Tuesday 10 September 2013

Berlin protests Obama Spynet:



BERLIN: 20,000 PROTEST
OBAMA/NSA SPYNET

More than 20,000 protesters turned out on the streets of central Berlin, the German Capital, last Saturday September 7, to protest the recently revealed spook scandal of US worldwide spynet called "Prism" operated by the so-called "National Security Agency" -NSA. The network was revealed last month by the Edward Snowden files obtained by the whistleblower organisation Wikileaks. Mr Snowden is currently an exile in Moscow having been granted asylum by the Russian Government.




Thousands took to the streets in protests against Internet surveillance activities by the US National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, and the German government's perceived lax reaction to them.
Organisers, among them the opposition Greens, The Left and Pirates parties, said 20,000 people turned out.  The protest was organised under the slogan "Freedom Rather Than Fear" and demonstrators carried banners saying: "Stop spying on us" and, more sarcastically: "Thanks to PRISM (the US government's vast data collection programs) the government finally knows what the people want".

"Intelligence agencies like the NSA shamelessly spy on telephone conversations and Internet connections worldwide (and) our government, one of whose key roles is the protection from harm, sends off soothing explanations," said one speaker,
Kai-Uwe Steffens. On Thursday last week, newly leaked documents alleged that US and British intelligence agencies have cracked the encryption that secures a wide range of online communications - including emails, banking transactions and phone conversations.




The documents provided by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden
to The New York Times, ProPublica and The Guardian suggest that the spy agencies are able to decipher data even with the supposedly secure encryption designed to make it private.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had earlier said that she was unaware of the PRISM programme until the media leaked Snowden’s revelations. That statement was proven false by Der Spiegel magazine, which was able to show that German Secret Services were also involved in the NSA spying process.
 

While the German Chancellor has been careful in commenting about the issue, Germany’s President Joachim Gauck has spoken out in defence of Snowden. As cited by Reuters, the President said, ”This will normally only be put right if information is made public. Whoever draws the public’s attention to it and acts out of conscience deserves respect.” Furthering his stance on the same, Gauck, while talking about the NSA programme, said, “The fear that our telephones or mails are recorded and stored by foreign intelligence services is a constraint on the feeling of freedom and then the danger grows that freedom itself is damaged.”  The demonstration saw many protesters showing their ire for the German government’s actions.

The German government, in the meanwhile, is planning to launch an initiative in order to reduce the criticism it is facing for aiding in the US-led spying programme. To that end, two of Germany’s most senior cabinet members have planned to request the United Nations to change its current privacy legislation, which has remained unchanged since 1966, when innovations like the cell phone and the Internet were not in existence.
 
GERMAN POLICE HELICOPTER BUZZED  US CONSULATE IN FRANKFURT:
 

A German police helicopter has hovered over the US Consulate in Frankfurt, southwest Germany, looking for a secret listening station, prompting a call from the American Ambassador to Germany's Foreign Ministry.
The helicopter circled low over The US consulate in Frankfurt on August 28th on the orders of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Ronald Pofalla, German press reported on Monday. The helicopter flight, whose mission was to gather evidence of the supposed spying station - hints at the German government’s lack of trust in its ally's spying activities on German soil.

The helicopter reportedly flew twice over the consulate at a height of 60 metres to photograph the site. It was seen by the Americans, and reported to the US Embassy in Berlin which immediately lodged a protest with Germany’s Foreign Ministry.

At the US Embassy, a spokesman told reporters: "The helicopter incident was the subject of an Embassy conversation with the Foreign Ministry but, no letter of complaint was sent to the German government."

Chinaware inside the consulate was apparently damaged during the flight press reported, but, no evidence of a listening station was found.

Mrs Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert refused to comment directly on the flight but said Germany’s security services would respond within the law when they suspected foreign secret services of spying, newspaper Die Welt reported.


















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