con­form to Ger­man law on Ger­man soil, doesn’t work at all. We would be naive to think that Ger­man coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence didn’t know this sort of thing was going.”

The agen­cies con­duct­ed an NSA oper­a­tion called Trea­sure Map, which sought close to real-time access to indi­vid­ual routers as well as com­put­ers, smart­phones and tablets con­nect­ed to the Inter­net, “map­ping the entire Inter­net,” Spiegel report­ed. The New York Times report­ed the exis­tence of Trea­sure Map last year.

Leaked Graph­ic

Deutsche Telekom and Net­Cologne were marked on a leaked graph­ic with red dots, indi­cat­ing sur­veil­lance access points, Spiegel report­ed.

In a video pub­lished by The Inter­cept, exec­u­tives from Huerth, Ger­many-based satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny Stel­lar PCS GmbH were able to iden­ti­fy their names, roles and servers on the leaked doc­u­ments, which spec­i­fied sur­veil­lance tar­gets.

A spokes­woman for the NSA declined to com­ment on “any alleged, spe­cif­ic for­eign intel­li­gence activ­i­ties.” In an e‑mailed state­ment yes­ter­day, Vanee Vines said the agency “col­lects only those com­mu­ni­ca­tions that we are autho­rized by law to col­lect for valid for­eign intel­li­gence and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence pur­pos­es.”

GCHQ, in Chel­tenham, Eng­land, took a sim­i­lar stance in respond­ing. An e‑mail from an uniden­ti­fied agency offi­cial yes­ter­day didn’t com­ment on the Der Spiegel report, while say­ing that GCHQ’s work “is car­ried out in accor­dance with a strict legal and pol­i­cy frame­work, which ensures that our activ­i­ties are autho­rized, nec­es­sary and pro­por­tion­ate, and that there is rig­or­ous over­sight” by oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

A Ger­man gov­ern­ment spokes­woman declined to com­ment when con­tact­ed by phone today.

Net­work Review

Deutsche Telekom, in an e‑mailed state­ment, said it has informed Ger­man author­i­ties and is review­ing its net­works with exter­nal infor­ma­tion-tech­nol­o­gy experts.

“So far we have no more than a col­ored curl around the label of part of our net­works in a Snow­den doc­u­ment,” Deutsche Telekom said. “Nonethe­less we take the indi­ca­tions seri­ous­ly and have involved Ger­man secu­ri­ty author­i­ties. Access to our net­work by for­eign secret ser­vices would be absolute­ly intol­er­a­ble.”
The CDU’s Kiesewet­ter repeat­ed his call on Snow­den to speak with inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers in Moscow. Snow­den this year reject­ed through his lawyer a request by the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee to ques­tion the leak­er in Rus­sia. Oppo­si­tion mem­bers have insist­ed that Snow­den must be giv­en free pas­sage to tes­ti­fy in front of the com­mit­tee in Berlin.

Snow­den Dis­cus­sion

“It’s all the more impor­tant for Snow­den final­ly to put a stop to his resis­tance and to have a dis­cus­sion with the inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee out­side of Ger­many,” Kiesewet­ter said.

Ten­sions over U.S. spy­ing in Ger­many esca­lat­ed this year amid dis­clo­sures includ­ing the alleged hack­ing of Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s phone. Ger­many asked the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency’s sta­tion chief in Berlin to leave in July as a result of two spy­ing cas­es.

...

Keep in mind that Deut­shce Telekom is plan­ning on devel­op­ing NSA-proof ser­vices so it’ll be inter­est­ing to see if this sto­ry flares up like the Merkel phone scan­dal or just qui­et­ly goes away. There’s a bit of a “brand” issue involved. It’ll also be inter­est­ing to learn whether or not the Five Eyes was will­ing to share intel­li­gence on Ger­man cit­i­zens with the BND that the BND could­n’t legal­ly col­lect on its own (as is the stan­dard pro­ce­dure for gov­ern­ments these days for legal­ly spy­ing on their own cit­i­zens). Accord­ing to one Ger­man offi­cial the fol­low­ing report, the CIA has­n’t always par­tic­u­lar­ly forth­com­ing about the intel­li­gence it col­lect­ed on, say, Indone­sia, even though the BND would share its intel on Cen­tral Europe. So would the CIA share its intel on Ger­man cit­i­zens with the BND if that was request­ed?:

Newsweek
Ger­many’s Spy Agency Is Ready To Shake Off Its Sec­ond Tier Rep­u­ta­tion
By Elis­a­beth Braw
Filed: 8/5/14 at 10:04 AM | Updat­ed: 8/5/14 at 10:32 AM

“In the CIA peo­ple view liai­son rela­tion­ships as a pain in the ass but nec­es­sary,” says Valerie Plame, the CIA under­cov­er agent whose iden­ti­ty was infa­mous­ly dis­closed by aides to Pres­i­dent George W Bush soon after the 2003 US inva­sion of Iraq. Liai­son rela­tion­ships are the CIA’s term for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign intel­li­gence agen­cies, and, giv­en that not even the world’s might­i­est spy out­fit can go any­where it likes, the CIA main­tains plen­ty of such liaisons.

That includes the decades-long col­lab­o­ra­tion with Germany’s BND (Bun­desnachrich­t­en­di­enst), which was recent­ly dent­ed in a spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion when the CIA appar­ent­ly decid­ed that wait­ing for the BND to deliv­er infor­ma­tion was too labo­ri­ous and so put one of the BND’s own agents on its pay­roll. In fact, after hav­ing estab­lished a remark­able degree of close­ness due to the shared threats of ter­ror­ism and weapons of mass destruc­tions, espi­onage rela­tions between allies are tak­ing a sharp­er turn.

...

Keep in mind that the BND agent found on the CIA’s pay­roll report­ed­ly approached the CIA on his own in 2012. So it was­n’t exact­ly the case that the CIA active­ly recruit­ed the guy.

Con­tin­u­ing...

...
“Thanks to joint efforts fight­ing ter­ror­ists, Nato intel­li­gence agen­cies are clos­er than they were dur­ing the Cold War,” says the direc­tor of a Cen­tral Euro­pean intel­li­gence agency. “But right now pol­i­tics and coun­tries’ dif­fer­ent goals are cre­at­ing bar­ri­ers. That impacts intel­li­gence agen­cies as well.” In order to be able to speak more frankly, the direc­tor asked that his name and coun­try not be iden­ti­fied.

Nigel Inkster, a for­mer MI6 agent who also served as the agency’s Assis­tant Chief and Direc­tor for Oper­a­tions and Intel­li­gence, adds “There’s been an ero­sion of coop­er­a­tion between Nato allies with regards to Rus­sia. Ger­many and Italy in par­tic­u­lar have become much more eco­nom­i­cal­ly depen­dent on Rus­sia.”

A recent­ly retired top BND offi­cial, who also asked not to be iden­ti­fied due to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the mat­ter says, “We’ve always said [to the Amer­i­cans], ‘up to here but no far­ther’. Now they’ve crossed that line.” In response, Ger­many has expelled the CIA’s sta­tion chief. Some Ger­man politi­cians, hav­ing found that the NSA mon­i­tored their phones, are now using encrypt­ed ones.

...

Still, the BND and its boss the Ger­man gov­ern­ment were incensed to find that the CIA had signed up one of its own agents. “Despite a lot of intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing now being pos­si­ble through elec­tron­ic inter­cep­tion recruit­ing sources, recruit­ing sources is a pri­or­i­ty for intel­li­gence agen­cies,” notes the BND offi­cial. “But in recruit­ing sources from a friend­ly agency, the CIA crossed a red line.” When Hel­mut Kohl and George H W Bush led their respec­tive coun­tries, says the offi­cial, who was post­ed in Wash­ing­ton for sev­er­al years, the BND had good access to the CIA. “But that’s not the case any­more,” he adds.

Friend­ly though rela­tions may have been in past years, the CIA nev­er con­sid­ered the BND an equal, a fact the Ger­man offi­cial read­i­ly acknowl­edges. “[In the 1990s] the CIA even told us, ‘you’re not in our league’,” he explains. “When they want­ed some­thing about Cen­tral Europe, they asked us, but if we asked them about, say, Indone­sia, they said, ‘what con­cern is that of yours?’”

...

As Ger­man law­mak­er Kon­stan­tin von Notz said above, “We would be naive to think that Ger­man coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence didn’t know this sort of thing was going.” So would we also be naive to assume that the BND was­n’t ask­ing the Five Eyes pesky uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions about what is known about Ger­man cit­i­zens of inter­est? This is pret­ty stan­dard for intel­li­gence agen­cies with close work­ing rela­tion­ships so it would­n’t be sur­pris­ing if it was the case but it would cer­tain­ly be of inter­est to the Ger­man pub­lic. Maybe that could be inves­ti­gat­ed too.