This Little NSA-German Episode

For months, this NSA-Germany episode has been brewing.

The bulk of the argument?  The 'evil' NSA has spied on Germany, and used Germany to spy on others. Naturally, a good bit of this discussion is tied into the election cycle of 2017 and slamming Merkel/CDU/CSU as much as possible.  It also helps in posturing a anti-US situation and develop this for future use.

So, this past week, the 'lie' story started up.  The German government (at least the BND, the German secret service) appears to have known part of the NSA business was going on, with requests for information.

The Bundestag asked if this was possible.....months ago....and was told 'no'.  Well.....that simply wasn't completely true.

Oddly, a lot of this intelligence help centered around economic targets....NOT Muslim radicals.  Most Germans wouldn't care if this was about some terrorist thugs in Germany.  But when you hint it's about German companies and of a economic nature....well, that's different.

The companies involved?  Mostly defense-related.  All occurring around 2010 (into the Obama period, not the Bush period).  They wanted names, email addresses and phone numbers.....of defense-related companies.  The BND complied.

What is curious here.....because the German press isn't really that bright on the issue....is this odd question.  What did the BND get in return?

Yeah....they might have provided this info, but they had to expect something of value in return.  So what was it?  Tax violators having accounts in Switzerland?  It might be curious to know what exactly the BND got, but I doubt if the German news media is that bright.  Why do I mention the tax violation thing?  It's an odd job where our NSA guy Snowden got his CIA start....in Switzerland.  Yeah, we seem to have forgotten what he did in his initial tour.

So, how many names ended up with the NSA?  Some people suggest 800,000.  I think the number is awful high and can't imagine that many folks working within the defense industry of Germany.

Here's the thing.....the NSA has to really trust the BND guys and hope they wouldn't lie about this.  But if you were the BND guy and really not feeling happy about this deal.....perhaps you might build up a fake listing.  Yeah.....fake names, fake email addresses, and fake phone numbers.  Heck, you might even create a fake bureau where you had people pretending to be these fake military industry people, and feed the NSA mechanism a tremendous amount of fake data to fill fake databases.

Maybe I'm on an imaginary game here, but it's hard to see why the BND would be this cooperative unless they were going to play out some type of game against the NSA folks.

The next step here?  The Bundestag hints that they'd like to open up a committee investigation and have sworn testimony.  You can figure the remainder of 2015 being used for this episode.  Surprises left?  It's hard to say.

Oddly, to whine or complain about this.....you have to talk about President Obama and his executive management over the NSA.  If they were deep into commercial espionage....why?  Did some company pay the Democrats to get help on spying into Airbus?  It opens up a number of issues....but only if some idiot journalists woke up and actually got aggressive.