Give NSA Chief Mike Rogers Tour of German Embassy Rooftop (Die Zeit, Germany)

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Give NSA Chief Mike Rogers Tour of German Embassy Rooftop (Die Zeit, Germany)

"The Foreign Ministry should offer NSA Director Mike Rogers a tour of the German Embassy rooftop in Washington. There are no antennae or microphones on the roof - just solar panels. Perhaps the NSA chief would laugh, 'If you’re going to be naïve, then at least be ecological about it.' But if you ask around, you’ll soon find out that politically, the Germans are not in very bad shape in Washington; in any event, not as bad as the Americans are in Berlin."

By Matthias Nas

Translated By Stephanie Martin

July 20, 2015

Germany - Die Zeit - Original Article (German)

Considering the NSA scandal, Germany should do more in the way of counter espionage. But upgrading technology against the allies is a dead end.

Were it not for the crisis in Greece, the government would have a much harder time, with pure inaction, tamping down the NSA spy affair. The scandal reaches ever larger dimensions from one week to the next.

In October 2013, it was just the Chancellor’s cell phone. Now we know that the cell phones of half her cabinet were monitored, and now it has come to light that espionage against Germans "friends" stretched back all the way to Helmut Kohl’s years in office.

Or has it been longer? The Americans were probably listening when the Federal Republic was in its cradle - and back then it would have been understandable, as there was no telling what may have emerged after the dragon brood of the Nazis.

But today, with Germany a senior citizen and having proven itself a stable democracy, does the U.S. government really need to tap government phones to find out what Berlin’s plans are as it heads to E.U. and NATO summits - or TTIP negotiations?

It’s bad enough that the Bundestag and the press are being pried into. Media organizations are defending themselves by reporting much more detail on the affair. For many, such as former head of the Chancellery Ronald Pofalla, spying on media is the real scandal.

Merkel before the committee

Parliament, for its part, has set up a committee of inquiry that, for the last sixteen weeks, has been digging through files soaked with the ink of thousands of blacked-out passages and interviewing witnesses, most of whom remember nothing. Yet committee members are undeterred as they continue to work their way through the list of witnesses from the bottom to the top, from the low-ranking BND caseworker up to the top of the government. [Former Chancellor] Gerhard Schröder and [Chancellor] Angela Merkel are still expected to provide information.

It has suddenly dawned on German officials that Washington has no intention of signing a 'no spy agreement' with Berlin...
Posted by WorldMeetsUS on Thursday, January 16, 2014

And what is the government doing aside from blacking out the documents requested by the committee? Their preference would likely be for the issue to sink into the Mediterranean somewhere between various Greek Islands - but it won’t be so easy to get rid of it.

The chancellor’s admonitions about "spying among friends – that doesn’t work" and "German law must apply on German soil" have only elicited shrugs in Washington. That's just how the world works, they say. The Germans shouldn’t pretend to be more naïve than they really are, and they’re already quite naïve.

Just what’s so naïve about refraining from spying on friends and partners? Isn’t that the basis of a very sensible cost-benefit analysis? What insights have the Americans gained from spying on Germany, and how much trust have they squandered over the past two years? One might conclude: It isn't worth it.

Together, at least, we could better protect ourselves against the dangers of terrorism, cross-border crime or Russian and Chinese hackers. Superpower attitudes don’t help: "If push comes to shove, you need us more than we need you; so please don’t make so much noise."

Bugs against allies?

Since America won’t see the wisdom of a change in course, Berlin is naturally calling for significant advances in counterintelligence. That's reasonable insofar as secure phone lines and video connections are a very sound investment for defending against real risks. But upgrading our defenses against allies with bugs, antennae and directional microphones? That doesn’t sound very smart.

Posted By Worldmeets.US

What might make sense in Beijing or Moscow is unreasonable in Berlin or Paris where diplomatic missions have scantily-concealed listening devices on rooftops. The Foreign Ministry should offer NSA Director Mike Rogers a tour of the German Embassy rooftop in Washington. There are no antennae or microphones on the roof - just solar panels.

Perhaps the NSA chief would laugh, "If you’re going to be naïve, then at least be ecological about it." But if you ask around, you’ll soon find out that politically, the Germans are not in very bad shape in Washington; in any event, not as bad as the Americans are in Berlin.

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GLOBAL ARCHIVE ON MASS SURVEILLANCE:

Der Spiegel, Germany: X-Keyscore: NSA Spying Far Worse than Germans Thought

Die Welt, Germany: 'Spook's Bazaar': Selling Off Press Freedom at the Behest of NSA Spies

Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland: Poles Should Expect Outsourcing of Surveillance to the NSA

Mediapart, France: NSA Spying Exposes Cataclysmic Failure of French Intelligence

Liberation, France: NSA Spying on the French: 'Another Mask has Fallen'

Polityka, Poland: Americans Suffer 'Pearl Harbor Attack' of Cyber Cold War

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany: Watchdog Issues Chancellery 'Ultimatum' on NSA 'Selectors'

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany: U.S. Spies and Angela Merkel: For Years, 'Guided by Wishful Thinking'

Der Spiegel, Germany: Betrayal and Betrayers: Merkel's High-Risk Silence in the NSA-BND Scandal

Joop, The Netherlands: Senior Elsevier Columnist Falls for ISIS-Snowden Hoax