{"id":5946,"date":"2013-06-24T08:50:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T08:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5946"},"modified":"2013-06-24T08:51:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T08:51:18","slug":"uk-tapping-eus-data-flows-a-catastrophe-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5946","title":{"rendered":"UK tapping EU’s data flows a catastrophe \u2013 Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sabine<\/a>
Sabine Leuthesser-Scharrenberger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The German Justice Minister has called the British spy agency\u2019s massive eavesdropping of international fiber-optic cables ‘a catastrophe’. Sabine Leuthesser-Scharrenberger insisted European institutions should seek clarification \u201cstraight away\u201d.<\/p>\n

The exposure by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of the global eavesdropping capabilities of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have sent European capitals into a stupor.<\/p>\n

Having revealed the NSA\u2019s PRISM global surveillance program, Snowden told the UK\u2019s Guardian newspaper information about Britain’s top secret Tempora surveillance project under which the UK’s GCHQ spying agency intercepts and stores for 30 days huge volumes of data, like emails, social network posts, phone calls and much more, culled from international fiber-optic cables.<\/p>\n

The most vociferous reaction has come from Berlin where politicians have demanded a thorough investigation of the activities of the British intelligence-gathering community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe,\u201d German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in an email to the Reuters. She compared the news with a \u201cHollywood nightmare\u201d and called on to the European institutions \u201cto seek straight away to clarify the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe accusations make it sound as if George Orwell’s surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain,” Thomas Oppermann, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats in the Bundestag told Reuters. German politicians called the situation \u2018unbearable\u2019 and demanded the government \u201cact against a total surveillance of German citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

A report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper has exposed that UK\u2019s GCHQ has been spying on European capitals for at least 18 months intercepting data from over 200 fiber-optic cables.<\/p>\n

Begun in 2008, by 2010 the Tempora project made GCHQ a true intelligence superpower, \u201c\u2019the biggest internet access\u2019 of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,\u201d The Guardian\u2019s report claims.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2012 the GCHQ agency reportedly had enough computational capacity to process information from 46 fibre-optic cables at a time, which amounted to 600 million international phone calls and internet messages daily.<\/p>\n

While it was reported earlier that NSA shared classified information obtained through its tapping of the world\u2019s largest internet providers with GCHQ, it became known that these were tit for tat relations and GCHQ shared the info it obtained with the NSA, too. The Guardian believes that the 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors, like Edward Snowden, had access to GCHQ databases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden confirmed to the Guardian. \u201cThey [GCHQ] are worse than the US,\u201d he stressed. – RT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The German Justice Minister has called the British spy agency\u2019s massive eavesdropping of international fiber-optic cables ‘a catastrophe’. Sabine Leuthesser-Scharrenberger insisted European institutions should seek clarification \u201cstraight away\u201d. The exposure by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of the global eavesdropping capabilities of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have sent European capitals … Continue reading “UK tapping EU’s data flows a catastrophe \u2013 Germany”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3,10,123],"tags":[3053,51,201,3409,3307,2283,3410,963,206,2812,1905,1946,745],"class_list":["post-5946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-ed-snowden","tag-germany","tag-human-rights","tag-information-technology","tag-intelligence","tag-internet","tag-mass-media","tag-politics","tag-protest","tag-scandal","tag-security","tag-uk","tag-usa"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/leutheusserschnarrenberger.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5946"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5950,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions\/5950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}