Verizon Wireless retail store in Saugus, Massachusetts (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons / Anthony92931)Germany announced Thursday it is canceling its contract with Verizon Communications over concerns about the role of U.S. telecom corporations in National Security Agency spying.

The links revealed between foreign intelligence agencies and firms after the N.S.A. affair show that the German government needs a high level of security for its essential networks, declared Germany's Interior Ministry in a statement released Thursday.

The Ministry said it is engaging in a communications overhaul to strengthen privacy protections as part of the process of severing ties with Verizon.

The announcement follows revelations, made possible by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, that Germany is a prime target of NSA spying. This includes surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkels mobile phone communications, as well as a vast network of centers that secretly collect information across the country.

Yet, many have accused Germany of being complicit in NSA spying, in addition to being targeted by it.

The German government has refused to grant Snowden political asylum, despite his contribution to the public record about U.S. spying on Germany.

Verizon, which has provided services to many of Germany's governmental agencies since, will be replaced by Deutsche Telekom, which was formerly run by the German state.

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Germany Fires Verizon Over NSA Spying

(Don Ryan/Associated Press)

Reports of U.S. spying on German citizens -- including German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- caused outrage in the European nationlast year after a wave of revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. It even led to German parliamentaryhearings on the issue, which started this spring.

And now the German government is ending itscontractwith Verizon over fears the telecom provider could be letting U.S. intelligence agencies snoop on sensitive communications, the Associated Press reports.

"There are indications that Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the NSA, and that's one of the reasons the cooperation with Verizon won't continue," German Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate told AP. Verizon has provided Internet service to a number of German government departments but not intelligence to agencies according to Plate.

Germany's current contract with Verizon will expire in 2015, he said.

"Verizon Germany is a German company, and we comply with German law," saidVerizon Germany managing director Detlef Eppig in a statement, which also referred questions to a post on the company's policy blog that it says outlines "the inability of the US Government to access customer data stored outside the US."

While various officials, including Merkel, have expressed concern about U.S. spying, a report from German magazine Der Spiegel last week suggested a close relationship between the NSA and German intelligenceagencies.

Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open government.

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German government to drop Verizon over NSA spying fears

Germany is irked that the NSA spied on its officials (including its Chancellor), and today it responded by hitting the US where it really hurts: the pocketbook. The German Ministry of the Interior has decided against renewing a Verizon internet service contract that expires in 2015, in no small part due to worries that the carrier must sometimes hand over foreign data to the NSA. The country has to reject companies that collaborate with the American intelligence agency if it's going to meet the "particularly high demands" of a critical communication infrastructure, according to the Ministry.

The nation had already been second-guessing the contract, so Edward Snowden's NSA surveillance leaks were really just the straws that broke the camel's back. However, the cancellation still validates US tech firms' worst fears -- they're losing business in countries which no longer feel they can trust American outfits with sensitive info. It's too soon to know whether this trend will continue, but it's clear that even close US allies aren't afraid to cut corporate ties if they believe their data is at risk.

[Image credit: AFP Photo/Jewel Samad]

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Germany drops Verizon internet contract over NSA spying fears

Congressional Hopeful Sees Borders As Number One Issue
Alex talks with Steve Lane who is running in the Republican primary in Tennessee. Alex and Mr. Lane will talk about Common Core, immigration and NSA spying and surveillance. http://www.infowars.co...

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Congressional Hopeful Sees Borders As Number One Issue - Video

A proposal to block the NSA from using backdoor searches on US communications without warrants has been passed by the House of Representatives. The surprise vote, adopted 293-123, is an amendment to the 2015 Defense appropriations bill that would effectively prohibit the NSA from using funds to conduct warrantless searches. Its also designed to prevent the NSA from using its budget to force companies and organizations to add backdoors to encryption standards and products.

"Tonight, the House of Representatives took an important first step in reining in the NSA,"says Mark Rumold, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We applaud the House for taking this important first step, and we look forward to other elected officials standing up for our right to privacy." While theres clear support for the vote result, the amended bill still needs to be approved by the Senate, and for President Obama to sign the legislation before it becomes law. Regardless of the end result, the unexpected vote shows a clear level of Congressional dissatisfaction with the NSA, and could pave the way for similar amendments elsewhere.

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House surprises with vote to limit NSA spying capabilities ...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) The defendants have filed their motion to dismiss in a lawsuit that alleges the National Security Agency conducted surveillance and intelligence-gathering programs that collected data from American citizens.

As an initial matter, the court should dismiss this case on grounds of claim-splitting, according to the memo.

Klayman

(T)he complaint in this case is a near carbon copy of the complaint in Klayman v. Obama, Civ. No. 13-0881 (Klayman II), overlaps substantially with the complaint in Klayman v. Obama, Civ. No. 13-0851 (Klayman I), and can only be explained as an attempt to evade the deadline under the local rules to move for class certification in those two cases, the memo states.

Plaintiffs cannot maintain more than one action involving the same subject matter at the same time in the same court and against the same defendants.

The plaintiffs complaint also should be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, according to the memo.

They have not alleged sufficient facts to demonstrate that information about their calls has been acquired or reviewed by the NSA under the bulk telephony metadata program, and any fear they might have that the NSA may in some way misuse data allegedly collected about their calls is neither a cognizable injury nor fairly traceable to the programs actual operation.

Similarly, the plaintiffs have not established that the NSA acquired or reviewed information about their communications under the bulk Internet metadata program, nor can they seek prospective injunctive relief when the program has been discontinued and the collected data destroyed, according to the memo.

As to PRISM collection of the communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad, this court has already ruled, on almost identical allegations, that plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge that program, the memo states. And Plaintiffs vague and speculative allegations about a claimed program they call MUSCULAR are also insufficient to confer standing under Article III.

The governments interest in identifying terrorist operatives and intercepting their communications to prevent terrorist attacks is a national security concern that far outweighs any residual privacy interest that the plaintiffs may have in their communications not already protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the same token outweighs any risk of erroneous deprivation of that interest, according to the memo.

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Motion to dismiss filed in NSA spying class action ...

Edward Snowden may be somewhere in Russia, but he might as well have been in Singapore waltzing along the halls of CommunicAsia 2014. He was on everyones lips, the NSA spying revelations having shaken the industry to the core over the past year.

Nearly everyone I talked to had a strong opinion, but none of them cared to share them on the record.

Many saw the American spy apparatus as a joke. One software vendor had an augmented reality learning application. If it saw the letters DOG, it would show a video of a dog, for instance.

So what happens if you show it the letters NSA?, I asked. It self destructs, came the answer complete with a chuckle.

Others were more serious. The Australians in particular were fingered in the Snowden files as spying on Indonesia and many were suffering as a result. One chap from down under pointed out that the Indonesian network that was compromised was mainly from an American vendor and it is not difficult to put one and one together to guess how the Australian spy agencies got through the back door.

The Chinese vendors were more vocal and complained of a backlash from the Huawei spying allegations of any Chinese equipment.

To this point one Canadian equipment vendor told me that it was a great time to be Canadian as they were not American and not Chinese. Then after a bit of contemplation he asked me to strike the last bit from the record.

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The Snowden effect at CommunicAsia

Besides exposing all of the not-so-good things the NSA and other clandestine agencies around the world were up to, the documents leaked by Edward Snowden have allowed hackers to reverse-engineer some of the tools the NSA has used to spy on us.

Along with the nefarious details of our constant surveillance, the NSA's Advanced Network Technology cataloga list of some of the gadgets NSA personnel can use to spy on computers and phoneswas also included in the leaked documents.

A team of security researchers led by Michael Ossmann have used the information to reconstruct two surveillance devices used by the NSA. These devices, called "retro reflectors," are tiny radio-based wireless data transmitters, which, when placed on a computer or keyboard, allow information to be gathered (like keystrokes and on-screen images) even when that device is not connected to the internet.

Ossmann says he will present his findings at Defcon, and show others how to protect themselves from future NSA hacksif that's even possible. [New Scientist via Engadget]

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Hackers Reverse-Engineer NSA Spying Tools Using Snowden Leaks

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs
June 19, 2014 - Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) speaks in support of an amendment she co-sponsored to prohibit funding for the NSA spying programs that illegally t...

By: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard

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Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs - Video

NSA Spying Rebuked By The House
The House of Representatives sent a strong message to the National Security Agency via the power of the purse strings Thursday night. By 293 to 123, the House voted in favor of an amendment...

By: Secular Talk

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NSA Spying Rebuked By The House - Video