A protester stumps for Edward
Snowden at the Reichstag, seat of the
Bundestag's lower house: Now it
appears that Austrian lawmakers will
follow the Bundestag in creating its own NSA Committee of
Inquiry.
Austrian
Lawmakers 'Terminate Silence' Over NSA Spying (Der Standard, Austria)
"NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden warned of how U.S. intelligence works with a number of E.U.
countries that filter out traffic belonging to their own citizens. However,
because of the number of collaborating countries, the U.S. is ultimately able
to obtain data on all E.U. citizens. … Parliament members are in broad
agreement that it is unacceptable for foreign intelligence services to conduct
legally baseless large-scale interception, storage and monitoring of the
communications data of Austrian and European citizens. To prevent this from
continuing, all legal and diplomatic measures will be taken."
Eavesdropping on of E.U.
countries discussed at Bundestag NSA Committee of Inquiry.
Despite being active for more than a year, progress at the
German Bundestag’s Committee of Inquiry is sluggish at best: the Committee's
efforts are "unsuccessful so far" according to Reporters without
Borders, with the Committee members themselves growing increasingly frustrated.
In addition to missing files and manipulative skirmishes with the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(German Federal Intelligence Agency or BND), memory
gaps on the part of important witnesses has been a major challenge.
Contradictions
So again on Thursday: Harald
Fechner, who had spent more than 28 years at the BND,
most recently as director of signals intelligence, made an appearance before
the Committee that can certainly be described as "bizarre:" In
responding to questions, the former agent repeatedly referred to the Live
Blog [of Committee Hearings] at Netzpolitik.org, which he referred to more than
his own memory. And when he did have something new to add to the record, he
contradicted the testimony of other witnesses.
'Inexpensive antennae'
For instance, Fechner asserted that top secret "Operation
Eikonal," in which the BND
vacuumed up Internet cable data for the NSA, had
already concluded when he was took up the post of signals intelligence chief in
April 2008. This directly contradicts the testimony of his predecessor, according
to whom Eikonal wasn’t wrapped up until later. On the
subject of the BND station in Bad Aibling
which the NSA operated until 2004, Fechner said the BND
still benefits today from the technology of the Americans.According to Fechner, "The antennae were
inexpensive." Bad Aibling is widely associated
with the Austrian intelligence station at Königswarte,
which in this connection is also said to have received a number of new antennae
worth tens of millions of euros.
[Editor's Note: According to the Snowden documents, "Operation Eikonal" involvedBND
cooperation with the NSA in skirting Germany's G10 Law, which forbids the
monitoring of the personal communications and data of Germans. Bad Aibling Station was where German intelligence officers are
said to have captured and analyzed satellite data from abroad - telephone calls
in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example. Members of American intelligence
attached to the NSA were also stationed on the grounds.]
'Ring Exchange': A
system for comprehensive collection
Fechner was also questioned on the selectors and filters the
BND used to screen Internet traffic. Der Standard, among others, has also
discussed the fact that non-German E.U. citizens are not protected under German
Basic Law [the German Constitution]. The NSA Committee of Inquiry addressed
this issue several times during its meeting on Thursday [Mar. 19]. For instance
the Green Party representative on the Committee, Konstantin von Notz, discussed the concept of a "ring exchange,"
something NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned of: U.S. intelligence works
with a number of E.U. countries that filter out traffic belonging to their own
citizens. However, because of the number of collaborating countries, the U.S. is
ultimately able to obtain data on all E.U. citizens.
"Austria, too, is considering a committee of inquiry. Here,
Austrian data are not being filtered, there German data are not - is the BND then part of a comprehensive system of data collection
under which Germans are not filtered out?" von Notz
asked the witness - according to the live blog of Netzpolitik.org - to which
Fechner merely replied "I hope not," and denying any knowledge of a
system of ring exchange. The second witness, a BND
attorney, was also questioned about these filter mechanisms. The attorney,
testifying under a pseudonym, explained that in principle, the German Basic Law
only requires data belonging to German citizens be filtered out.
'Lack of Relevance'
"We differentiate between foreigners and Germans,"
the BND employee said. "Austrians are considered
foreigners." Just "like Afghans?" Notz
inquired further, to which the witness essentially responded in agreement,
although Austrians would likely be "filtered out later because the data
would lack relevance." However, this raises the question of whether the
data were forwarded from Germany to the NSA.
Jihadist sites
"Jihadist locations" are particular areas of
interest according to the witnesses - Pakistan, Mali, Somalia, and "now
Syria." For satellite reconnaissance there were clear mission objectives,
the BND employee said. In the past there were already
concerns among Bundestag members that the U.S. would carry out its drone war in
Africa based on data acquired from German intelligence. Such operations are thought
to be carried out from the U.S. base in Ramstein,
Germany. According to research by the SüddeutscheZeitung, NDR (German Public
Television or NorddeutscherRundfunk) and
WDR Television (WestdeutscherRundfunk), the Foreign Ministry sent the
U.S. Embassy a list of questions in April 2014. Yet Bundestag members NiemaMovassat and Andrej Hunko are sharply critical, calling this a merely symbolic
gesture.
Drones
For the German government, after "intensive
confidential conversations with U.S. officials, the affair was apparently over.
According to MP Movassat, this obscures the fact that
"the German government has dispensed with an investigation [into whether
German-collected data has been used in drone strikes]." The same approach has
already been observed in the regard to NSA spying under the PRISM program.
In Austria as well, after the initial Snowden revelations then-Foreign Minister
Michael Spindelegger sent a list of questions to the
U.S. Embassy. Answers to those questions were never made public.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The activities of the U.S. intelligence agency NSA and its
British accomplice GCHQ have unified all of Austria's
parliamentary parties. They are forcefully demanding that the Austrian
government shed light on the surveillance affair. On Thursday a corresponding resolution
was adopted unanimously by the Home Affairs Committee of the National Council
(the lower house of Parliament).
Call for legal action
Parliament members are in broad agreement that it is
unacceptable for foreign intelligence services to conduct legally baseless
large-scale interception, storage and monitoring of the communications data of
Austrian and European citizens. To prevent this from continuing, all legal and
diplomatic measures will be taken.
BND Data Protection Officer Tells How Work with NSA Trumps German Law (Die Zeit, Germany)
Criticism is primarily focused on advanced malware that
circumvents encryption and is unrecognizable by antivirus software. Sometimes
even completely deleting everything on a hard drive is useless. The NSA's alleged theft
of millions of electronic SIM card keys from
manufacturer Gemalto is also considered
"extremely serious."
"This would allow illegal phone tapping to be carried
out across borders, without involving networks or national governments in any form,"
the resolution warns.
'Political silence is
terminated'
Parliament deputies have the support of Internet activists.
"With this resolution the long political silence over the spy agency affair
is terminated. The federal government must now act," said Thomas Lohninger of the Data Retention Task Force (ArbeitskreisVorrat) in a
press release issued on Friday [Mar. 20]. In addition, the resolution calls for
transparency over whether Austrian authorities benefit from NSA data that the
service has illegally collected.
