German Authorities Lack Evidence To Prosecute Anyone For NSA Spying 107
jfruh (300774) writes "The revelations about the NSA's surveillance program caused particular outrage in Germany, a country that is closely allied with the United States but nevertheless found that its leader's cell phone was being snooped on. Nevertheless, the German federal prosecutor's office will not be bringing any charges against anyone, mostly because they lack enough evidence (Google translation). The decision is sparking anger among German privacy advocates."
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You can't prove a negative. How in the world would you prove you did not do something? Presumption of guilt until proven innocent is never a good thing.
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If you can't take the heat.. well, you know the routine. If you want the power, you must pay the price.
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If you want the power, you must pay the price.
This attitude ensures that we are governed by people that love power.
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You already are. XD
Lotteries (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want the power, you must pay the price.
This attitude ensures that we are governed by people that love power.
That's why I think we should have lotteries for political service. Once you hit voting age and legally able to vote, you are automatically entered into the service lottery and you serve one term and one term only in that office.
Once you do one mandatory service period, one can choose to volunteer to be placed back into the lottery pool for another office other than the one you served in.
This will take a bit of the money out of politics, end career politicians and I really think it would lead to a much fair
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Sounds like jury duty. Which was (and still is) one of the best technologies to fight tyranny.
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Yeah. And it'll also end these political dynasties. We are developing a political aristocracy in this country and it's deplorable.
I don't care what their platform is, I will not vote for a Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, or anyone else that has family in higher offices. It's one thing if it's a Congressional, mayoral or city council candidate, but President or Senator? NFW.
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Politics has always been about people seeking power. You're laughably naive to think otherwise.
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You can prove negatives. What you can't prove is that something is true by the absence of any proof that it is false.
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Nah nothing that profound. Just a statement of basic logic. Too many people trot out the pseudo-logic statement "can't prove a negative" when that is simply a misunderstanding of the real fallacy. Mathematics, for example, contains tons of negative proofs.
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That's kind of funny. Citizens are considered guilty and treated like criminals until proven innocent. I think all he's asking for is a little bit of equality.
If we, the people, are losing our rights, I damned well expect that politicians should lose theirs, too.
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That would just result in political prosecutions.
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Sorry, they must be put under the Sword. It's the only way to keep the riff-raff out of the running. Cut them no slack.
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Not until I seek power over others.
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You don't get it. The Sword hangs over the seat of power. If you want to sit there, you are more than welcome, but the Sword stays.
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Whats the issue here? While indeed "allies", Germany is still an international rival to the USA and thus the NSA targeting the German political leadership is perfectly acceptable as that is, surprisingly enough, their job - espionage and intelligence gathering! Gathering information which gives the USA an advantage in talks or negotiations (trade agreements et al) is what is supposed to be going on.
What the Germans should be asking close questions about is why their counter-espionage agencies are not prot
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Well, apparently the Germans figured out that the spying wasn't "discovered", so much as "leaked by Snowden".
Alas, without names, dates, actual evidence, it's pretty hard to turn "Snowden said..." into actual prosecution and prison sentences and all that.
Especially if it turns out that the guilty parties are in the USA, and have been the whole time. Do you REALLY think we're going to extradite our intelligence analysts to Germany to stand trial?
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Stop with the "it's their job!" nonsense. Nobody is buying it. Our president was just saying a few months before the NSA revelations that China was hacking into our government systems and considered it a breach of treaty and an illegal act of aggression. The only difference here is that the "bad guys" are on our side and you are buying into their propaganda.
"Everybody else is doing it" also is not an excuse. It didn't work when you were a child and sure as fuck doesn't work when you're a adult. Do not make
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What the Germans should be asking close questions about is why their counter-espionage agencies are not protecting them - where is the failure?
It's all faux outrage for political expediency. I won't consider Snowden's a success until I see a very dramatic turnover in elected offices. In fact, it looks more like an attempt to manipulate the stock markets than anything else. The politicians and their political parties are in no danger of losing anything.
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It's all faux outrage for political expediency.
Absolutely. German politicos don't really care about this, because the existence of this particular type of spying is something they've always understood. For decades, all diplomats everywhere, if wise, have made the presumption that their unsecured lines are under surveillance by any number of different nations. The only reason they're pretending to care is because their naïve constituents apparently didn't know. They can't simply let the rabble go unanswered.
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That's Snowden's efforts...
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The problem is not that people are angry, its that they want legal recourse to be had - they want NSA chiefs and ex-chiefs et al to be prosecuted, which is pure fantasy land demands imho, very much like the recent "charging" of Chinese military personnel with hacking US institutions.
I have no issue with people being angry, or there being very real political ramifications between "allies", but for privacy groups to demand prosecutions just shows how far out of touch with reality they actually are.
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No, they don't really want "legal recourse". They want revenge. Punish those guys! What, they didn't do anything illegal? Tough! Punish them anyway!!!
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...for privacy groups to demand prosecutions just shows how far out of touch with reality they actually are.
Um, the US and various other countries prosecute spies every chance they get, and probably with less evidence than what we have here. This is a show. You're not making any sense.
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that is, surprisingly enough, their job
Bam, Godwin! (Hint: Nürnberg processes)
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Yeah, right (Score:2)
Translation: The NSA has some information about their politicians that would be... Unfortunate if it was accidentally revealed in a trial.
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If the Germans were going to reveal FDR's secrets, you'd think they'd have done it by now. The man's been dead for 70 years!
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That's one possible translation. Another is that they don't know which people were doing the spying.
For that matter, my wager would be that they can't even prove which organization was doing the spying. All they can really prove is that they were spied upon, and possibly a few IP addresses.
NSA surveillance in Germany is most probably legal (Score:5, Interesting)
We have treaties left over from WW2 that interestingly were put in place. There is a Professor at Freiburg University who says what the NSA is doing in Germany is basically legal. He even claims that the German secret service can legally assist the NSA.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/historiker-foschepoth-ueber-us-ueberwachung-die-nsa-darf-in-deutschland-alles-machen-1.1717216
We also have a quite unspecific exception clause in Artikel 10 (section 10) of our Grundgesetz (constituiton), that restricts applicability of telecommunications secrecy.
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html
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Good. The Germans have earned their 1,000 year bitch status. In 2945 they can ask the USA to stop spying.
How has asking the fox to guard the henhouse worked out historically? Good for the hens?
Sounds like a good way to save face (Score:3)
"Ja, Ve investigated but der Amerikans undt Birtish vouldn't answer zee question and zee others vent all Sgt Schulz on uns"
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, leaders realized such a prosecution would open a can of worms that could lead to very embarrassing disclosures about German activities and complicity in the spying. No politician wants to be caught in that mess, and the spymasters are quite happy to keep working together while the politicians publicly denounce the spying for their own political ends. I would not be surprised if sone of the professionals are going "We have too get some of that stuff for ourselves" and "Holy crap. They can do that?"
Re:Sounds like a good way to save face (Score:4, Funny)
"Ja, Ve investigated but der Amerikans undt Birtish vouldn't answer zee question and zee others vent all Sgt Schulz on uns"
...Holy crap...
I have always found it strange how you Anglo Saxons see so much sanctity in feces. To us Germans it is a revolting substance but for you it is the focus of much religious reverence.
Re:Sounds like a good way to save face (Score:4, Funny)
That's OK, we've never understood why your toilets have shelves so you can inspect your own feces.
So, whose the one obsessed with poo?
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Oh, and the Saxons were German.
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Oh, and the Saxons are [wikipedia.org] German.
FTFY.
Also, the Angles [wikipedia.org] are Germans. (Nearly Danes, I suppose, but Germans nonetheless.)
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It avoids the splash.
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That's OK, we've never understood why your toilets have shelves so you can inspect your own feces.
So, whose the one obsessed with poo?
Well, we may examine the turd before despatching it onwards on its journey to the sewage treatment facility, but we have not yet accorded fecal matter the status of a venerated holy relic. Your religious veneration trumps our slightly unusual scientific curiosity.
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"Ja, Ve investigated but der Amerikans undt Birtish vouldn't answer zee question and zee others vent all Sgt Schulz on uns"
...Holy crap...
I have always found it strange how you Anglo Saxons see so much sanctity in feces. To us Germans it is a revolting substance but for you it is the focus of much religious reverence.
Well, it started out out as bing referred to as "wholly crap" as in "completely crap" but given the deep Anglo Saxon religious roots it got misinterpreted as "Holy crap" and that is what stuck. Or something like that...
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Why is this acceptable humor but not the "Wi Tu Lo" Korean pilot jokes?
translation (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA couldn't spy and monitor in Germany without the close and widespread collaboration of the German government and German corporations.
What they are really saying is that they couldn't find someone to shift the blame to outside the government or the corporations close to the government.
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Yup, they were GLAD to hand it over, because that means they get to look at the big pile sometimes. Same with the rest of our allies who were "outraged!!!"
Outrage the public found out more like it.
maybe it really is the money (Score:2)
"follow the money" has gotten trite, but I have to wonder if the German federal government's decision not to pursue this is in any way tied to the large amount of German gold we are holding for them. As I recall, they asked for it back a couple years ago and the US declined to ship it.
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West Germany was rebuilt on French, UK and US terms and ideals. Staff where vetted and kept their old ww2 jobs or where in the UK, France, US under Operation Paperclip like plans.
Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Reinhard Gehlen and start of West German/CIA work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Operation Gladio US/EU long term staff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So long term the people selecting the next generation of West German telco/cry
Wasn't in German (Score:3)
Considering how some European countries are so protective of their language, I bet they refused to accept the evidence at hand, because it was in English instead of German.
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Considering how some European countries are so protective of their language, I bet they refused to accept the evidence at hand, because it was in English instead of German.
Unlikely. Although for example SEPA regulation (euro-wide banking rules) require some terms to be provided to consumers in their own native language, the German version of the regulation is full of using English terms whenever some specific thing of the English main text is referred to. For the consumer, this leads to strangely sounding, practically non-understandable documents.
As another example, the word "marmalade" in English, referring to smashed/sugared fruits of only certain types has now influenced t
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What can any one German do? If they make a fuss, protest your on a domestic security agency watch list as a far right or left sympathiser, fellow traveler.
No more security work, risk that promotion, your boss gets a hint about your new found political views...
As in West, East or now in Germany - you protest, you risk a lot long term.
Asking for telco/privacy law reform in Germany is not fun outside a list of tame political parties, front organization
Well, we know... (Score:2)
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People who are pissed off at Edward Snowden are the same people who would applaud the US government if they claimed they needed to curtail free speec/freedom of the press until this whole "terrorist" thing has passed. If only the times were safer to afford such liberties.
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How generations of cleared German gov contracted academics, the German military, German security services all allowed this to happen is something for elected German leaders to ponder.
Can diverse, independent, fully vetted groups of staff, engineers, consultants really just rubber stamp something of th
Typical ... (Score:2)
Of course, supposedly no hard evidence or witnesses.
The general attorney is part of the ministry of justice ... Merkel and other leading politicians have made it clear they do not see any reason to prosecute the U.S. for the privacy invasion the NSA has committed ... now, the general attorney decides there's not enough evidence. Go figure.
All lying bastards ... too bad the general public does not understand (or care) what most politicians are doing ...
Proof? (Score:1)
Are we losing the lawsuit race? (Score:1)
Suing for spying? I would expect that type of thing to be an American invention.
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I would advise Germany to mind its own business
I don't think it needs to, the NSA is minding Germany's business for them.
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Is it a school holiday again?
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The Nazi's what understood quite well? (check your possessive apostrophe)
I'll let someone else make the appropriate joke about a grammar nazi comment about real Nazis. So to feel like I contributed something serious to the discussion, I'll simply add that, whatever they understood about SIGINT, the Nazis were pwned [wikipedia.org] by the English-speaking world too.
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The Nazis had, at best, a limited grasp on SIGINT. They came up with a world-class solution, then stopped development, since their then-current ideas were so perfect noone would be able to crack them.
Someone should have explained to them that signals security is an ongoing process, not an idea....
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Wow, if this is the prevailing attitude in America, then the rest of the world needs to bomb you moronic douchebags back into the stone age before you do any more harm.
Go wave your little penis elsewhere.
God Americans are assholes.
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Aren't you Mr. High and Mighty? Way to take one douche bags comments, assume he's an American (probably is), and then extrapolate that he represents all 310+ million Americans. I wouldn't say you're clear of the asshole label yourself.
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US prosecutes Chinese Generals and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commanders on the slimmest, "guilt by implication and association" pretexts.
Bless the Germans, for having principles and integrity - unlike the Amerikan rogue state.
General Alexander and Michael Hayden are off the hook. Now, they face only the hellish void of their own souls.
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No, the USA "brings charges against" these guys. "Prosecution" requires a trial before a Judge and Jury. Which in turns requires a defendant who is PRESENT for the trial. We have no legal provision for Trial in Absentia in the USA (hence Kerry saying Snowden should "come back to the US to stand trial").
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No, the USA "brings charges against" these guys. "Prosecution" requires a trial before a Judge and Jury. Which in turns requires a defendant who is PRESENT for the trial. We have no legal provision for Trial in Absentia in the USA (hence Kerry saying Snowden should "come back to the US to stand trial").
Barring the occasional executive order to dispense with all that inconvenient legal stuff... for example [theatlantic.com]
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No, the USA "brings charges against" these guys. "Prosecution" requires a trial before a Judge and Jury. Which in turns requires a defendant who is PRESENT for the trial. We have no legal provision for Trial in Absentia in the USA (hence Kerry saying Snowden should "come back to the US to stand trial").
No, the USA simply sends drones to kill unwanted persons without any of that.
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From neo-nazis to neo-cons, you still have the same warped ideas and logic.
How soone before fucks like you scream that jews and/or blacks screwed over America? Oh wait. You have been here doing it all along.