What I don't understand is why the Germans allow the US to setup a base that spies on them. According to the Spiegel the base was setup without local approval. Also also locals have been concerned for a long time because of possible radiation from the large antennas but for what ever reason the local government cant even inquire about it.
Imagine a German military base in the middle of the US that has who knows what kind of equipment on it and the local town can't question it.
There's a similar base in the UK at Menwith Hill. They don't welcome visitors as such, but activist/comedian Mark Thomas discovered that due to a quirk in a law, it was legal to fly a hot air balloon over it.
He once organised a bunch of people who went to the big Apple Store on Regent Street and opened a webpage on all the devices there. The contents of said page informed readers (potential buyers) that they could get the same devices at a nearby high street retailer who didn't indulge in shady tax avoidance schemes.
Another time he went around sticking Margaret Thatcher heads on the ladies in girlie mags.
"Imagine a German military base in the middle of the US that has who knows what kind of equipment on it and the local town can't question it."
Sometimes, when I imagine what I would do if I won the Lottery and had a few millions I could just fritter away, I think it would be highly entertaining to buy a lot outside of Washington DC or perhaps in New Jersey and construct upon it a building, surrounded by razor wire and maybe trenches, and then come up with ever more fanciful antenna looking designs to install on the roof. Sort of an artists enclave where the artists could visualize different shapes that might pull un-imagined signals out of the air.
And never let anyone "official" inside the building.
Clearly you'd need a few million for the building and a few tens of millions for the law firm that would spend its days keeping the curious out.
Its a variation on the old puzzle box psychologists trick where you keep an obvious unopened box in the room and refuse to talk about the contents. It really does drive people nuts.
"City officials in Heidelberg expect annual financial losses of up to $25 million, as a result of the closures of U.S. bases in the region."
"We estimate that a total of about 1,000 civilian jobs will be lost, when the nearly 8,000 service members pull out," said Diana Scharl, a spokesperson for the city of Heidelberg."
This is what makes the Dagger Complex so special: Usually, locals are very friendly to the US troops and the local dignitaries are devastated when they leave.
Not here. The NSA people are secretive, hostile and their activities are unpopular. I read an article in my local (!) newspaper recently, where people, among them the mayor of the nearest town, complained about the installation.
The Heidelberger mayor Eckart Würzner said he felt very sad about the departure of the US Army:
“After World War II no-one in Heidelberg knew the way into the future. The US Army worked to educate the young generation about how democracy works. It gave Heidelberg a perspective and helped the city get back on its feet and on its way to democracy,” he said.
He's right, and you can look at Eastern European countries to see what would've happened otherwise.
However, this isn't the Army we're talking about (obviously, they're leaving), but the NSA, whose mission is to gather intelligence to protect the US, so it's kinda funny that it uses bases smack in the middle of foreign countries...
A lot of former employees have been relocated to bases in Wiesbaden and Kaiserslautern, but you're right that there will be an economic downturn, a drop in petrol & energy consumption etc.
On the other hand, something very positive is that the 2.500 abandoned apartments will make some space in the horrendous housing shortage in Heidelberg. The regional authorities said it's short of 8000+ apartments to fulfill the needs of thousands of commuters and students. So this is seen as a relieve.
The 213 hectars open area can also be used for sport facilities, agricultural utilization, public green space or rooms for the "creative economy" as germans say.
Heidelberg is very stable economically speaking and will not struggle from the troops leaving in 2014. Excluding any friendships and romantic liaisons that might end, this is generally seen as positive by germans. My guess would be that the service members are also glad to be returning home.
Either the military is all about [insert alleged ideals and aims here], and then people would forego more lucrative options to do the right thing and work in the military sector; or it's not, and we should just stop the fucking charade. Maybe Smedley Butler is right, war is a racket, and the costs in lives and materials outweigh the benefits by far... how's that for an idea? It creates X jobs and destroys Y lives; so let's talk about both or neither.
The current German citizenry don't dictate the ongoing activities of the German government, and after WWII they had no choice, so their permission isn't necessary.
The Cold War-era West German clandestine/covert operations was run almost entirely by Western powers, particularly the US. The relationships between the German intelligence community (BND) and the American intelligence community (NSA/CIA) is still very tight, so that explains the nature of their relationship.
Many still harbor feelings that the Cold War may have ended, but the need (for the intelligence infrastructure surrounding it) never went away.
Ever wondered what many embassies contain? There were serious health concerns about staff in the British Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War from all the stuff the Soviets were throwing at the building trying to work out what the occupants were up to.
Ever wondered what that odd superstructure box on a visiting warship parked in your local naval base had inside it?
Ever wondered why Britain was so keen to hang onto random colonial possessions and the Cyprus base areas? And why other Western countries didn't mind?
Embassies are full of secret spying equipment, and indeed spies. Foreign warships that come to visit "interesting" ports have been known to carry extra electronics intelligence equipment.
My point was that you don't have to imagine a foreign power having unknown surveillance equipment on your nation's soil. Unless you're in the most backwater nation on earth foreign powers will already be doing this.
Europe is full of US military bases, which although intelligence requests are approached through a veneer of "assisting allies," does come with a certain amount of implied threat when you enter the dark realm of realpolitik.
Heck, for half a century Operation Gladio and its NATO-wide equivalents reduced several European governments to puppet states through a campaign of terror, all in the pursuit of US interests.
Not that this justifies what happened at all, but:
"Bangert, a veteran of the Blockupy protests in Frankfurt, had set up a group calling itself "NSA spy protection league" (NSA Spion Schutzbund), as if the US spies were an endangered species of birds"
Would it be more reasonable to think that this individual was probably already being monitored as part of his Blockupy, and perhaps the German government was the one watching him more than the NSA was?
German police is monitoring Facebook and has been for years. We once had a Conference at our University. Someone posted something about a party (back when everyone was afraid of facebook parties) and 15 minutes later the police arrived.
They were not allowed to enter the premises, but by coincidence winkwink someone pulled the fire alarm in a then-vacant building 15 minutes later, which opened the gates and barriers for the cop cruisers waiting just around the corner. By coincidence of course.
With all the talk of spying and monitoring citizens' whereabouts via license plate scans -- can anybody setup a camera to take snapshots of license plates of cars entering & leaving NSA & other such installations, and cross-reference these against license records?
A few years ago at Defcon someone rigged up a Twitter scraper, and found all the tweets that geolocated to the massive NSA headquarters parking lot. That said, it's not clear to me that it's legal to actively attempt to "out" NSA employees.
I think most of the time you would want some sort of official response to an attempt to systematically catalog the employees of your nation's clandestine intelligence agencies.
I don't dabble in anything illegal, and I don't scare easily, so they wouldn't really have anything to hold over me. But yeah, I can definitely see that going that route would invite some unwanted attention. It's probably one of the reasons we haven't seen a mass effort to dox the 50k or so NSA employees.
Thanks! Also, this seems as good a time as any to bring up Maltego. It's an OSINT network analysis tool that is as good as anything I know about in civilian law enforcement. You get some really cool results when plugging in Twitter data.
I looked into the tool and realized I'd seen my Information Assurance roommate use it 5+ years ago. It was a great application then, but has become even better since. I played around with it for a couple hours yesterday, lots of fun.
I'm sure some redneck sheriff would love to send a SWAT team. Can't let the expensive team just sit around all day, they need entertainment and the city gets nice law & order pictures to please the crime-fearing crowd.
According to released information most of the espionage occurring against Europe is economic. From the UK wanting to know what German interest rate policies were back in the 1980s to Airbus to current the current state of EU finances and what they are planning to do.
Germany is in a fantastic economic situation and has unparalleled soft power across Europe at the moment. So yes, certain European nations are enjoying it, and are not in the slightest bent over.
Imagine a German military base in the middle of the US that has who knows what kind of equipment on it and the local town can't question it.