German Parliament Spy Oversight Board Sues German Government Over Data Sharing With NSA

from the uncharted-territory dept

After Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of spying being carried out around the world by the NSA and its Five Eyes friends, there have been a number of attempts in other countries to find out what has been going on. One of the most thoroughgoing of these is in Germany, where there is a major parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in that country. As Techdirt reported back in May, a surprising piece of information to emerge from this is that Germany's secret service has been carrying out spying on behalf of the NSA, which sent across various "selectors" -- search terms -- that it wanted investigated in the German spies' surveillance databases.

One group of people particularly shocked to hear this were the German parliamentarians who make up the G10 Commission that must approve spying operations in Germany. A post on Intellectual Property Watch explains why:

The German Foreign Intelligence Services, supported by the government, tapped the German Internet Exchange Point Decix, the largest internet exchange point globally. While the G10 Commission had approved the blanket tapping, they were unaware that some of the tapped data were forwarded to the NSA, the US National Security Agency, based on a list of so-called "selectors" -- names or numbers the NSA sent to their German colleagues.
Understandably annoyed, the G10 Commission demanded to see a complete list of those selectors so that it could check what information had been passed to the NSA, and whether any laws had been broken. The German government said that it would not disclose them. After misleading the oversight body about who would have access to information obtained from the Decix tapping, the German government's refusal to provide the selectors adds insult to injury. So much so, that it has apparently driven the G10 Commission to take unprecedented action: hauling the German government before the country's constitutional court, which decides weighty matters of this kind.

Since this is uncharted territory -- the G10 Commission had to find out whether taking legal action against the government in this way was even possible -- nobody really knows what might come of the move. But at the very least, it's yet another indication of the seismic shifts that are still occurring throughout the world of surveillance as a result of Snowden's unprecedented leaks.

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Filed Under: ed snowden, german parliament, germany, lawsuit, mass surveillance, nsa, oversight, surveillance


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  • icon
    That One Guy (profile), 4 Dec 2015 @ 1:54am

    Empty authority and meaningless titles

    Any 'oversight' group that cannot demand compliance from those they are overseeing and punish refusal is nothing more than a powerless group, meant merely to give the appearance of oversight, without any substance.

    If the G10 Commission loses in court they might as well resign en-mass from it, as it will have been made crystal clear that they are not intended to provide oversight, merely to rubber-stamp anything put before them, and I would hope, given the spine they're showing suing the government, that they would have too much pride to knowingly act as nothing but mindless tools for the government.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 3:48am

    I imagine the German spooks want to know what Angela Merkel ordered for lunch too.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 4:13am

    sounds like the serfs the world over are revolting

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 6:02am

      Re:

      sounds like the serfs the world over are revolting

      Yes, serfs are quite revolting. They can't even eat cake properly.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 6:06am

    As I Said Before

    When performing the 5 eye shuffle while playing semantic games, rules are unimportant. If one player gets too close to a rule, or rules get changed on a player's home turf, they just pass the ball. It gets quite frenetic, watching five players juggling a few trillion data points while trying to look like they are searching haystacks for needles when the are actually charged with looking for terrorists, oh, and avoiding those pesky irrelevant rules thingys. Meanwhile the goal of collect it all is collectively achieved.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 6:25am

    Need to do something to distract the serfs from the BNDs criticism of the Saudis...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 8:18am

    secret governments abound and supposedly free people all over are learning some hard truths.

    thank you, again, edward snowden. what you did is making our part of the world grow up.

    hero.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2015 @ 2:23am

    Germany is under allied occupation and regarding intelligence is nothing more than NSA's cableguy.
    this legal show is all a farce.
    techdirt readers should already know this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2015 @ 2:30am

    even Sigmar Gabriel (just the Vice-Chancellor of Germany) already publicly screamed Merkel is the managing director of a non-governmental organization.
    "wir haben gar keine Bundesregierung, wir haben, Frau Merkel ist Geschäftsführerin einer neuen – Nichtregierungsorganisation in Deutschland!"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2015 @ 2:31am

    here the G10 farce in German
    https://youtu.be/exO_-umPSd4

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2015 @ 2:47am

    the german spy agency BND has repeatedly answered to EVERY request from the german "government"
    that they need to ask permission from the USG FIRST to see IF/WHAT they can leak to the german "government"

    that should give you an idea of who is the boss here

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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