Germany 'accidentally' snooped on John Kerry and Hillary Clinton Calls made by US secretary of state John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton were "accidentally" intercepted by German intelligence agencies, Der Spiegel reports. The Bundesnachrichtdienst (BND), the German intelligence service, snooped on a satellite phone conversation that Kerry made in 2013, a year after it …
"It's like the horrible Bruce Willis movie, Diehard, where everyone, and I mean everyone, was sharing the same frequency. Police, Fire, Rescue, ATC, CB, Aliens, everyone." I would suggest you go watch the movie again. Willis's character switches to the police emergency frequency to make his first attempt to contact the police from the rooftop. The dispatcher even warns him that he is using a restricted frequency for emergency use only, to which Willis replies something along the lines of "No shit, lady, does it sound like I'm ordering a pizza?" The unexplained bit is how Hans Gruber hears that transmission as he is not seen switching to the police bands, though you could excuse that by saying it was part of his plan to monitor police bands all along. Willis then uses the normal police bands to talk to the other cops as 'Roy'. As a cop it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he would know the regular and emergency police frequencies.
And Diehard 'horrible'?!? Seriously? I take it your preferred viewing is more along the lines of 'serious cinematic efforts' by people like Michael Moore? No wonder Diehard was a bit tough for you to follow....
"Oh dear, Matt, and you were doing *SO* well, right up until the last paragraph where you had to get in a dig at *someone* on the Left..." <Yawn> I'd be upset if I didn't already know Michael Moore's docuganda is about the limit of your capabilities. I assume from the complete lack of relevance your post bears to the thread that you haven't been spoonfed any thoughts on the Germany doing that 'nasty' eavesdropping thing yet?
@Matt and any like-minded: what are you doing here? This is free. All right-minded, right-thinkers should use only things that cost money. Avoid these socialist ideas of free or very cheap things for the masses.
Just because you disagree I see precious little difference between the extremes of either excuse for thought. Interesting that both need to demonise others, often by name.
It's a bit like swearing - removes the need for the ability to speak or write cogently or think and have reasoned opinions. Properly thought-through opinions would see the good and bad in both and acknowledge these, rather than lambast the other on some kind of "principal", otherwise known as ignorance.
As for the topic: of course Germany (and Britain and France ...) spies on the USA. For most of the time USA is behind most of the nastier political problems of the rest of the world, taking the reasonable view that, for the USA, USA interests come first and these are often at odds with those of its "allies". Real governments and security agents know that very well.
The same was true of Britain and France and Russia and any other regime aspiring to signficance.
"....USA is behind most of the nastier political problems of the rest of the world...." Really? And you have some form of evidence to show that? Is the US somehow to blame for the continued Chinese occupation of Tibet, did the US somehow force Mao into that act and how are they forcing the current Chinese government's actions? Did the US somehow force the Chinese into their current dispute with every single neighbouring country with their landgrab in the South China Sea? How about the alleged damage done to Venezuela's economy by people smuggling subsidised goods and petrol into Colombia, did The Man put a gun to Hugo Chavez's head when he came up with that vote-grabbing economic policy? Did the US somehow fire the HAMAS rockets from Gaza that punctured the last ceasefire and negotiations between Israel and the PNA? How about the abduction of girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, how was that an US-inspired act? Or is it more of the usual Leftie autonomic response when confronted with someone else doing wrong - "ignore that because I have been told American evil is the real evil" - how open-minded! I have met in-duh-visuals like you before, they always have some clumsy and illogical reason for blaming all the World's ills on 'Evil America', even down to some truly hilarious justifications for people like Stalin and Pol Pot.
"....for the USA, USA interests come first ...." Wow, how blinkered you are! I think you'll find that EVERY government in the World tends to put their concerns first, it's kind of what their citizens expect. You are obviously too busy hating to actually have anything even close to an original opinion.
"Would be interesting to know if they really did delete it once they realised it was irrelevant to the case they were investigating. If so their moral authority isn't that badly dented." WTF? So, if the NSA and chums capture innocent conversations and delete them then the sheeple say they are worse than Satan, but if the Germans do it then they're 'morally OK'?!? Sorry, but there's no chance of letting the sheeple get away with that selective bias! And Angela Merkel needs to be making a really big apology.
Judging from news reports the NSA went after everyone and everything regardless of its value to them and even broke the laws they were suppose to be uploading in order to do so. I've only seen a few articles on this but both of them said that the politicians weren't the main targets of this surveillance and when they realised what had happened the recordings were destroyed. Given their recent past Germans are a lot more sensitive about this than most western countries it could be that they’ve got not only checks and balances but enforce them as well.
"....They should apologise to their fellow citizens if they were not monitoring USA and other countries. That's their job, for security." Merkel in particular should apologise for making political hay out of her faux indignation at possible eavesdropping when her own spooks were doing exactly what she criticised. Or do your socio-political blinkers not allow you to see the hypocrisy?
Again and again we are fed this trite nonsense: NEWS ALERT! SPIES SPY WITH THEIR FREAKISHLY LARGE EYE! The real issue, total surveillance of every civilian on a planetary scale, is gracefully overlooked. Cannot eat as much as I want to throw up, as we say here in Teutonia.
Use encryption when you need to and don't when you don't. Simple as that. Yeah it might be annoying we spy on you people but if we didn't then sometimes we might not get the bad guy. Kind of like when you go through your kid's top dresser drawer or look under their mattress. Gotta look out for their well being ya know? If you feel guilty doing whatever it is your doing then protect yourself and we'll move on to an easier target (or try to crack your algorithm depending on factors such as signal origin, destination, etc.)
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