US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Jan Klimkowski]

More on Gehlen Org, sorry Germany, and the NSA.

Somewhat oddly:

Der Spiegel said the interview was conducted while Snowden was living in Hawaii, via encrypted emails with US documentary maker Laura Poitras and hacker Jacob Appelbaum.

Which begs the question, why has Der Spiegel waited until now to publish details of the interview....

Edward Snowden tells Der Spiegel NSA is 'in bed with the Germans'

Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel's public surprise at snooping

Reuters in Berlin
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 July 2013 17.22 BST
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Angela Merkel
German opposition parties insist that somebody in Merkel's office must have known what was going on. Photograph: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

America's National Security Agency works closely with Germany and other Western states on a "no questions asked"-basis, former NSA employee Edward Snowden said in comments that undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel's indignant talk of "Cold War" tactics.

"They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states," German magazine Der Spiegel quotes him as saying in an interview published on Sunday that was said to be carried out before he fled to Hong Kong in May and divulged details of extensive secret US surveillance.

"Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide," he said.

His comments about cooperation with governments overseas, which he said were led by the NSA's foreign affairs directorate, appear to contradict the German government's show of surprise at the scale of the US electronic snooping.

Germany has demanded explanations for Snowden's allegations of large-scale spying by the NSA, and by Britain via a programme codenamed 'Tempora', on their allies including Germany and other European Union states, as well as EU institutions and embassies.

Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out during President Barack Obama's recent visit that Germany had avoided terrorist attacks thanks to information from allies. But she says there must be limits to the intrusion on privacy and wants this discussed next week in parallel with the start of EU-US free trade talks.

Berlin has alluded repeatedly to "Cold War" tactics Merkel used the term again on Saturday at a political rally and has said spying on friends is unacceptable. Her spokesman has said a transatlantic trade deal requires a level of "mutual trust".

The domestic intelligence chief has said he knew nothing of such widespread surveillance by the NSA. But German opposition parties with an eye on September's federal election insist that somebody in Merkel's office, where the German intelligence agencies are coordinated, must have known what was going on.

The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Der Spiegel report, which follows a report last week in French daily Le Monde saying France also had an extensive surveillance programme.
Der Spiegel has reported that on an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days.

Germans are particularly sensitive about eavesdropping because of the intrusive surveillance in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and during the Nazi era.

Snowden, a US citizen, fled in May a few weeks before the details he provided about the NSA were published and is believed to have been holed up in Moscow airport since June 23.

Bolivia offered asylum on Saturday to Snowden, joining leftist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of the secret US spy programs.

Der Spiegel said the interview was conducted while Snowden was living in Hawaii, via encrypted emails with US documentary maker Laura Poitras and hacker Jacob Appelbaum.

Snowden told them that America's closest allies sometimes went even further than the NSA in their zeal for gathering data.

The Tempora programme of Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency is known in the intelligence world as a "full take".

"It sucks up all information, no matter where it comes from and which laws are broken," Snowden said. "If you send a data packet and goes through Britain, we'll get it. If you download anything, and the server is in Britain, we'll get it."

If the NSA is ordered to target an individual, it virtually take over that person's data "so the target's computer no longer belongs to him, it more or less belongs to the U.S. government".

[Magda Hassan]

Potential consequences for those who support surveillance like PRISM and haven't thought it out yet.

In These Times We Can't Blindly Trust Government to Respect Freedom of Association

Posted on July 7, 2013 by emptywheel
One of my friends, who works in a strategic role at American Federation of Teachers, is Iranian-American. I asked him a few weeks ago whom he called in Iran; if I remember correctly (I've been asking a lot of Iranian-Americans whom they call in Iran) he said it was mostly his grandmother, who's not a member of the Republican Guard or even close. Still, according to the statement that Dianne Feinstein had confirmed by NSA Director Keith Alexander, calls "related to Iran" are fair game for queries of the dragnet database of all Americans' phone metadata.
Chances are slim that my friend's calls to his grandmother are among the 300 identifiers the NSA queried last year, unless (as is possible) they monitored all calls to Iran. But nothing in the program seems to prohibit it, particularly given the government's absurdly broad definitions of "related to" for issues of surveillance and its bizarre adoption of a terrorist program to surveil another nation-state. And if someone chose to query on my friend's calls to his grandmother, using the two-degrees-of-separation query they have used in the past would give the government not always the best friend of teachers unions a pretty interesting picture of whom the AFT was partnering with and what it had planned.
In other words, nothing in the law or the known minimization rules of the Business Records provision would seem to protect some of the AFT's organizational secrets just because they happen to employ someone whose grandmother is in Iran. That's not the only obvious way labor discussions might come under scrutiny; Colombian human rights organizers with tangential ties to FARC is just one other one.
When I read labor organizer Louis Nayman's "defense of PRISM," it became clear he's not aware of many details of the programs he defended. Just as an example, Nayman misstated this claim:

According to NSA officials, the surveillance in question has prevented at least 50 planned terror attacks against Americans, including bombings of the New York City subway system and the New York Stock Exchange. While such assertions from government officials are difficult to verify independently, the lack of attacks during the long stretch between 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings speaks for itself.

Keith Alexander didn't say NSA's use of Section 702 and Section 215 have thwarted 50 planned attacks against Americans; those 50 were in the US and overseas. He said only around 10 of those plots were in the United States. That works out to be less than 20% of the attacks thwarted in the US just between January 2009 and October 2012 (though these programs have existed for a much longer period of time, so the percentage must be even lower). And there are problems with three of the four cases publicly claimed by the government from false positives and more important tips in the Najibullah Zazi case, missing details of the belated arrest of David Headley, to bogus claims that Khalid Ouazzan ever planned to attack NYSE. The sole story that has stood up to scrutiny is some guys who tried to send less than $10,000 to al-Shabaab.
While that doesn't mean the NSA surveillance programs played no role, it does mean that the government's assertions of efficacy (at least as it pertains to terrorism) have proven to be overblown.
Yet from that, Nayman concludes these programs have "been effective in keeping us safe" (given Nayman's conflation of US and overseas, I wonder how families of the 166 Indians Headley had a hand in killing feel about that) and defends giving the government legal access (whether they've used it or not) to among other things metadata identifying the strategic partners of labor unions with little question.
And details about the success of the program are not the only statements made by top National Security officials that have proven inaccurate or overblown. That's why Nayman would be far better off relying on Mark Udall and Ron Wyden as sources for whether or not the government can read US person emails without probable cause than misstating what HBO Director David Simon has said (Simon said that entirely domestic communications require probable cause, which is generally but not always true). And not just because the Senators are actually read into these programs. After the Senators noted that Keith Alexander had "portray[ed] protections for Americans' privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are" specifically as it relates to what the government can do with US person communications collected "incidentally" to a target Alexander withdrew his claims.
Nayman says, "As people who believe in government, we cannot simply assume that officials are abusing their lawfully granted responsibility and authority to defend our people from violence and harm." I would respond that neither should we simply assume they're not abusing their authority, particularly given evidence those officials have repeatedly misled us in the past.
Nayman then admits, "We should do all we can to assure proper oversight any time a surveillance program of any size and scope is launched." But a big part of the problem with these programs is that the government has either not implemented or refused such oversight. Some holes in the oversight of the program are:

• NSA has not said whether queries of the metadata dragnet database are electronically recorded; both SWIFT and a similar phone metadata program queries have been either sometimes or always oral, making them impossible to audit
  
• The FISC does not itself audit this metadata access and given Dianne Feinstein's uncertainty about what queries consist of it appears neither do the Intelligence Committees; Adam Schiff recommended this practice but Keith Alexander was resistant
  
• The government opposed mandated Inspector General reviews of the Section 215 use in the last PATRIOT Act renewal; while DOJ's Inspector General is, on his predecessors own initiative, reviewing its use, he's only now reviewing the program as it existed four years ago
  
• DOJ and CIA's Inspectors General have limited ability to review what FBI and CIA do with the unminimized data they get form NSA's Section 702 collection (though DOJ's IG does have the authority to review what the NSA does)
  
• The government refuses to count (and doesn't appear to document) what happens with the US person information "incidentally" collected under Section 702 that is subsequently searched or read
  

That's just a partial list. And all that's before you get to things we know the government does with this data, like keeping encrypted communications indefinitely, treating threats to property as threats to human life, and only respecting attorney-client privilege for indicted defendants (Note, the first two of these are some of the exceptions to Simon's assertion that entirely domestic communications require probable cause).
How does someone looking to "level[] the playing field between concentrated privilege and the rest of us" defend a program that secretly treats corporate property as human life?
Ultimately, though, Nayman seems most worried about empowering the dwindling TeaParty movement.

So, let's be very careful about doing the Tea Party's dirty work by running to the defense of every leaker with the inclination and means to poke a stick in the government's eye.

This displays another misunderstanding about who on the right really opposes these programs. While Rand Paul has as he did earlier with the drone program offered clown show legislation to play off worries about these programs, Justin Amash is the TeaParty figure most legitimately active in countering these programs (and he has been disempowered by his own party). Amash is joined in his efforts by progressive stalwarts like Barbara Lee and Zoe Lofgren, along with a fascinating mix of others, including paleocons. In the Senate, Mike Lee has been the most effective quiet champion of efforts to bring more oversight to the program, but he has been joined by Lisa Murkowksi and Dean Heller. And often not Rand Paul.
Meanwhile, Nayman is joined in his position attacking Edward Snowden by TeaParty Caucus Chair Michele Bachmann.
One of the biggest problems with blindly trusting the government on these programs is that they've secretly breached First Amendment Freedom of Association for some, including Iranian-Americans, those who encrypt their email, and those who might threaten corporate property. Without unfettered Freedom of Association, the power of labor unions and all others fighting for the rights of working men and women is at risk.
Nayman may be comfortable with that risk so long as we have a Democratic president (though teachers unions are one of the labor groups that should not be). But one President's labor organizer may be the next President's terrorist. And with this dragnet infrastructure in place, it will be far too late at that point to reverse this power grab.

- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/07/07/in-...0wldh.dpuf

[Peter Lemkin]

The NSA can decrypt most encrypted messages - they have both the computer power for this [when they want to devote the computer time to it] and/or have secretly made deals with the companies that sell encryption for back-door keys. All encrypted messages they can't decrypt they keep until they can [more powerful computers in the future - as most encryption is based on mathematical manipulation of data packets by large prime numbers]. It hardly matters, as they keep ALL communications anyway, and then actually look at them when a person becomes a target, for whatever reason[s]. Sick 1984-ish stuff. Of course, even those in the NSA and other intelligence and military agencies [and all politicians, judges, et al.] also have their communications spied upon and recorded...which will lead to any number of internal power plays, blackmail, and purges. We are ruled by madmen, totally out of control, and rapidly moving into full-on fascist police state mode.

[Magda Hassan]

Maybe its time to bring up the issue of Pine Gap again...and the 'effect' it had on a former Oz PM. To my knowledge, Pine Gap is still fully functional, a major node in the worldwide electronic data collection, and a base on Oz territory that is manned by Americans and American troops! I hear that very few Ozzies ever get inside - and the public has little knowledge of what is going on there. I believe it is antipodal to the main downlink GCHQ uses and tied in with a system of spy satellites run by NSA and a few other US electronic spy agencies [oh, yes, we have several!]

Snowden reveals Australia's links to US spy web

DateJuly 8, 2013 - 4:38PM

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Philip Dorling

HMAS Harman is well connected. Photo: Andrew Meares

United States intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has provided his first disclosure of Australian involvement in US global surveillance, identifying four facilities in the country that contribute to a key American intelligence collection program.
Classified US National Security Agency maps leaked by Mr Snowden and published by US journalist Glenn Greenwald in the Brazilian O Globo newspaper reveal the locations of dozens of US and allied signals intelligence collection sites that contribute to interception of telecommunications and internet traffic worldwide.
The US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra are among contributors to the NSA's collection program codenamed X-Keyscore.

Pine Gap is part of the network.

The New Zealand Government Security Communications Bureau facility at Waihopai near Blenheim also contributes to the program.

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X-Keyscore reportedly processes all signals before they are shunted off to various "production lines" that deal with specific issues and the exploitation of different data types for analysis - variously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a "national Intelligence collection mission system".
Worldwide web
The documents published by O Globo show that US and allied signals intelligence collection facilities are distributed worldwide, located at US and allied military and other facilities as well as US embassies and consulates.
Fairfax Media recently reported the construction of a new state-of-the-art data storage facility at HMAS Harman to support the Australian signals directorate and other Australian intelligence agencies.
In an interview published in the German Der Spiegel magazine on Sunday, Mr Snowden said the NSA operates broad secret intelligence partnerships with other western governments, some of which are now complaining about its programs.
Mr Snowden said that the other partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand "sometimes go even further than the [National Security Agency] people themselves."
He highlighted the British Government Communications Headquarters "Tempora" program as an example:
"Tempora is the first 'I save everything' approach ('full take') in the intelligence world. It sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it. ... Right now, the system is capable of saving three days' worth of traffic, but that will be optimised. Three days may perhaps not sound like a lot, but it's not just about connection metadata. 'Full take' means that the system saves everything. If you send a data packet and if makes its way through the UK, we will get it. If you download anything, and the server is in the UK, then we get it."
Mr Snowden also argued that the "Five eyes" partnerships are organised so that authorities in each country can "insulate their political leaders from the backlash" when it became public "how grievously they're violating global privacy".
The Der Spiegel interview was conducted by US cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras via encrypted emails shortly before Mr Snowden revealed himself publicly as the source of leaks of highly classified information on US signals intelligence and surveillance programs.
Another US NSA whistle-blower William Binney also recently disclosed that Australia was involved in the trial of an earlier US-designed Internet traffic interception and analysis program codenamed "ThinThread".
Other countries involved in the trials were the UK, Australia and Germany a decade ago. ThinThread was not adopted but Australia has also been directly involved with later collection programs codenamed "Trailblazer", "Turbulence" and "Trafficthief".
Stranded
The US government has charged Mr Snowden with offences including espionage and revoked his passport.
He has been stranded at a Moscow airport for two weeks after leaving Hong Kong where the US Government has sought his extradition.
Three Latin American countries, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, have now offered Mr Snowden political asylum after European Governments last week denied their airspace to a plane carrying the Bolivian president Evo Morales home from a conference in Moscow after the US State Department alleged that the former US intelligence contractor was on board.
Russian officials have publicly urged Mr Snowden to take up Venezuela's asylum offer. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said on Sunday that his government had not yet been in contact with Mr Snowden.
Mr Jaua said he expected to consult on Monday with Russian officials. Mr Snowden is being assisted by the anti-secrecy organisation, WikiLeaks.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-r...z2YR9Rh3ZZ

[Magda Hassan]

[URL="http://oglobo.globo.com/infograficos/volume-rastreamento-governo-americano/"]http://oglobo.globo.com/infograficos/volume-rastreamento-governo-americano/
T[/URL]hese are the documents and maps published in the Portuguese media that the Australian media have had to use to find out what is happening in Australia...

[Magda Hassan]

NSA Surveillance of Australia Exposed!

Yesterday journalist Glenn Greenwald posted an exclusive story in Brazil's O Globo newspaper, based on the revelations of the incredibly brave ex-NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, which included this page showing slides from NSA presentations.

The page includes four maps of special interest to Australians. The first shows the location of US bases that are part of the X-KEYSTORE program:

As Fairfax journalist Phillip Dorling notes in this must read article, the four bases in Australia include "the US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra."

NOTE: The NZ facility is at Waihopai near Blenheim.


The O Globo article also displays three maps which apparently show phone calls and messages gathered by the NSA's Fairview program over two days (4th & 5th March 2013). Countries with the most interceptions are shown in red, then orange, then yellow, with the least monitored nations shown in green.

US surveillance of Australia (in red) is only matched by Brazil, Colombia and Japan (perhaps some smaller nations are less visible).

NOTE: The writing on these slides is hard to read, but the first word above looks like "Total" so perhaps this is the total over the two days?

The second and third maps show Australia in yellow, again amongst the most monitored nations on earth. Why is this so? Are we not a US ally? Why are we being massively surveilled?

NOTE: Of course the percentage of mobile phone-using people in Brazil, Japan and Australia is relatively high, but there are many others on this list who exceed our per capita rate.

Another map from the O Globo page is also worth noting. This slide is from a different NSA program called Boundless Informant, details of which were previously described here:

Boundless Informant measures US gathering of metadata. In this slide, US monitoring of Australia is still as high as the Soviet Union.

Curiously, the Guardian newspaper showed another image, where Australia appears in dark green. So if this is another daily snapshot, it does not tell us the overall level of metadata surveillance (selective editing perhaps?).

Australians, you should all be very, very angry about this.

Update 1:

Here is a map showing US bases in Australia:

Source: http://t.co/0GoWR2B3UR

And below is a map of global submarine cables, which carry phone and Internet traffic. Not that nearly all links from Asia to USA go via US allies (and NSA surveillance Client States) Australia and Japan.

Source: http://t.co/tHRrLHzJ4U

Add this to the information gathering from Pine Gap and other satellite sites and it is clear that a huge proportion of the NSA's information on Asia comes via Australia. I don't think our neighbors are going to be very happy when they find out.

It's time we Australians told our government that enough is enough! The US Government is not only spying on all of us, but also using us to spy on the entire world!

A personal note: If you value this information, please support the WikiLeaks Party at the coming Australian election.

[Magda Hassan]

More on Gehlen Org, sorry Germany, and the NSA.

Somewhat oddly:

Der Spiegel said the interview was conducted while Snowden was living in Hawaii, via encrypted emails with US documentary maker Laura Poitras and hacker Jacob Appelbaum.

Which begs the question, why has Der Spiegel waited until now to publish details of the interview....

Edward Snowden tells Der Spiegel NSA is 'in bed with the Germans'

Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel's public surprise at snooping

The Der Spiegel interview also says that Stuxnet was made with the NSA and Israel.
[URL="http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden-spiegel-13-0707-en.htm"]http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden-spiegel-13-0707-en.htm

[URL="http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden-spiegel-13-0707-en.htm"]Question: Does the NSA cooperate with other states like Israel?
[/URL]Snowden: Yes, all the time. The NSA has a large section for that, called the FAD - Foreign Affairs Directorate.
Question: Did the NSA help to write the Stuxnet program? (the malicious program used against the Iranian nuclear facilities -- ed.)
[URL="http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden-spiegel-13-0707-en.htm"]Snowden: The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.
[/URL]

[/URL]

[Jan Klimkowski]

Question: Did the NSA help to write the Stuxnet program? (the malicious program used against the Iranian nuclear facilities -- ed.)
Snowden: The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.

Aaaahhhhh. How sweet.

Just like writing a bed time story where everyone lived happily ever after......

I'm amazed PNAC and the neocons weren't openly claiming credit for Sutxnet.

[Phil Dragoo]

the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

The sea powers of Guido Giacomo Preparata's Conjuring Hitler, 2005, whose facilitators such as Montagu Norman, director Bank of England (1922-1944), created the German nationalist phenomenon and its dictator to wrestle with the Bear of Stalin, sending in the Eagle to declare the World Island divided and safe.

The manipulation continues with ever-improving technology.

Blair-Orwell continually revised.

Oceania, why that very descriptor just screams Sea Powers, doesn't it.

The French have a saying for it.

But it's classified.

[Magda Hassan]

Commercial in Confidence.
Intellectual Property.
Business as usual.

German government sells the privacy of German citizens to the US'

Published time: July 08, 2013 13:10

The recent NSA spying scandal showed the German government behaves towards US like a puppet regime, involving all major political parties just before the September elections, German journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter told RT.
RT: Let's just discuss it now with the journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter who is joining us from Berlin. Mr. Ochsenreiter, to what extend do you think Germany may have cooperated with the NSA?
Manuel Ochsenreiter: Well, I think it's a matter of fact that we know that the German authorities, the German mainstream politicians, the German government they all cooperate in a very intense way with US intelligence. I feel a little bit weird to use the term "cooperation" for this because when we look exactly on what is going on that they were spying on German citizens we have to say that the German government behaves towards the US government in this question more or less like a US puppet regime. No claim of sovereignty. No claim of independence. Of course, no claim of privacy, for the right to privacy of their own citizens. So, the German citizens are not at all protected by their own government. The German government sells the privacy of German citizens to the US government. And this is the really, really serious case, it's a big scandal.
RT: Snowden claims top politicians were insulated in case of a scandal - yet now they seem to be outraged. What you are saying is that they might be doing this because of the public outrage. What's got them more angry then, if that's the case that they did not know, or that they did not know about the scale of the operations that they would too be spied on?
MO: To be honest I believe that they are angry that it became public, that now all the facts are open and the citizens can see what's going on because I wouldn't believe any word right now of a government politician. By the way, I'm also not fond of opposition politicians in the German parliament. We have to know that the government before the Merkel government was built by the GPD opposition. And they cooperated as well with the Americans as the today's government are doing this. And when we listen very well to the words of mainstream politicians in Germany we hear right now a lot of justifications of this. Yes, let us say cooperation as they call it. They say it's for our security, they say that this is a partnership, that this is a friendship but, of course, it's not. It's pure spying. And we have to watch a little bit back in the past we had in the 1990s the ECHELON project. It was also USA spy project especially on Germany. And this spying project was especially for economic espionage. The German companies, the German economy was monitored by the US secret service. So, what we see here is that Germany is behaving more or less like, well, let me say like a state fully under control of the US without any independence. And the scandal's not that US are doing that. Real scandal's that the German politicians are not doing something against it…
German politicians should expel the US American military bases'

Angela Merkel (AFP Photo / DPA / Michael Kappeler / Germany out)

RT: Snowden did say that this went beyond agreements between the countries in terms of what they can share, what they can… in terms of sharing information. So, how is this affecting the politicians knowing that. They have been spied on far more than the agreement they had. So, yes, so, we say "yes" they did know about this. But to the extent that they have been spied on, I mean, this is going beyond spying on just their own citizens. It goes it is spying within politicians as well. How are they reacting to that? Is it going to create tension between the US and its allies now? Are they not seeing this? Are we just reading too much into something which is been happening anyway?
MO: We are knowing a very interesting time Germany because we have in September the elections. And I think the spying scandal is really really disturbing the elections campaigns of all the mainstream parties because they all are involved in the scandal. So, what they are doing now is that they all try to give the impression that on the one side they knew about so-called cooperation but that they are completely surprised about how far it went. And to be honest I wouldn't believe any word because we had already the experience in the past about how far the US governments are going and how they treat their so-called allies or their so-called partners. So, if the German politicians… Let me finish with one sentence. If they are really so upset and so surprised as they act now then we have to see the consequences. And they are many consequences we could do with. For example, that the US ambassador is summoned to the Chancellor and is so criticized that there is diplomatic protest, that, for example, we make it to initiate that we have until today US barracks and US army troops on Germans soil. And we know that those military bases are also used for the NSA projects. So we invite the Americans to our country or our politicians invite them in our country to establish their military and intelligence bases there. So, if the German politicians want to do something it's very easy to them just expel the US American military bases. Don't make any more Germany do the military aircraft carried out in Europe of the US Americans. It would be easy but they will not do, because they believe in this partnership which is not a partnership.
RT: So, how does the spying on the EU leaders, and seat with the intelligence community cooperating. I mean, is that a sign that the US doesn't trust its allies? Or it's just keeping a close eye on its allies?
MO: I think this shows a lot about the attitude of the American government has towards the allies because we are never talking about the partnership we are talking about hegemonic politics. They want to be able to control a partnership or something else. Partnership is when two countries make an agreement with each other. But what we see here is that the US are gained the control and for control of those countries. I'm not sure that it will really bring mistrust in the EU bureaucracy because these people are used to that and I'm not sure if they are really upset about this because they know about this. But the interesting question is how long will the population be so tolerant to bear those problems. This is the interesting question.

RT: Just one more from you. In terms of destroying itself, I mean, we now have been focusing a lot on Snowden instead of what he's actually been leaking. Do you think we are just kind of missing what politicians in the EU are trying to cover all of this up, by focusing on him rather then what actually Snowden keeps on releasing?
MO: Why? I don't know. Perhaps, it might be interesting what Snowden has on his four laptops he took with him and I'm pretty much sure the information we got until now is not really 100% percent of what he has with him. I think you know he is in Moscow. Now, I think, the Russians are very interested in the content and the Germans again (I'm from Germany) my politicians, my government, they should be really interested in the content of the full-scale, of these espionage practices if they really want to know this. But I don't see that right now. But I think in the near future we will get may be a lot of surprises how intense the spying is really.

http://rt.com/op-edge/german-government-...cy-us-780/