Sunday, December 18, 2016

The 'Truth-Commission' Story

Back in 2014...the Merkel coalition (CDU-CSU-SPD) was forced into a corner about the NSA revelations that Snowden revealed.  The opposition parties in the Bundestag of Berlin wanted to know the full picture.  Naturally, you need a truth-commission.

As this idea was discussed....one of the issues that everyone wanted to avoid was having classified or extremely sensitive data stuck out there and handed either to some journalist or to WikiLeaks.  As this truth-commission was formed....sticking to security rules would be necessary.  Anyone near the collected data had to be trusted.

This weekend....it's been noted that the Bundestag President (Norbert Lammert, CDU) has issued an investigation approval.  He says in a crafted sort of way....there's a mole or spy within the Bundestag.

As you might expect...roughly two-thousand documents from this truth commission got out, via WikiLeaks.  These were confidential files from the NSA investigation committee.

If you read the Focus piece....the cops looked at everything, file security, access to the internet...the German cops feel pretty sure that this was not a hacker action...it was an insider episode.

What happens now? It's probably a two sided approach.  First, they will go line by line on the computer log files to see who downloaded the files in question.   Second, the cops have approval to do some surveillance of Bundestag members now.  Since the accusation is a mole (in essence a spy), if they get to some person and can prove the document theft, it's hefty charges and a major embarrassment to whichever party the guy is connected with.

Odds of success?  It'll be curious how this proceeds.  They may reach a point where they just can't establish a lead on any single person.

But then we have the secondary event coming up in 2017....since the courts have ordered the Merkel coalition to bring Snowden to testify in Berlin....there's going to be a testimony on what he provides.  The odds that this will also be leaked out via WikiLeaks?

My guess is that someone will be stupid enough to return and steal this set of fresh new documents and get caught.  In a matter of hours, this will become page one news as the guy is arrested and carried off to some Berlin police station.

By early summer, this Snowden episode will occur and you can probably guess that within a month....the new theft will occur.  WikiLeaks will put the fresh documents up and the cops will go seize this guy and a series of political blunders will occur with some political party trying to separate themselves from the act of one of their players.  With the election in September, some party is sitting in a potential mess....waiting for the curtain to fall on one of their members.  Hint: I don't think we are talking about anyone with the CDU, CSU or SPD.

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