Snowdon is a dummy

Actually, I read it in a BBC report.

Frank Apisa wrote:

I do not know what an "ordering agency" is.

I'd appreciate you informing me, Walter.

What I do know is that the NSA and CIA have agents within the embassy.
It could well be that there are agents from the DIA, MI, INR, I&A or some other.

I really appreciate your confidence, Frank, that I'm educated in everything about spying in Germany. But I don't have other sources than you could have as well - there's no hint online which of those agencies gave the orders to spy on the committee or to deliver the documents or ...

Frank Apisa wrote:

Actually, I read it in a BBC report.

Certainly less biased as if it was a German source.

But the BBC report may well be less biased than the German source.

I wonder...if this guy eventually pleads that he was doing it in what he considered the interests of Germany...will you consider him a hero as you do Snowden?

Frank Apisa wrote:

But the BBC report may well be less biased than the German source.

I quoted from these media who investigated and published first about it.
The BBC only quotes them, summarised their reports (without the videos and live interviews).

Frank Apisa wrote:

I wonder...if this guy eventually pleads that he was doing it in what he considered the interests of Germany...will you consider him a hero as you do Snowden?

I do have more than just some difficulties to follow you here again, Frank:
a) this guy confessed the spying,
b) he confessed that he was engaged by the USA,
c) he confessed that he did it for the money he got from ...
My main confusion, however, is what here could be the interest of Germany:
- that our legally elected members of parliament and we shouldn't know who spies on us?
- that a court-like parliamentary committee's inquiry should be spied on by the USA?
- that acted against our constitution is in the interest of Germany?

It certainly could be that he says something like that. It isn't know so far.

Coming back to your question:
I have never said that I consider Snowden to be a hero.


Besides that, it would be more than queer that I want the Snowden-affair to be investigated and than call someone a hero who tries to hinder that.

I wont answer any of your posts or react to your responses from now onwards besides perhaps when they are included in someone else's post.

The USA is worse than Russia when it comes to third world countries.

Files provided by Snowden show extent to which ordinary Web users are caught in the net
[...]
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.

The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

Among the most valuable contents — which The Post will not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations — are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.
[...]
Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained, have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless.

In order to allow time for analysis and outside reporting, neither Snowden nor The Post has disclosed until now that he obtained and shared the content of intercepted communications. The cache Snowden provided came from domestic NSA operations under the broad authority granted by Congress in 2008 with amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA content is generally stored in closely controlled data repositories, and for more than a year, senior government officials have depicted it as beyond Snowden’s reach.

The Post reviewed roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.

The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks.
[...]
“None of the hits that were received were relevant,” two Navy cryptologic technicians write in one of many summaries of nonproductive surveillance. “No additional information,” writes a civilian analyst. Another makes fun of a suspected kidnapper, newly arrived in Syria before the current civil war, who begs for employment as a janitor and makes wide-eyed observations about the state of undress displayed by women on local beaches.
[...]
Most of the people caught up in those programs are not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such. “Incidental collection” of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, but in other contexts the U.S. government works harder to limit and discard irrelevant data. In criminal wiretaps, for example, the FBI is supposed to stop listening to a call if a suspect’s wife or child is using the phone.

... ... ... ... ...

In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are

Quote:

Files provided by Snowden show extent to which ordinary Web users are caught in the net
[...]
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.

The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

Among the most valuable contents — which The Post will not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations — are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.
[...]
Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained, have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless.

In order to allow time for analysis and outside reporting, neither Snowden nor The Post has disclosed until now that he obtained and shared the content of intercepted communications. The cache Snowden provided came from domestic NSA operations under the broad authority granted by Congress in 2008 with amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA content is generally stored in closely controlled data repositories, and for more than a year, senior government officials have depicted it as beyond Snowden’s reach.

The Post reviewed roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.

The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks.
[...]
“None of the hits that were received were relevant,” two Navy cryptologic technicians write in one of many summaries of nonproductive surveillance. “No additional information,” writes a civilian analyst. Another makes fun of a suspected kidnapper, newly arrived in Syria before the current civil war, who begs for employment as a janitor and makes wide-eyed observations about the state of undress displayed by women on local beaches.
[...]
Most of the people caught up in those programs are not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such. “Incidental collection” of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, but in other contexts the U.S. government works harder to limit and discard irrelevant data. In criminal wiretaps, for example, the FBI is supposed to stop listening to a call if a suspect’s wife or child is using the phone.

... ... ... ... ...

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a visit to Mongolia on Sunday that: "If the reports are true, then we're not dealing with small issues." Therefore the United States must "collaborate [with Germany] since it has the capability to obtain the fastest possible information [on the subject]." Steinmeier also said that "out of self-interest, the U.S. should also follow their obligation to cooperate", and not simply sweep it under the carpet.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also told the Bild newspaper "quick and clear" statements need to be made by the US concerning the double agent.
[...]
German parliamentarians across the political spectrum, including Merkel's traditionally pro-American CDU, have already expressed outrage over the allegations.
"If it turns out to be true that a BND employee worked for the US embassy for years, it would be a huge breach of trust in the transatlantic relationship," Stephan Mayer, the internal affairs spokesman for Merkel's conservative parliamentary grouping, told Bild.