'The Americans Are Pros'

German companies once had a lot of confidence in everything coming from the United States. But it's already clear that much of this has been lost.

Granted, to date, there are no known cases in which US agencies have tried to steal German know-how. But perhaps this is only because German authorities and companies haven't been looking hard enough. The victims of hacker attacks are usually kept in the dark, and it might be that American intelligence agencies are just better at covering their tracks.

In fact, they don't even have to gain direct access to German companies. What sometimes happens is that US intelligence agencies, while conducting their extensive searches on the Web, flush out packets of data from German companies "that don't belong there," says a senior official with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Through data leaks, this information often reaches German authorities, who then notify the affected companies.

"The Americans are pros. They don't leave any tracks behind -- and if they do, they're the wrong ones," says Christopher Fischer of BFK, a consulting firm in the south western city of Karlsruhe. "It's always easy to act as if the attack were coming from China. And although they are very active at the moment, everything is now of course being blamed on the Chinese."

All companies know that they should protect themselves from the prying eyes of competitors. But, until now, it was commonly believed that threats of industrial espionage emanating from government entities primarily came from China and Russia, where it is common for intelligence services to spy on foreign economies.

Likewise, it has always been clear that Germany is a stomping ground for industrial spies. Dozens of cases have been publicized in recent years. The only real difference among them is that the spies were looking for different things. The Iranians wanted to know where in Germany they could secretly buy parts for their nuclear program. The Russians have an appetite for all things military. And China's product bootleggers are interested in everything from military technology to high-end record players.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/companies-in-germany-scramble-to-strengthen-data-protection-abilities-a-914922.html

The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan at Fort Meade: ''The prosecution will be disappointed that the sentence is relatively low''

The US soldier convicted of handing a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website Wikileaks has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Pte First Class Bradley Manning, 25, was convicted in July of 20 charges against him, including espionage.

In a statement read by his lawyer after the sentencing, Pte Manning said he had acted "out of love for our country".

His supporters have called on President Barack Obama to pardon the soldier or commute his sentence to time served.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23784288

May Wikileaks make good use of Bradley's whistle-blowing — "if there was ever a link"...

Australian attorney general Mark Dreyfus recently claimed that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden weren’t whistle-blowers because they were “politically motivated”, and neither man exposed government wrong-doing (in fact, both did in major ways). The highest lawyer in the country fundamentally misunderstands the vital, democratic necessity of whistle-blowing as a safety valve against state violence, corruption and dishonesty.

Dreyfus should remember that the most comprehensive global study ever conducted into public attitudes towards whistleblowing, Melbourne University’s Suelette Dreyfus was a key researcher on the World Online Whistleblowing Survey, which found 81% of Australians believed such individuals should be backed.

If any western state claiming to be a democracy wants to destroy hard drives containing sensitive information, there’s only one response: resistance. Glenn Greenwald is right when he told CNN this week that “journalism is not a crime and it’s not terrorism”. The fact that such obvious statements need to be made in this climate shows how dangerous the attempts to criminalise legitimate investigations have become in the post 9/11 world.

In the spirit of telling governments and authorities that the public won’t tolerate illegal intrusion and intimidation against its own citizens, the following list is a far from comprehensive collection of information and documents the public has the right and need to know. Whistle-blowers and gadflys should feel unburdened and find the best way to get this information out (yes, I can receive snail mail to avoid all electronic communication).

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/22/australia-surveillance-documents-whistleblowing

9/11 was spectacular and demanded a devastating response, but terrorism also plays out in smaller ways, as it did last week. Twenty-two U.S. embassies and consulates in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa were closed, many for the entire week, and all nonessential personnel at the Embassy in Yemen were evacuated. The closure was ordered because al-Qaeda’s de facto leader Ayman al-Zawahiri reportedly sent a message via intermediaries to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of the franchise operation al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), calling for an attack against unspecified western targets. The message was obtained by the CIA and there might even have been an intercepted al-Qaeda conference call relating to it shortly before the security alert was issued. AQAP is widely believed to be al-Qaeda’s most capable affiliate and the suggestion for the attack might have actually been initiated by al-Wuhayshi rather than by the group’s leadership in Pakistan. A flurry of chatter on websites and through communications channels believed to be used by militants also occurred, suggesting that an attack might be imminent. The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda is best able to strike at home and elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula but its potential reach also extends to neighboring states, including Egypt and the Emirates, as well as to the Horn of Africa.

The U.S. intelligence community regarded the threat as “credible and specific” enough not to ignore. But the decision to close the embassies was purely political in that a risk-averse White House did not want to revisit a Benghazi type situation where an unfortunate incident would be carefully dissected by the Republicans to obtain political advantage. Indeed, in this case, Republican spokesmen strongly and uncharacteristically endorsed the move by the president.

Which is not to say that there wasn’t considerable dissent in the National Security Council. Some believed that there was no actual attack impending, that the intercepted message and chatter were deliberate moves to confuse Washington and force it to overreact. Others argued that if the instructions actually came from al-Zawahiri they might well be ignored by AQAP. State Department Security stated its belief that most of the potentially targeted embassy and consulate buildings were secure against anything but an overwhelming number of heavily armed attackers, which was highly improbable. Unlike the facility in Benghazi, Inman plan embassies, the norm in the countries affected, are designed for security and are more like fortresses than government buildings or offices. They have an outer perimeter fence or wall that is usually protected by local security forces and contract guards, barriers on driveways that can stop a truck, a setback before one reaches the actual building to protect against car bombs, a thick wall angled to deflect and force of an explosion, and shatter-proof armored windows on all sides of the building facing any public street or road. Marines inside the building are armed with automatic weapons and there is a containment space which doubles as a killing field inside the main entrance which can be sealed off even if someone does manage to break through the outer security. In the depths of the building there is normally a safe haven with its own power supply, food and water, as well as an independent communications system.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-al-qaeda-succeeded-last-week/

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The whole thing was an orchestrated distraction from the Snowden affair, as well as appearing to be a justification for "interception of emails and of other electronic communications including phone records..." I believe that the USA and its cronies think that spying exclusively on "Arabic" suspects might appear to be discriminatory... Thus they spy on "everyone" and bob's your auntie when he used to be your uncle...

Meanwhile, industrial espionage is going gangbusters...