Germany to beef up spy defenses against allies – report

BERLIN - Germany plans to beef up its counterintelligence tactics against allied countries in response to revelations of widespread US spying, Der Spiegel magazine reported Sunday.

The weekly said the German government was considering deploying its own agents to keep tabs on Western secret services and embassies on German soil including those of the United States and also Britain.

It said the domestic intelligence service aimed to glean precise information about foreign spies using diplomatic cover and technical equipment at diplomatic missions used to snoop on German officials and the country's citizens.

"This step would be an about-face from the decades-long practice of systematically monitoring the activities of countries such as China, Russia and North Korea but rarely the activities of Western partners," Spiegel said.

It said the plans would require the final approval of Merkel's office as well as the foreign and interior ministries.

The reported initiatives follow leaks by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden that US intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone and collected vast amounts of online data and telephone records from average citizens.

Media reports last year said that equipment installed on the roofs of the US and British embassies in central Berlin was used for snooping.

Spiegel also reports in its upcoming issue on a suspected attack by Chinese spies on the German government ahead of the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia last September.

It said high-ranking German officials from several ministries as well as banks had been sent Chinese cyber-espionage malware under the guise of an exchange of information among economic advisors to the G20 governments.

A government spokeswoman told Spiegel that the attempt "to compromise information security at the chancellor's office" had been successfully rebuffed.

Merkel said Saturday ahead of a summit with French President Francois Hollande that they would discuss bolstering citizens' data protection with "European communication networks" that bypass US Internet giants. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Snowden warns of loss of privacy in Christmas message

LONDON - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of electronic surveillance by American and British spy services, warned of the dangers posed by a loss of privacy in a message broadcast to Britain on Christmas Day.

In a two-minute video recorded in Moscow, where Snowden has been granted temporary asylum, he spoke of concerns over surveillance in an age of huge technological advancement.

"We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person."

"A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all," said Snowden. "They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."

The "Alternative Christmas Message", broadcast annually on Britain's Channel 4 television since 1993, mimics the format of the yearly address to the nation by Queen Elizabeth.

Previous participants have included then President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008 and popular cartoon characters Marge and Lisa Simpson in 2004.

On Tuesday, Snowden - who disclosed thousands of confidential documents - said in an interview published in the Washington Post that he had achieved what he set out to do.

"For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished," he said.

Snowden left his NSA post in Hawaii in May and went public with his first revelations from Hong Kong a few weeks later.

In June, he left for Russia and stayed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport for nearly six weeks until the Kremlin granted him temporary one-year asylum.

The United States has revoked his passport and demanded he be sent home to face charges for stealing secrets.

Earlier this month there were signs of thawing attitudes when Richard Ledgett - a top NSA official who leads a task force at the agency responding to the leaks - left open the option for Snowden to return to the United States in an amnesty.

"It's worth having a conversation about," he told CBS.

"I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured and my bar for those assurances would be very high," Ledgett said. Senior officials in the Obama administration remain opposed to such a move.

Last week a White House-appointed panel proposed curbs on some key NSA surveillance operations, recommending limits on a program to collect records of billions of telephone calls, and new tests before Washington spies on foreign leaders.

"The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it," Snowden said in the Christmas address.

"Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com