Shamed Germany severs US spy links
GERMANY’s secret service has stopped helping the Us with its internet surveillance after they were accused of jointly spying on European governments and companies.
The revelation of the extent to which Berlin’s spies were working with Washington’s national security Agency has heaped pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Earlier this week, it emerged they targeted not only suspected terrorists and criminals but also the French presidency, the European Commission and the Airbus group. now the backlash has prompted the BND, Germany’s f oreign i ntelligence agency, to end the cooperation. Polls show most Germans believe the scandal has damaged Mrs Merkel’s credibility, while her coalition partners the social Democrats are demanding full disclosure.
surveillance is a hugely sensitive issue in Germany after the practices employed by the East German stasi, and before that the Gestapo. Berlin now insists the NSA provides a justification for each online surveillance request, a rule with which it has been unable to comply.
The NSA also came under renewed pressure in the Us yesterday after an appeals court ruled its bulk collection of millions of
‘Unprecedented and unwarranted’
Americans’ telephone records is largely illegal. The NSA’s ‘expansive concept’ of what constituted relevant data was ‘unprecedented and unwarranted’, said judges.
Their decision could open the door to a full legal challenge to the practice, which was revealed by American traitor Edward snowden. He also disclosed that Britain’s GCHQ has access to emails and messages that the NSA was collecting from the internet. The judges ruled the bulk of the NSA’s collection of phone call records could not be legally justified under the anti-terrorist Patriot Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had launched the legal challenge to the NSA surveillance, called the decision a ‘resounding victory for the rule of law’.
But with Democrats and Republicans battling in Congress whether to end the operation or widen it, the judges decided not to shut the programme down immediately.
A former deputy director of the CIA has accused snowden of fuelling the rise of Islamic state. Michael Morell says snowden’s leaks led jihadists to switch messaging systems to more ‘secure’ platforms, encrypt them or ‘avoid electronic communications altogether’. In his book The Great War Of Our Time, he writes: ‘It is clear his actions played a role in the rise of Isis.’