Focus on Germany

Germany arrests suspected 'double agent' for working for US - report

RT,

4 July, 2014

A man employed by Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US. The espionage swoop is the latest of a series of embarrassing intelligence scandals straining ties between the two countries.

A 31-year-old German man was been arrested Wednesday on suspicion of being a foreign spy, according to a statement released by the German Federal Prosecutors Office.

Two politicians with knowledge of the affair told Reuters on Friday that the unnamed man has admitted passing on details to a US contact about a special German parliamentary committee into National Security Agency (NSA) spying activities in Germany, which were revealed by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Snowden said that the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ eavesdropped on a number of European leaders’ phone calls, including those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Both lawmakers are part of the nine member parliamentary control committee, which oversees the activities of the BND.

“The matter is serious, that is very clear,” a German government spokesman told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The German tabloid Bild reported that the man had passed the Americans 218 secret documents in exchange for € 25,000 ($34,100) and has been a double agent for them for two years. The man allegedly met his contact in Austria and passed on the secret documents on a USB stick.

Der Spiegel magazine reported that he had confessed to passing on details about the NSA inquiry to a US contact in return for money.

There is also some uncertainty about what position he held in the BND. Earlier reports in Der Speigel that he worked in the mail room have now been discounted and Die Welt newspaper has alleged that in fact he was in close contact with Gerhard Schindler, the head of the BND.

One of the politicians on the committee also appeared to down play the man’s importance within the BND.

“This was a man who had no direct contact with the investigative committee. He was not a top agent," one of the politicians told Reuters.

He added that the man had offered his services to the US voluntarily.

But the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper alleged that the man had originally been suspected of spying for the Russians only to admit that he was working for the Americans.

As the parliamentary enquiry is confidential, it is not clear exactly what information the man is suspected of passing on the US.

But the MPs involved wanted to invite Edward Snowden to Germany to testify, although this was blocked by Chancellor Merkel in case Washington demanded his extradition.

MPs also offered to go to Moscow where Edward Snowden has political asylum, but the US fugitive refused to see them there.

However, two other whistleblowers and former NSA employees did testify. Thomas Drake claimed that the two agencies cooperate so closely that the BND is an “appendage”to the NSA.

Germany is sensitive to surveillance issues because of abuses by the Nazis and by the East German Stasi. After Snowden’s revelations Berlin suggested a no-spy arrangement between the US and its close allies, but Washington refused.

German media have said that if the case against the man is proven “it will be the biggest scandal involving a German-American double agent since the war.”

Last week Germany announced that it has ended a contract with Verizon, the US broadband and telecom company, because of security concerns about its systems, in the first example of Snowden’s revelations having commercial repercussions.

New report says the NSA is checking who visits Tor's website

The Verge,

3 July, 2014

The NSA's interest in breaking the Tor encryption system is well known. A presentation leaked in 2013 recounted the agency's largely failed attempts to reveal the identities of users and degrade the quality of the network itself; using anonymizing software has been treated as a red flag. And according to a report published by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and others, it's treating even the Tor website as a place to check for terrorists. The authors, three of whom work on the Tor project, say they've obtained new details on NSA internet database XKeyscore, specifically a piece of source code with rules for automatically capturing information about people who used Tor and privacy-focused operating system Tails.

"ADVOCATED BY EXTREMISTS ON EXTREMIST FORUMS."

As explained on the site of German broadcasters WDR and NDR, the rules monitor servers in Germany and elsewhere that host Tor directory authorities, which contain a list of all the service's relays; a comment explains that the "goal is to find potential Tor clients connecting to the Tor directory servers." It also monitors the email address used to send out details of non-public relays, which are used in countries where major Tor servers are blocked. Some of these rules are set up to explicitly avoid people believed to be in "Five Eyes" countries, the small group of places where the US has formally agreed to heavily limit spying. But the system apparently goes beyond trying to compromise Tor. One rule seems to "fingerprint" people who even visit the Tor website, as well as people who search for information about Tails or visit places known to have information on it. That apparently includes the Linux Journal, where anything in the "Linux" category of articles is flagged.

Fingerprints, as explained by Edward Snowden earlier this year, are flags that allow NSA agents to identify and track users across the web. Earlier this year, he suggested that their use was widespread. "Fingerprints are used to identify people who have had the bad luck to follow the wrong link on an Internet site, on an Internet forum, or even to download the wrong file. They've been used to identify people who simply visit an Internet sex forum," he said, adding that they had also been used to monitor French citizens who logged into networks that the NSA considered suspicious. This appears to add a few more parameters to this list, specifically aimed at people who use encryption tools. As usual, the NSA takes a dim view of encryption tools. It's previously dismissed the "pseudo-legitimate" uses of Tor — which include protecting journalists' sources and evading abusive partners. Here, it calls Tails "a comsec [communications security] mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums."

Where is this information coming from? The report says it's the result of "months of investigation by the German public television broadcasters NDR and WDR, drawing on exclusive access to top secret NSA source code, interviews with former NSA employees, and the review of secret documents of the German government." The exact source of these secret documents is unspecified. Appelbaum has previously feuded with The Guardian over surveillance leaks, accusing it of delaying a story about Tor and criticizing its willingness to redact information at the behest of the White House and Britain's GCHQ.