The NSA Scandal.

[Anthropoid]

@Bayard: I'm gonna have to agree with Mage on this one. EU seems like a split personality hydra with slightly different bureacratic agendas in each head of the beast. Yes, it is big and tough. Yes, being a part of the whole is beneficial to each head. Yes, when and if it gets its four legs moving, it can be a force to be reckoned with. But the heads seems to spend as much time bickering among themselves (and biting each other) as they do acting as a unified polity.

EU interests are a confusing mess that varies day by day. EU actions rarely even match stated EU interests. It's only natural to be frustrated by this. Stated EU interests would have indicated a higher profile played by EU in the Ukraine crisis. This is what Nuland wanted.

Not to sound egotistical but . . . as early as the mid 1980s I was arguing that a unification of the Western European nations was inevitable. I can remember long discussions on the bus on the way to debate tournaments, arguing with my debate coach and the other high school students on the team about this very issue. I guess if I had been a more dynamic and creative 17 year old, and had written a book on it, I coulda been a rich man by now 

Again, not to sound egotistical, but I also predicted the Egyptian and Syria and Libyan 'civil wars' (in very general terms).

At present, I am predicting that something similar is inevitable in Iran and China. 

All that said; I think the main problem with the EU today is that there seems to be far too much focus on the nitty-gritty details of the current arrangement and far too little focus on the long-term vision of the union. You've got yourself an economic union, which has also slowly creeped into other dimensions of your societies; most of you are also members of NATO, so, while the administrative processes are not perfectly articulated, you are effectively halfway to being "one nation."

You as people can either acknowlege that is where you are going, talk about it, and plan for it (because it is inevitable, whether it makes your skin crawl or not) or you can just keep ignoring the pink elephant in the corner.

 

[Mage246]

Bayard, if EU interests are so crystal clear to you, maybe you should state what you think they are instead of making snide remarks about me not understanding them. I can think of a few overall goals, but even those are sometimes contested on an individual nation level. And when it comes to specifics, those are even more highly contested.

EDIT: Just read article on UK "Optic Nerve" program. Oh look, further proof that this was never really about big bad evil America after all.

 

[Jhessail]

HUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/05/congress-intelligence-community-whos-overseeing/

In the wake of an explosive new allegation that the CIA spied on Senate intelligence committee staffers,  one senator felt this morning that he needed to make something clear.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee oversees the CIA, not the other way around,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M) said in a press release.

In normal circumstances, that would have been a statement of the obvious. Today, it was more a cry for help.

McClatchy News Service on Tuesday reported that the CIA’s inspector general has asked for a criminal investigation into CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides who were investigating the agency’s prominent role in the Bush-era torture of detainees.

Specifically, McClatchy reported: “The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers – in possible violation of an agreement against doing so – that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge.”

In a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) referred to what he called “unprecedented action against the Committee in relation to the internal CIA review,” and described it as “incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight responsibilities and for our democracy.”

You could not make this **** up.

 

[rebelknight]

The conspiracy theorists were ****ING RIGHT! 
I know some Hobo who are finally happy that peoples acknowledged their claim.

 

[Jhessail]

Well, looks like USA shot itself in the foot when it comes to Germany.

First, NSA was caught wiretapping Merkel's phone and reading millions of German e-mails. Merkel played it low-key.

But now, two Germans have been caught for spying for the US. One as a worker in the German intelligence service BND, other an officer in the Bundeswehr.

Merkel is currently visiting Moldova, from where she commented that "spying on allies is a waste of energy... we have so many problems that we should focus on them... more trust between countries would mean more security as well".

Now Germany has deported the CIA station chief in the American embassy in Berlin.

It's pretty ludicrous, because CIA and BND work closely together in monitoring extremist Islamist movements in Germany. Why spy on Germany? Only thing that comes to mind is commercial/industrial espionage, and institutional paranoia.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Officer? I heard it was a civilian working for the ministry of defence.

Also they haven't deported him, they merely "asked him to leave", good puppy dogs that they are.
It's not an order, not a deportation but simply the least forceful way of saying it. Like "hey, um.. you know, that guy? Yeah, we kinda need him to go. Please? Maybe?"


But yeah, this is Merkel's biggest interior weakness and blunder since she came into office all those years ago. People are still pissed off because of the first thing but the parties in charge want to keep it on the down low and just let everyone forget it even happened.
She could gain a lot of support if she'd just stop sucking American **** for a second, but since that's been the main stick of her party since the '40s I doubt she can bring herself to do so.

Most amusing - and one more argument for my "they're all equally useless" argument - the SPD before the election was all over the NSA thing and wanted it cleared up. Now that they share power with Merkel? Yeah, no, it's not that important is it?

[edit]
Ok my bad. Missed the latest bit of "development" apparently.
They asked first, as I wrote, and now apparently they officially declared that he will need to leave the country.

It helps to read the article in full.
They asked him to leave. Then told him to leave and then finally "corrected" it so that they now "suggest that he leaves".
Morons, kick him out, everything else will make you look like an even bigger joke. Not that it will change anything...

 

[Catholic]

Doing well so far I think. Germany isn't really looking like a joke, more like an exasperated friend pissed at constant American bullying. Asking their head intelligence officer to leave seems like a pretty meaningful move, considering the circumstances. Haven't heard of any other countries doing that though I could be wrong.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

It's pretty ludicrous, because CIA and BND work closely together in monitoring extremist Islamist movements in Germany. Why spy on Germany? Only thing that comes to mind is commercial/industrial espionage, and institutional paranoia.

Probably just to make sure the Germans aren't spying on the US . Industrial and economic espionage doesn't seem like something that would cause as much of a ruckus as spying on another spy agency.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Doing well so far I think. Germany isn't really looking like a joke, more like an exasperated friend pissed at constant American bullying. Asking their head intelligence officer to leave seems like a pretty meaningful move, considering the circumstances. Haven't heard of any other countries doing that though I could be wrong.

I meant the politicians in charge, not the country as a whole. The US's political image is a joke here anyway, there's no helping that at this point no matter what happens in this instance. That's gonna take years to recover.
I mean:
the ones who refuse to allow Snowden to come here so he can be asked about the first instance of this crap.
the ones too afraid of annoying the US by being offended for being spied on like that and then told how important they are as Allies.
the ones who do their best to try to make everyone forget it even happened.

You know, Merkel's folks. She of course would never say anything publicly about it, she knows people are pissed about it and having an official opinion before everyone else reached consensus and put themselves out of their respective windows just isn't her style.

 

[wrc]

Most amusing - and one more argument for my "they're all equally useless" argument - the SPD before the election was all over the NSA thing and wanted it cleared up. Now that they share power with Merkel? Yeah, no, it's not that important is it?

Well it really isn't that important, if you ask me. Europe has had so many problems recently starting with Greece and Euro crisis and then all this **** happening in Ukraine and Putin going crazy. Considering that Germans are dealing with most of those things, I don't think that Merkel gives a **** about NSA and their spy toys.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

I realise that. Which is why I find it amusing and not offensive.
It's just nice to see how casually and quietly such an important piece of election propaganda of theirs is disposed of.

 

[wrc]

Then it was a well planned election campaign, who wouldn't want to kick 'murican butt. 

 

[FrisianDude]

“The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers – in possible violation of an agreement against doing so – that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge.”

what the **** does this sentence mean.


Wellies; I've read that asking him to leave is, essentially, kicking him out. Kind of like how a prime minister would not literally boot a poorly performing minister out the door; they'd ask them to leave. But both the prime and minister know it's not really a question.

 

[Mage246]

The real question (and to my mind, the only important one) is what kind of intelligence was he sharing and why was it valuable enough to risk this kind of scandal? You don't take the risk of developing a human asset like that unless they have information that you want. And also, if he had information that the US wanted, maybe US-German intelligence cooperation isn't as robust as you believe.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

One of them was spying on the folks investigating the first instance of US spying on Germany. So that's stuff one can understand them being interested in.
Why they did it in such a ham-fisted way I have no idea, but the interest in understandable.

About cooperation and such, the way I understand it is that the mistrust amongst many US secret service thingamajig fellas is carried over from times of the cold war. West German intelligence was heavily infected with Eastern spies, at least for a while.
Also the refusal to go into Iraq and to go into active combat in Afghanistan, more-so the former.

Also what Jhess said, "institutional paranoia", is likely a huge factor as well.

 

[Sir Saladin]

About cooperation and such, the way I understand it is that the mistrust amongst many US secret service thingamajig fellas is carried over from times of the cold war. West German intelligence was heavily infected with Eastern spies, at least for a while.
Also the refusal to go into Iraq and to go into active combat in Afghanistan, more-so the former.

Aha! The "you're either with us or against us" policy is still in place, just like the super secrecy policies. Thanks Obama.

 

[Bayard-X]

Why spy on Germany?

May seem stupid, but: Because they can.

If it comes to industrial espionage, what for? I barely know any German technology they could seriously exploit. In advanced tech, they hold more patents. In stuff like automotive industries, they seem not have any more the necessary capacities to commercialise new technologies.

And in fact, I am not sure that the first chap was an American agent. He rather looks like a German traitor. I heard stuff about an offer he made to Russian services...

 

[Mage246]

There's never been a case in which industrial espionage has been attributed to the CIA, anyway. It doesn't seem to be one of their areas of interest and it certainly isn't part of their mission statement. I should emphasize that there is a difference between conducting industrial espionage and gathering economic intelligence. The latter is information used to understand a country and penetrate it in other areas, while the former is spying on behalf of corporations.

 

[Kobrag]

Since the CIA is a quasi independent corporation itsself, it's not hard to imagine it may have a mercenary character.

 

[Anthropoid]

National Security Agency (NSA, which is the culprit in the German espionage scandal(s) and CIA are not the same entity. My understanding is that the NSA and CIA are known, at best, to not always work in synchrony and at worst to work actively against one another. Moreover, these are only two examples of what must be a score or more "official" U.S. intelligence "agencies," and that is discounting the ones that are more like educational institutions or offshoots of the State Department.

The main thing that one must keep in mind when considering the state of excess to which the NSA or any other U.S. intelligence service is going at this time, is that question that nagged U.S. society in ~2002: "Could 9/11 have been prevented?"

There is of course no real way to answer that question, but there have certainly been billions of words conveying a myriad of messages that fall under the general theme that "The U.S. intelligence community SHOULD have prevented 9/11." If I recall, there was a great deal of outrage both among the American public, and among many members of Congress that the perpetrators of 9/11 were able to operate in the U.S. training, planning and funding their attack for years prior.

An intelligence community that has gone "overboard" is an unsurprising long-term result of the rhetoric of blame and culpability that was wielded against the intelligence community in the aftermath of 9/11. In sum, we are just getting what we "asked for."