The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed the NSA spied on European Union offices in Brussels, Washington and at the United Nations. The NSA allegedly planted bugs to listen in on conversations and phone calls, also hacked into the EU computer network to access emails.
Malte Spitz talking:
There are, since already four days, no other news than the spying of the U.S. on Germany and also on EU institutions, because politicians from all political parties are somehow afraid and also shocked by the situation that the U.S. is spying so hard on German citizens, but also on EU institutions and EU countries. And so, there is a huge confusion in Germany, and also lots of people are quite angry.
These spying revelations did not surprised me. because already it is known that the U.S. is spying all over the world, but what is also new for me is the amount of spying, if Der Spiegel numbers are correct that there are 500 million individual communication acts spied on here in Germany each month. And I think this is an amount where you cant talk about war on terror; its just a huge part of espionage on the German government, on the German citizens and also on the German companies. So I think there is no sense of proportionality any longer, if the U.S. secret agencies are spying so hard on a so-called friend and ally. And I think that Foreign Minister Kerry isnt right if he says that this is something normal, because you dont spy on friends, you only spy on your enemy. And if Germany and if the EU is an enemy for the U.S., then they should say that.
I started a lawsuit against the Deutsche Telekom, which is the largest phone company here in Germany, around four years ago, and I asked them that they should hand me over all the information they have stored on me. And at the beginning, they only wanted to hand me over just regular informations like my address and something like this. But I said that they also have to store all this so-called metadata. And so I started a suit against them to get handed out all this metadata they have stored about me. And at the end, it was six months ofwith around 35,000 informations. So the Deutsche Telekom knew 35,000 times where I was, what I did and who I called and who I sent text messages. And after a while, I decided to publish all this information, because it was important for me to show the public that even if you only have so-called metadata, it onlyit is also showing a really large part of your social life
it is six months of my life you can see on this map. And if you are in city centers like here in Berlin, the cellphone towers are really close to each other, so you can really track down people up to 50 meters, and so you always know where someone is. Even if you have turned off your GPS signal at your phone, they still store all this information.
at the same time as I filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Telekom, there was also a huge constitutional challenge against this law here in Germany. So, around 34,000 people went to the constitutional court, and in March 2010 the German constitutional court decided that its implementation of this EU directive into German law was unconstitutional. So, since 2010, there is no such storage of information of all the cellphone users, of all the Internet users, but still this debate is going on here in Germany because the two largest political parties are still in favor for such a system.
Kristinn Hrafnsson talking:
this is the kind of data we are now seeing, as mapped out for one individual, and they are being collected for millions of people, and not only the data from the telephone companies handed over, as Snowden revealed in his first leak, but also data on Internet, the email use, which also give you a location, because its linked to an IP address, which gives out a location, and who is where sending a message to whom. So, by putting this information together, you can, just by that metadata, so-called, get a very detailed picture of the life of an individual, without actually going into listening in the conversation or reading the messages. However, it has been said by experts and is known that its very hard to distinguish the actual metadata on emails, for example, and the actual messages. And it has been revealed that they have confirmed that they did not intentionally collect the content, but its there. And with the revelation we have now, who would trust the NSA for not looking into that?
I dont see analyzed by the mainstream media here. People seem to be avoiding that serious issue of lying to Congress. And not only in the case of Clapper, it is also now known that 26 senators from both parties have demanded a clarification from General Keith Alexander of NSA in a very careful statement. I mean, they are basically saying that they were misled. So, the Congress, who is supposed to have oversight under all this cloak of secrecy, well, how can they do that when they are not getting information, that they arewhen theyre lied to, when they are misled? That is not a proper function in a democratic society, is it?
after 25 years in the mainstream media and journalism, I was, you know, honestly, seeing that we were not doing our job as journalists, in general. We were failing the public. And, of course, we have many examples. American public know of so many examples where journalists have failed, you know, prior to the Iraq invasion in 2003. We also have examples of where the mainstream media have quashed stories because they were asked to, even media that we hold in high regard, in generalyou know, The New York Times, Washington Post, for example, in this country. But the examples that we see, as well, is that the journalism has failed to be the proper watchdog to those in power, whether corporate or government power, and are too much the lapdogs, if I may say so, of those in power.
And I have to say that after spending a week here and seeing the coverage in the mainstream media here, Im actually appalled by theand they confirmed all my worst beliefs about whats going on. Its a terrible situation. Ive seen here how the mainstream media has carefully avoided actually going into the real story, which is of course the leaks, thewhat Snowden has revealed. Instead, its this ridiculous focus on where he is, his personal life, and even journalists have attacked journalists like Glenn Greenwald, suggested that he had aided and abetted a felon, as we see examples of, or even tried to dig up dirt on the journalist, who was doing this incredible job. So, this is awhat Snowden is revealing is not just the snooping of individuals; hes also exposing the extremely poor condition of journalism today.
– source democracynow.org
Malte Spitz, a member of the German Green Partys executive committee and a candidate for the Bundestag in Germanys national election this September. http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention
Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesperson for WikiLeaks. He is an investigative journalist who was named Icelandic journalist of the year three times.