The phrase is mythical, although it seems increasingly naive. Angela Merkel said in October 2013: “It’s not possible to spy on friends.” The chancellor became angry when she learned that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had clicked on her cell phone. The excitement was so cool, that even Attorney General Harald Ring began proceedings in 2014, which were suspended a year later. But now there is anger again. At the end of the week, it became known that Danish Military Intelligence Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE) helped the NSA eavesdrop on Merkel and other politicians from 2012 to 2014. Current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then foreign minister, and his party friend Peer Steinbrück, a candidate for the position Counselor for the Social Democratic Party in the 2013 elections. Steinbrück talks about a scandal.
In the case of the northern neighbor of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Danish radio station DR, the NDR and WDR Research Network and the Süddeutscher Zeitung as well as other European media have now discovered that spying on friends is a very good thing. . US espionage was not only targeting Germany. Politicians in Sweden, Norway and France have also been affected. FE granted its NSA colleagues use of the Sandagergardan listening station, south of Copenhagen. In the secret facility, the Americans used an internet hub for several submarine cables. Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have asked Denmark and the United States to clarify the matter.
The advisor also used the CDU’s insecure cell phone
However, discontent with the agency’s cooperation is limited in German security services. “It’s our biggest problem,” says one expert. “German politicians use very little secure communication channels.” In fact, another expert accuses Merkel of making “uncontrolled” phone calls. The chancellor used, at least until 2013, an insecure CDU cell phone in addition to her government cellphone, which is hard to crack. The NSA can poach the device.
“Our politicians are talking about open things that they shouldn’t be talking about publicly,” former FBI chief August Hanning said Monday. “It’s very interesting what ministers are discussing with their office managers in the morning from their car.” Not only western friends can help themselves, “but also the Russians and the Chinese.” The unwillingness of politicians to pay more attention to securing contact and following the advice of their security authorities is one of several indicators of Hanning’s general problem: “Germany is facing difficulties with the intelligence services.”
However, in security circles, it is also mentioned critically that the FBI supported the NSA in wiretapping in European partner countries – and also spying on institutions and people, including Germans, in friendly countries via self-developed “locators”. The NSA story began when former employee Edward Snowden released several internal documents.
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The Danish government knows all this, but is embarrassed about the revelation. “The systematic eavesdropping on close allies is unacceptable,” Defense Minister Tren Bramsen told Danish Radio. The Chairman of the Bundestag Parliamentary Oversight Committee, Rodrich Kesswiter (CDU), reacted moderately. “The eavesdropping on political actors is part of the intelligence services’ job to give the government security to operate,” said Kiesewetter Tagesspiegel. “Everything else does not reflect reality, it is wishful thinking in all respects.” In the field of intelligence, there are no friends, “only close partners, partners and others.” “The United States and Denmark will remain our close partners,” Kiesewetter emphasized. As for Germany, “partners are not eavesdropped, the German Federal Intelligence Service complies with strict legal requirements.”
The intelligence chief had to go
Sevim Dagdelen, head of the left-wing parliamentary group on the Foreign Affairs Committee, was tough. The NSA’s support by the Danish foreign and military intelligence services to spy on European citizens for years was “intolerable and unjustifiable”. Dagdelin said the federal government should “press for a full clarification, and for its part, reveal the extent to which the FBI is still involved in the illegal wiretapping of the NSA.” Western intelligence “in favor of the illegal espionage program of the United States must be stopped immediately.”
It remains to be seen to what extent FE cooperated with the NSA in spying on German targets. Anyway, FE used it too Did the Danes also listen to Merkel, or did they just make the station available to the United States? The Danish government may have known this for a long time. In an exam that began in 2014 in FE for collaboration with the NSA, it was found that FE was an NSA-spying program XKeyscore They used and considered targets in their government, in the State Department and the Ministry of Finance. As well as a Danish arms company. The findings were summarized in 2015 in the confidential report “Operation Dunhammer”. Last year, FE Chairman Lars Vindsen lost his job. However, the Dunhammer report did not reveal the targeting of Merkel, Steinmeier and Steinbrück until now only through research conducted by Danish and German journalists and others.
