WikiLeaks says NSA spied on top German politicians 'for decades'

[reorg]

Source: Deutsche Welle

TOP STORIES
Espionage

an/jr (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)
Date 08.07.2015

The WikiLeaks report, released on Wednesday, suggests NSA spying on German officials went on far longer and more widely than previously thought. The website published a new list of German phone numbers it claims showed the NSA targeted the officials for surveillance.

The list of 56 partially redacted phone numbers includes those belonging to staff of the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as well as his predecessor, Helmut Kohl. Also on the list were numbers attributed to former diplomat Geza Andreas von Geyr, who now works for the Ministry of Defense, and Ronald Pofalla, who was the former head of Angela Merkel's chancellery between 2009 and 2013.

... These latest disclosures come barely a week after WikiLeaks posted documents from the 1990s revealing contact details of various officials in Germany's Finance Ministry, as well as staff in the Ministry of Agriculture, European policy advisers and an official working in the European Central Bank. The leaks display a special interest in Merkel's handling of the financial crisis in Greece, and her thoughts on the heads of key financial institutions.

The secret-spilling site says both sets of reports illustrate that "the NSA explicitly targeted, for long-term surveillance, 125 phone numbers for top German officials, and did so for political and economic reasons." It claimed the lists were updated for more than a decade after 2002, and a "close study" of it reveals it evolved from a previous list in the 1990s.

Read more: http://www.dw.com/en/wikileaks-says-nsa-spied-on-top-german-politicians-for-decades/a-18571708

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RELEASE: All the Chancellor's Men: The Merkel NSA target list https://t.co/DVf61ZocIr

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 8, 2015

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Every developed country/kingdom/empire with surveillance infrastructure

has been "spying on" every other country that matters to them (or their own people), for millenia.

[reorg]

3. Well, East Germany sent its agents to the West

Some of them engaged in love affairs with secretaries of the same kind of officials whose phone calls the NSA is tapping now, others became NATO officials or high level advisors of the Chancellor. When they were caught, though, they went to prison.

That is what seems to be different here. Despite their immense data theft (more than one Terabit per second for I don't know how long at just one data center, DeCix in Frankfurt) and treacherous tactics towards their German partner BND, I haven't heard of any arrests yet.

'Even US officials have to obey the law' said Merkel's chief of staff, Mr Altmaier, but if they don't there are no consequences, apparently.

[Nitram]

2. I'm shocked! Shocked,I tell you!