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发帖数: 3096 | 1 Germany blasts Britain
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/25/germany-uk-gchq-intern
Germany blasts Britain over GCHQ's secret cable trawl
Minister questions legality of mass tapping of calls and internet and
demands to know extent to which Germans were targeted
Cameron and Merkel
David Cameron and Angela Merkel. The German government's letter is the first
major challenge to the UK over its data-trawling operation. Photograph: AFP
/Getty Images
The German government has expressed the growing public anger of its citizens
over Britain's mass programme of monitoring global phone and internet
traffic and directly challenged UK ministers over the whole basis of GCHQ's
Project Tempora surveillance operation.
The German justice minister, who has described the secret operation by
Britain's eavesdropping agency as a catastrophe that sounded "like a
Hollywood nightmare", warned UK ministers that free and democratic societies
could not flourish when states shielded their actions in "a veil of secrecy
".
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger sent two letters on Tuesday to the
British justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the home secretary, Theresa
May, stressing the widespread concern the disclosures have triggered in
Germany and demanding to know the extent to which German citizens have been
targeted.
It is the first major challenge to David Cameron's government to publicly
justify its mass data-trawling operation, which was revealed in documents
leaked by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, has made clear her frustration that
many of the questions raised by the disclosures made by the whistleblower
have gone unanswered by the Obama administration.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, again dismissed concerns on
Tuesday in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California, saying
Britain should have nothing but pride in its "indispensable" intelligence-
sharing relationship with the US.
"Let us be clear about it: in both our countries intelligence work takes
place within a strong legal framework. We operate under the rule of law and
are accountable for it. In some countries secret intelligence work is used
to control their people – in ours it only exists to protect their freedoms."
But writing in the Guardian, the former Conservative leadership contender
David Davis disputes that view, saying Britain's intelligence agencies are
only subject to law in theory. He accuses GCHQ of circumventing "
inconvenient laws" by handing over personal data to the US and raises the
prospect of "extremely serious violation" of the rights of British citizens
over the use of their personal data.
The German justice minister, in her letters to Grayling and May, asks for
clarification of the legal basis for Project Tempora and demands to know
whether "concrete suspicions" trigger the data collection or whether the
vast quantities of global email, Facebook postings, internet histories and
phone calls are being held for up to 30 days as part of a general trawl.
She also demands to know whether the programme has been authorised by any
judicial authority, how it works in practice and the precise nature of the
stored data. The level of concern was reinforced by a phone call from the
justice ministry to Ursula Brennan, permanent secretary at the Department of
Justice in London.
"I feel that these issues must be raised in a European Union context at
minister's level and should be discussed in the context of ongoing
discussions on the EU data protection regulation," Leutheusser-
Schnarrenberger writes, adding she wants it discussed at the next meeting of
justice and home affairs ministers in July.
Britain is almost single-handedly blocking Europe's attempts to increase
privacy protection for personal data in a new regime. The Home Office said
it would not comment on "private correspondence", while the Ministry of
Justice said only that it would respond to the letter in due course.
The Guardian's disclosure of GCHQ's secret decision to use more than 200
probes to tap into the transatlantic cables to monitor and store up to 30
days of the world's telephone and global traffic has sparked outrage in
Germany and other European countries.
The leading German social democrat, Thomas Oppermann, has said the details
of Project Tempora make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society
has become a reality in Britain.
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger's letters – sent to Grayling and May on the
110th anniversary of Orwell's birth on 25 June 1903 – are the most forceful
expression yet of the German government's frustration and anger over the
surveillance scandal. The German media has been filled in recent days with
pundits and readers asking to what extent they have been spied upon and
whether their government knew about the surveillance.
The Snowden revelations have drawn wide-scale comparisons in the last
fortnight with Gestapo and Stasi techniques. "I thought this era had ended
when the German Democratic Republic fell," Markus Ferber, a member of the
European parliament, said in a Reuters interview.
On Tuesday night the British inventor of the internet accused the west of
hypocrisy over online snooping.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the Times: "In the Middle East, people have been
given access to the internet but they have been snooped on and then they
have been jailed.
"Obviously, it can be easy for people in the west to say, 'oh, those nasty
governments should not be allowed access to spy'. But it's clear that
developed nations are seriously spying on the internet."
Konstantin von Notz, the interior affairs spokesman of the opposition Green
party, told Deutsche Welle radio: "What's been going on here is against
international law and must be stopped immediately." His party has scheduled
a Bundestag debate on the topic. On Tuesday, Snowden's location was
clarified by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who disclosed that the
whistleblower was at a Moscow airport. The admission reversed days of
Russian obfuscation and came hours after Putin's foreign minister said
Russia had nothing to do with Snowden's travel plans. |
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