Turkey has stepped up spying in Germany, says Berlin

Erdogan Dictatorship Referendum

Turkey has stepped up spying in Germany, says Berlin

Amid ongoing diplomatic unrest, German intelligence has reported an increase in Turkish spying in Germany. Turkey's Foreign Minister meanwhile has said Berlin "must decide whether Germany is a friend or not."

Read more: Symbolbild NSU Affäre Verfassungsschutz Jahrestag Terrorismus Rechtsradikale (picture-alliance/dpa)   

While tensions between Berlin and Ankara have escalated ahead of next month's referendum on Turkey's presidency, the German government said on Wednesday that there has been a significant increase in Turkish spying in Germany.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, said divisions in Turkey leading up to the controversial April 16 referendum on boosting the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were mirrored in Germany.

"The BfV is observing a significant increase in intelligence efforts by Turkey in Germany," it said in a statement. No further details were provided.

Already strained relations between Germany and Turkey reached a new low this month in a row over canceled Turkish political rallies to drum up support for the impending referendum.

Some 1.4 million Turks living in Germany are eligible to cast their ballot in the vote.

Hoping to calm the storm on Wednesday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel met with his Turkish counterpart Melvut Cavusoglu in Berlin. While both diplomats agreed on the importance of good relations, Cavusoglu said that Germany must now "decide whether Turkey is a friend or not."

In light of recent comments from both Cavusoglu and Erdogan, Gabriel also made it clear that in maintaining good relations "there are lines that should not be crossed."

"...And one of those is the comparison with Nazi Germany," Gabriel said.

Cavusoglu, meanwhile, said he would host Gabriel for a new round of talks in Turkey "as soon as possible."

In a bid to secure support ahead of next month's referendum, Erdogan himself is also due to hold a rally in Germany. Critics have warned, however that the proposed presidential system which seeks to expand Erdogan's powers as president would cement a one-man rule in the country.

Read more: Turkey has stepped up spying in Germany, says Berlin | News | DW.COM | 08.03.2017

NSA Spying on EU: Report: Evidence of 2011 US cyberattack on EU defense giant EADS in Germany

"Bild am Sonntag" said on today Sunday July 12 that it inspected a "confidential letter" provided by Germany's foreign intelligence services - the BND - to the domestic intelligence agency - the Verfassungsschutz - outlining a "suspected" attack on European arms manufacturer European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) from American soil.

"From a foreign intelligence service, the BND received information about a suspected data tap at EADS Germany," the letter is reported to have said.

The German news outlet claimed that it was the first shred of evidence of a 2011 cyberattack on the French-German manufacturer, headquartered in Munich, since the onset of collaboration between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the BND.

"Bild am Sonntag" reported that on November 2, 2011, hackers planted a spy program on the computers of EADS, during which 5,116 "connections" were said to have been found between the company's computers and the US-based "aggressors."

Germany's Protection of the Constitution committee informed EADS - now known as the Airbus Group - that their networks may have been compromised by the apparent attack, which had been initially traced to a server in Los Angeles.

Read more: Report: Evidence of 2011 US cyberattack on defense giant EADS in Germany | News | DW.COM | 12.07.2015

Spying is bad for business: NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds - by Mike Wheatley

In the weeks following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s massive web surveillance program PRISM, speculation was raised about the negative implications it could have on U.S. cloud companies.

Now, Forrester Research has taken the time to see just what kind of impact it has had, asking a host of foreign firms whether or not PRISM has caused them to scale back their spending on U.S. cloud services, and the answer makes for some uneasy reading.

A total of 1,668 non-U.S. business technology decision makers were quizzed in Forrester’s survey. The exact question asked was “In the past year, has your company explicitly halted or reduced your spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services (e.g., cloud, online service/outsourcing) due to these security concerns?”, with 26 percent of respondents answering in the affirmative.

Forrester followed up by asking the 427 who said yes what their reasons for doing so were, and found that 34 percent cited “fear of the intelligence community spying”. A quick sum of the math shows that 9 percent of foreign firms have therefore ditched U.S. cloud companies due to the NSA, not an insignificant number by any means, despite The Register’s insistence that “Snowden didn’t scare off many”.

It’s worth nothing that the respondents held, on average, only about a third of their company data in U.S. clouds anyway, so their decision to pull out may not be as significant as it first seems. But even so, U.S. cloud firms will still want to take notice of the survey, which indicates that most foreign companies simply don’t trust them all that much anyway, irrespective of the NSA. In total, 53 percent of respondents said they would not trust any of their critical data with a U.S. cloud company, end of story.

Read more: NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds | SiliconANGLE

EU: Leave Facebook if you don't want to be spied on by US, warns EU - by Samuel Gibbs

The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.

The case, dubbed “the Facebook data privacy case”, concerns the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens’ data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.

Schrems maintains that companies operating inside the EU should  not be allowed to transfer data to the US under Safe Harbour protections – which state that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a “self-certify” basis – because the US no longer qualifies for such a status.

The case argues that the US government’s Prism data collection program, revealed by Edward Snowden in the NSA files, which sees EU citizens’ data held by US companies passed on to US intelligence agencies, breaches the EU’s Data Protection Directive “adequacy” standard for privacy protection, meaning that the Safe Harbour framework no longer applies and does not protect citizen’s data.

The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

Read more: Leave Facebook if you don't want to be spied on, warns EU | Technology | The Guardian

Personal Privacy Laws: Britain: Mass spying on UK citizens ‘essential,’ say MPs in landmark report

A British Parliamentary report examining the mass collection of private communications by UK security agencies has defended the practice as “essential.”

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report, published on Thursday, said only a “tiny” proportion of data collected was ever seen by human eyes.
 
Intelligence agencies “do not seek to circumvent the law” and must seek the “specific authorization” of a cabinet minister before spying on individuals in the UK, the ISC said.

However, the committee also said the current legal framework surrounding surveillance “lacks transparency” and is “unnecessarily complicated.”

The ISC called for a single law to be introduced to regulate UK security services and their bulk collection of private communications.

Read more: Mass spying on UK citizens ‘essential,’ say MPs in landmark report — RT UK

Surveillance: 9 Ways You're Being Spied On Every Day

Casinos. Banks. Airports. We all know there are public places where we're being watched, ostensibly for crime-prevention purposes. But with the advancement of digital technologies, "Big Brother's" reach has gotten way wider, recording our movements—and our conversations—in a surprising amount of places.

"Big Brother is becoming more and more intrusive in our private lives and until something is done to scale it back or eliminate it, it's only going to get worse," says David Bakke, Money Crashers tech expert.

Read more: 9 Ways You're Being Spied On Every Day

EU-US Trade Talks And NSA Spying: Britain and Sweden block crucial espionage talks between US and Europe - by Ian Traynor

NSA surveillance scanda

The first talks to soothe transatlantic tensions to be restricted to data privacy and Prism program after Britain and Sweden's veto 

Britain has blocked the first crucial talks on intelligence and espionage between European officials and their American counterparts since the NSA surveillance scandal erupted.

The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA's Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two "working groups" on the espionage debacle with the Americans.

Instead, the talks will consist of one working group focused on the NSA's Prism programme, which has been capturing and storing vast amounts of internet and mobile phone metadata in Europe.

The disclosures in the Guardian over the past month have triggered a transatlantic crisis of confidence and threatened to derail crucial free trade talks between the EU and the US, also due to be launched in Washington on Monday.

The talks on Prism and data privacy have been arranged to coincide with the trade talks in an attempt to defuse the transatlantic tension. EU diplomats and officials say the offer of talks by the Americans is designed to enable the leaders of Germany and France to save face following revelations about the scale of US espionage – particularly in Germany, but also of French and other European embassies and missions in the US.

Other aspects of the dispute, such as more traditional spying and intelligence matters, will be off limits for the Europeans after Britain insisted the EU had no authority to discuss issues of national security and intelligence.

"It was decided. It finished successfully," said Dalia Grybauskaitė, the president of Lithuania, which has just assumed the EU's six-month rotating presidency and which mediated the sensitive talks in Brussels over the past two days  

Note: Several members of the EU-Parliament have said in relation to the above that the EU-Commission is showing "no balls" when it comes to confronting the Americans about their spying activities on European Citizens. As one parliamentarian noted: "who needs enemies when you have friends like this".

Read more: NSA leaks: UK blocks crucial espionage talks between US and Europe | World news | The Guardian

Privacy Rights: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers - by Chris Velazco

The NSA's got its long, spindly proboscises slurping up sweet, sweet information from within governments and businesses the world over, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that wireless carriers are targets, too. That's the thrust of a lengthy new report from The Intercept: The NSA is capable of snooping in on a vast majority of the world's cell phone service providers thanks to an initiative called AURORAGOLD, as revealed in key documents from Edward Snowden's archives.

Rad more: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers

Internet: The Cloud -No, your data isn't secure in the cloud - by Lucas Mearian

While online data storage services claim your data is encrypted, there are no guarantees. With recent revelations that the federal government taps into the files of Internet search engines, email and cloud service providers, any myth about data "privacy" on the Internet has been busted.

Experts say there's simply no way to ever be completely sure your data will remain secure once you've moved it to the cloud.

"You have no way of knowing. You can't trust anybody. Everybody is lying to you," said security expert Bruce Schneier. "How do you know which platform to trust? They could even be lying because the U.S. government has forced them to."

While providers of email, chat, social network and cloud services often claim -- even in their service agreements -- that the data they store is encrypted and private, most often they -- not you -- are the ones who hold the keys. That means a rogue employee or any government "legally" requesting encryption keys can decrypt and see your data.

Even when service providers say only customers can generate and maintain their own encryption keys, Schneier said there's no way to be sure others won't be able to gain access.

For example, Apple's SMS/MMS-like communications platform, iMessage, claims both voice and text are encrypted and can't be heard or seen by third parties. But because the product isn't open source, "there's no way for us to know how it works," said Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "It seems because of the way it works on functionality, they do have a way to access it. The same goes for iCloud."

Note EU-Digest: The Cloud services are also offered to European Internet users. Given that  the storage data banks of  Google, and Apple for Cloud and other similar systems are kept in the US by American companies, and consequently  fall under US jurisdiction, it probably would not be a good idea for EU citizens and businesses to store sensitive material on these data bank services.

Read more: No, your data isn't secure in the cloud | Computerworld

NSA Spy Scandal: Europe's High Court Will Look at Facebook's Possible Role in NSA Spying - by Carol Matlack

Did Facebook (FB) illegally let the U.S. National Security Agency spy on its European users? That question is to be considered by the European Union’s highest court, after an Irish judge questioned whether data that the social network transferred from Europe to its U.S. servers might have fallen into the hands of the spy agency.

In a ruling today, Irish High Court Judge Gerard Hogan asked the European Court of Justice to decide whether Irish regulators should investigate the data transfers, which have been permitted under a transatlantic agreement that assumes U.S. privacy protections are comparable to those in the EU.

 Privacy advocates, led by an Austrian law student named Max Schrems, contend that Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s Prism program showed that the agency conducted “mass and largely unsupervised surveillance” of Facebook users’ data.

Schrems took Ireland’s national data regulator to court after it refused to consider his complaint and dismissed his arguments as “frivolous and vexatious.” But Judge Hogan said Snowden’s disclosures had “exposed gaping holes in contemporary U.S. data protection practice” that could undermine the U.S.-EU agreement.

He asked the European court to determine whether an investigation of Facebook’s data transfers was warranted in light of the disclosures. The case was filed in Ireland because Facebook’s European operations are headquartered there.

Read more: Europe's High Court Will Look at Facebook's Possible Role in NSA Spying - Businessweek

Government Spying: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - by Adam Satariano

Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents revealing the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, said technology companies need to take a leadership role in improving encryption tools.

“There’s a technical response that needs to occur,” said Snowden, speaking through a video feed to a packed room of more than 3,000 people today at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Technology companies can add layers of security that make it harder for intelligence agencies to scour for data, and can do it faster than new surveillance-oversight laws can be implemented, he said.

Snowden is now a fugitive in Russia to avoid arrest following last year’s release of the documents, which disclosed how global spy agencies collect vast amounts of data about phone calls and online activities. The revelations frayed U.S. relationships with countries such as Brazil and Germany and set off a global debate about whether the government is overstepping its authority and violating privacy to bolster security.

The leaks from Snowden, a former NSA contractor, showed that the U.S. had been collecting phone records as well as data from companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. The disclosures made Snowden a hero to some people who want to see government activities reined in, while others, including U.S. President Barack Obama, say his actions compromised efforts to combat terrorism.

Security and privacy have been main themes of South by Southwest this year. Known as the conference that helped catapult Twitter Inc. to popularity, the gathering typically focuses on the discovery of new social-networking companies. Instead, this year’s event has focused more on the drawbacks and consequences of sharing personal information online.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke at the conference on March 8 and said the group would soon release a new trove of classified information. He didn’t disclose the timing or the topic of the material because he said he didn’t want to give the subjects a chance to prepare.

Other speakers, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, have discussed the impact of Snowden’s leaks. Schmidt said the material alerted his company to the fact the U.S. government was intercepting data from Google’s servers. Schmidt said the company has since enhanced its encryption and is “pretty sure” the government can’t access the data.

Still, he said the company must comply with court orders for information. Schmidt said there must be a balance between transparency and security, because the government data being disclosed could put lives at risk. Assange and Snowden’s release of classified information have made them “celebrities,” Schmidt said, and may spawn copycat efforts, increasing the risk for harm if the disclosures aren’t done carefully.

Read more: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - Bloomberg

NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament - by Loek Essers

"Don't worry EU, we are your friend"

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has turned the European Union into a tapping “bazaar” in order to spy on as many EU citizens as possible, NSA leaker Edward Snowden said.

The NSA has been working with national security agencies in EU member states to get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible, Snowden said in a testimony sent to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) published Friday March 7.

The European Parliament had invited Snowden to provide testimony for an inquiry into the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens. That surveillance, often instigated by the NSA but carried out with help of EU member states, is quite extensive, he wrote.

The NSA has been pressuring EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance, according to Snowden. This is done through NSA’s Foreign Affairs Division (FAD), he said, adding that lawyers from the NSA and GCHQ work very hard “to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers,” he said.

The deals between the NSA and foreign partners are set up in such a way as to provide the NSA with a means of monitoring a partner’s citizens without informing the partner, and to provide the partner with a means of plausible deniability, he said.

“The result is a European bazaar, where an EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn't search for Germans. Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements,” Snowden said.

Snowden, who said that he’s still seeking asylum in the EU, also provided solutions to solve the mass surveillance problem.

It is easy to make mass surveillance more expensive through changes in technical standards, he said. “Pervasive, end-to-end encryption can quickly make indiscriminate surveillance impossible on a cost effective basis,” he said, adding that the result is that governments are likely to fall back to traditional, targeted surveillance founded upon an individualized suspicion.

The European Parliament is set to vote on a draft resolution on Wednesday March 12 that seeks to keep data protection out of EU-U.S. trade talks. The MEPs want the EU to suspend two deals with the U.S., one on exchanging banking data and the other on the Safe Harbor privacy principles for U.S. firms holding European data, as, they say, the fight against terrorism can never justify secret and illegal mass surveillance.

The MEPs will also vote on a proposal for stronger safeguards for data transfers to non-EU countries.

Wednesday’s vote could result in the updating of 19-year-old data-protection laws. Under MEPs’ amendments, companies breaking the rules would face fines of up to €100 million (about $139 million), or up to 5 percent of their annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greater, according to the Parliament

Read more: NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament | PCWorld

The Netherlands - NSA Spying: Home affairs minister Plasterk under fire over security service phone taps

Ronald Plasterkerk and the NSA

Dutch Home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk and defence minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert were summoned by the prime minister on Wednesday night to explain the confusion over exactly who gathered information on 1.8 million phone calls and text messages.

The ministers told parliament yesterday the Dutch, not the American, secret services were responsible for monitoring the phone calls, and that the information had then been shared with the US authorities.

Parliament is due to debate the latest information next week. Opposition MPs want to know if Plasterk deliberately misinformed parliament last year when he stated NSA was behind the information gathering.

Plasterk said: 'The details were collected in the interest of counter-terrorism activities and military operations abroad,’ the briefing stated. The information was then ‘shared with the US’.

Note EU-Digest: The question that needs to be asked in the Dutch Parliament is - "who requested the info in the first place and if it was the NSA why were Dutch citizen privacy rights breached and why was this information given so freely to this US spy agency ? "

Read more: DutchNews.nl - Home affairs minister under fire over security service phone taps

The Netherlands-Privacy Rights Violations:US taps 1.8 million Dutch phone numbers-very few taps related to terrorism

DutchNews NL reports that the American National Security Agency tapped 1.8 million Dutch telephones in one month alone as part of its "Boundless Informant Surveillance Program"..

The raw information was first published by Der Spiegel in June but has now been interpreted by Dutch technology website Tweakers following publication in Le Monde.

Between the beginning of December and beginning of January, 1.8 million Dutch phone numbers were tapped into by the NSA, recording information about number and possibly location, Tweakers said.

The numbers were compared against a database of suspect numbers and, Tweakers says, if a number was on the list, calls to and from the number were listened in to.

In Germany, 500 million numbers were picked up by the NSA and in France 70 million. Paris has now summoned the US ambassador to explain events. According to Le Monde, documents show the NSA was allegedly targeting not only terrorist suspects but politicians, business people and others.

The raw information comes from whistleblower Edward Snowden. VVD parliamentarian Klaas Dijkhoff said the news that the US is obtaining telephone information in the Netherlands on such a broad scale is ‘disappointing’.

'If it was the Chinese or the Russians, then no-one would be surprised,’ he is quoted as saying by Tweakers ‘But this is an ally and that makes it extra disappointing.’

The Netherlands is already the most heavily phone-tapped country in the world. The number of phone taps rose 3% to nearly 25,500 last year, according to justice ministry figures. And the number of requests for information about phone calls - such as the location calls were made from - reached almost 57,000, up 10% on 2011.

The above  figures do not include taps by the Dutch security services.

The question the EU Commission and Parliament should pose, and so far have not ; "why would the EU want to negotiate a comprehensive and  far reaching trade agreement with the US when they can't be trusted and as a matter of fact even have been caught bugging offices of the EU in Bruxelles and  the US ?"

The Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) of 2010 agreed on by the EU and US, which supplies bank and credit card transaction information to the U.S. treasury in an apparent effort to trace funding to terrorist groups, should probably also be scrapped now it has became evident the Americans have been abusing the agreement. 

Almere-Digest

Netherlands: Famous WWI Spy Mata Hari's Dutch Birthplace Destroyed by Fire

Mata Hari in Paris

Over the weekend the home in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, in where exotic dancer and WWI spy Mata Hari was born got totally destroyed in a fire.

One person was killed by the fire on Saturday evening as it engulfed several buildings in Leeuwarden, about 140km (87 miles) north of Amsterdam.

Local media said the victim was thought to be a 24-year-old man who had lived in a flat in the buildings.

Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in August 1876, to a shopkeeper and a Javanese ( Indonesian) mother.

In the early 1900s she left her husband and travelled to Paris where she found fame as an exotic dancer. Her work brought her into contact with many high society figures.

But she was arrested by France during WWI, accused of being a spy for Germany.

Her defense attorney, veteran international lawyer Edouard Clunet, faced impossible odds; he could not cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses or directly question his own witnesses. Under the circumstances, her conviction was a foregone conclusion. She was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

German documents unsealed in the 1970s proved that Mata Hari was truly a German agent however. In the autumn of 1915, she entered German service, and on orders of section III B-Chief Walter Nicolai, she was instructed about her duties by Major Roepell during a stay in Cologne. Her reports were to be sent to the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle West (War News Post West) in Düsseldorf under Roepell as well as to the Agent mission in the German embassy in Madrid under Major Arnold Kalle, with her direct handler being Captain Hoffmann, who also gave her the code name H-21.

Several films have been made about Mata Hari's life, most famously in 1931 where she was played by Greta Garbo.

Also read more in: BBC News - Mata Hari's Netherlands birthplace destroyed in fire

Netherlands: "The Dutch ‘have no idea’ about the scale of the US espionage activities in the Netherlands" says Glenn Greenwald

American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who helped publish reports on the US’s internet-based spying program, says the Dutch ‘have no idea’ about the scale of the US espionage activities in the Netherlands.

In an interview with the Volkskrant, Greenwald says the revelations about the situation in the Netherlands will be published soon.

‘I have a lot of information about the Netherlands but I cannot go into it yet,’ Greenwald said. 'The tone of debate in the Netherlands may well change when the revelations are published.'

Dutch reaction to the revelations has been fairly muted so far, the paper points out. In mid-September the government published its official reaction, stating that the US has now promised the EU to inform it about its spy programmes and welcoming US discussions about improving transparency.

This, the paper states, is in sharp contrast to the justice ministry’s recent report on cyber security which stated digital spying by foreign states poses a serious threat.

Read more in Volskrant