Seriously? I'm a German and I'm simply surprised no one is out on the streets or that there is no nationwide strike after the revelation that our current government has:
- blatantly lied to us wrt NSA "no-spy deal"
- the BND tries to conceal just how deep they were up the NSA's butthole
- Heckler&Koch tried to get MAD (the military's (counter)-espionage agency) to silence the press over the G36 scandal.
As soon as I got some money together, I'm out. That's not what I consider an acceptable environment here, and I honestly don't see any political force trying to change the way things run (or those who try have no serious hope of ever gaining power).
Where are you going to go, though... all of the western countries seem to have this exact same problem. My home, Australia, is just as secretive if not worse, the UK is bust, and more and more info is coming out showing that no government is immune. It's really disheartening.
The worst part is, the Australian government really did foil a possible terrorist attack. Guess where the info on the perp came from? Mass surveillance? Their new metadata retention laws (okay, that's a cheap shot as it hasn't been implemented yet)?
Nope. It was a tip-off to the national security hotline.
Same here in Germany: Police also did foil an attack lately. The information just came from a shop assistant in a hardware store. And what: Again they want get into more surveillance.
Of course! A tip off is real information, spoken as a truth by someone who cares, and who is being present. That truth translates directly into a trusted communications channel when instantiated. We've used this 'neighborhood watch' thing for years in the U.S., and it simply works without anyone being in charge.
Regardless of how much knowledge it represents, mass surveillance by central agencies is just them pretending to know the truth. The reason why is because the information used to 'know' is based on simulations of bad actors doing bad things, usually in the past, applied to the present moment. This 'simulated truth' translates into multiple communications channels of unknown quality when instantiated (because there are multiple futures) and fails to represent the present state of bad actor's actions.
In short, it's a low trust channel which is always ripe for a misuse of power!
As John Steinbeck put it best, “Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”
I dunno, I'm as skeptical as anyone else I know but this time I don't see why it'd be worth lying about -- considering it was the tip-off not the other surveillance programs that led them to him, and it's public knowledge.
It's not a new phenomenon - successive managements go through a cycle where they think ELINT and COMINT can make HUMINT obsolete, and then some bad thing happens and they realize they were wrong (but never admit it).
The theory is that - much as the decentralised panopticon of Van Vogt's "Anarchistic Colossus" - we'll eventually be able to parse everything everybody ever says and preemptively stop bad things. The practice is that humans are pretty good at it and computers aren't yet (that we publicly know of).
Reading about Eagle Claw [1], I was surprised at how few human assets the US had in Iran, due to both post-Vietnam cuts and an increased belief in computer magic. It's been a while but I remember they had something like a couple of cooks in the embassy, and nobody outside... contrast this with General Kalugin's assertion in his biography that almost 2/3 of Soviet staff in the US was KGB!
More recently, Charlie Hebdo was followed by a few leaks from the DGSE complaining of budget cuts targeting human assets and "street" operations, and a reorg that definitely did not prioritize the man on the street (no link - I read it in French papers).
Pete Blaber, at the time commander of Delta Force, recently complained [2] that Operation Anaconda was plagued by generals who managed it from the comfort of their AC rooms in Washington, basing their decision on drone and satellite feeds, unwilling to trust the men on the ground (and even cutting the Delta Force team out of comms when they objected).
The sad thing is that HUMINT takes a long time to develop, and requires a lot of experience (which is partly why the Allied won the intelligence war over the freshly purged German apparatus). Firing those with that experience can lead to years of underperformance as the expertise is slowly rebuilt.
This is one of the reasons the CIA was happy to use former Nazis to hunt Soviet spies in Germany [3] - justified both by these men's extensive experience operating in the territory and the fact that the Stasi was doing the same. I think not enough has been said about how the recent (returning) obsession with electronic surveillance is potentially damaging that side of (genuine, needed) counter-terrorist capability.
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Mission-Men-Me-Commander/dp/042523... - what is most interesting was Delta Force's insistance on reading everything they could from previous defenders of the Shahi-Kot, thereby anticipating the exact way in which the enemy took down the helicopters later sent in by Washington, which was the way the locals used to shoot down Soviet helicopters.
I am also outraged, what our government is doing and how they get away with it.
I think, political disinterest has just risen so much, that most people just ignore everything. 30-40 years ago, chancellors stumbled upon much less, but today they just keep on lying.
I even heard, that only 15% or so of the German population is interested in the lying and spying scandals. Everybody seems to be more interested in the price of bananas or if the government promises lower taxes.
We train our politicians, that they can be corrupt, that they can lie and do anything that is for their profit and get away with it. Consequently what we will get is an even more corrupted system in the future.
I fear that we will again reach the state of the 1930s years. And what will happen than, nobody can say. Maybe a new dictator or even the world wide dictatorship of the big corporations. In Italy we saw, how much might just one media mogul can unfold.
I agree that Germany has problems, too. However, I don't think the points you listed are the most important problems.
Some in the MAD tried to start intelligence activity against the press, but the responsible official denied their motion.
The BND is not properly supervised, but the government already acknowledged that and said that they are going to solve it.
What I found to be the most outrageous thing is that chancellor Merkel said that her goal is to enforce german law on german ground, and that they are working towards that. This doesn't sound like she is really convinced to be able to do so. I expect the government to say that german law will be enforced and that they will fight any activity not adhering to them.
> Some in the MAD tried to start intelligence activity against the press, but the responsible official denied their motion.
The fact alone that high-up army officials and H&K managers even attempted such behaviour is telling enough about the respect to the constitution of those involved.
The fact that this behaviour has not warranted immediate consequences (at least resignation/discharge of the involved AND a criminal investigation by the Bundesanwalt) is telling lengths about the Bundesanwalt, too.
> The BND is not properly supervised, but the government already acknowledged that and said that they are going to solve it.
Honestly, you're believing in that? A secret agency is by definition secret, and I don't see the amount of change needed for proper surveillance of the spies coming anytime soon.
> What I found to be the most outrageous thing is that chancellor Merkel said that her goal is to enforce german law on german ground, and that they are working towards that. This doesn't sound like she is really convinced to be able to do so. I expect the government to say that german law will be enforced and that they will fight any activity not adhering to them.
I don't see that much of a problem in this regard, though. The US embassies and military bases in Germany have historically been dealt with as foreign territory, even though they were not de jure. In a certain way, what we allow the US to do in "their" bases and what we get in exchange from the US, is a reasonable amount of discretionary power of the politicians. However, this needs trust and at least "private" (i.e. knowledge on level of ministers/heads of state) transparency on both sides that no cheating takes place.
Seriously? I'm a German and I'm simply surprised no one is out on the streets or that there is no nationwide strike after the revelation that our current government has:
- blatantly lied to us wrt NSA "no-spy deal"
- the BND tries to conceal just how deep they were up the NSA's butthole
- Heckler&Koch tried to get MAD (the military's (counter)-espionage agency) to silence the press over the G36 scandal.
As soon as I got some money together, I'm out. That's not what I consider an acceptable environment here, and I honestly don't see any political force trying to change the way things run (or those who try have no serious hope of ever gaining power).