Posted on 06/23/2017 9:09:26 PM PDT by Lorianne
Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday.
The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006.
These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as email addresses at the White House as well as the US finance and foreign ministries.
Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions including the US Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human Rights Watch.
Hundreds of foreign embassies as well as international organisation like the International Monetary Fund were not spared, Spiegel said. The BND declined comment in the Spiegel report. Germany had reacted with outrage when information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that US agents were carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.
Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany where state spying on citizens was rampant, declared repeatedly that "spying among friends is not on" while acknowledging Germany's reliance on the US in security matters.
SNIP
Give them time. They are still reeling from the Georgia loss.
Everyone spies on everyone else. They usually just don’t talk about it. It’s a fact of international relations and helps keep wars from getting out of hand.
Not only did she grew up, she was a friggin' officer in the East German Communist Military.
No big deal. If a country’s intelligence services are not spying on other countries (including allied countries) they’re not really carrying out their responsibilities.
“and helps keep wars from getting out of hand.”
A FAR more solid case can be made that it causes them, makes them worse, and causes more misery in the world.
Spying CAUSES far more misery than it ever prevented. Ten fold at least.
Not the least of the damage it does is to make us into a nation people regard as wormy, as a sneak, as dishonest. As in individuals, that reputation damages you far beyond the value of what you may learn.
Spying is basically the ethics of the coward.
When I was in Germany, from 80 to 84, I was amazed at how much affinity that many Germans had for the communist Soviet Union.
“foreign embassies as well as international organisation like the International Monetary Fund were not spared, Spiegel said.”
IMF a target? Actually I’ve wondered at times whether various intelligence services didn’t use IMF or World Bank staff as some level of agent. Staff from both institutions travel abroad frequently “on mission” and likely have access not available to embassy types or private citizens on holiday.
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