Who’s the leader of the club
That spies on you and me?
N S A B N D M O U S E!
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency is officially lifting the lid on some of its worst-kept secrets by acknowledging that half a dozen facilities are in fact spy stations.
“Diese Aufgaben gehören zum Kernauftrag des Bundesnachrichtendienstes und beruhen auf gesetzlicher Grundlage. Zu diesen Aufgaben stehen wir, weshalb wir zukünftig auf die Legendierung dieser Außenstellen im Inland verzichten.”
A Soyuz spacecraft launched last night (May 28) from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan docked with the International Space Station in the early hours of this morning. Onboard were ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and his Expedition 40/41 crewmates, who will now live and work in space for the next six months…
And watch Tatort.
Der deutsche Astronaut Alexander Gerst (38) erlebt derzeit das, wozu viele Menschen wahrscheinlich nie die Möglichkeit haben werden: Als Bordingenieur arbeitet er nun für einige Monate auf der internationalen Raumstation ISS. Damit verbunden ist natürlich ein atemberaubender Bilck auf die Erde. Doch auf eines möchte der Raumfahrer während seiner Mission im All nicht verzichten: die “Tagesthemen” und den Tatort.
But don’t tell anybody you heard it from me.
It goes like this: The BND is soon going to start monitoring users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter in something they are referring to here as “Echtzeit.” “Echtzeit” can roughly be translated as “real-time” and means that said users will be monitored – now get this – live. That’s right. Like while it’s actually happening?
Let me repeat this so you will understand the implications of what it is I’m saying here: They will actually be seeing what these people are typing while they are actually typing it. Just like you and I and everybody else on Facebook and Twitter the world over are doing already, I mean. Like how creepy is that?
Befreundete Nachrichtendienste seien methodisch viel weiter
They’re switch-hitters, you know. You can have the Squeaky-Clean Party of Doves SPD that has been making a whole lot of noise these days about curbing German arms exports but hasn’t wirklich (really) taken all that much action up until now and of course never, ever, ever will.
Or you can have the Sweet and Plentiful Dough SPD that boasts of having two former lawmakers who are said to have raked in over five million euros in commissions from the German defense contractor Krauss-Maffei Wegmann for two big honking tank deals.
This little tidbit, that nobody here is particularly interested in, was uncovered during an investigation being made by Pricewaterhouse Coopers looking into charges of payoffs made to Greece.
Wurde Einfluss auf die Auftragsvergabe genommen?
What will they tank of next?
The Sound Tank (or “Sound Panzer,” as Nowak refers to it in the video) is a reconfigured mini-dump truck that Nowak was able to transform into a colossal mobile soundsystem. Nowak designed the bass-bumping vehicle’s giant speaker wall with a hydraulic system, enabling him to raise it upright and point the 13 loudspeakers and three 18-inch subwoofers at any target.
Someone fired a gun next to Nowak’s ear as a young child, and as a result the artist lost the ability to hear high frequencies with his right ear. “That experience brought home to me the extent to which sound can shape reality,” Nowak muses in the video.
PS: For those interested in old school NSA stuff, there are some good shots of what is left of the old Teufelsberg facility in the video, too.
Europe’s top court ruling that Google and other Internet companies can now be made to remove “irrelevant or excessive personal information” from search engine results has triggered a virtual stampede of excited Germans demanding that their irrelevant and excessive personal information be removed from the Internet immediately.
“Irrelevant and excessive personal information is the only kind of information I produce,” said one soon-to-be-forgotten Google skeptic. “Or consist of, if you will. So you can bet that I just can’t wait to be wiped out of virtual existence for good!”
“The ruling will help certain people hide their past, making it difficult to access certain information, but not when it concerns public figures, or people in whom there is a genuine public interest. This will result in added costs for Internet search providers who will have to add to their take-down policies the means for removing links to an individual’s data, and develop criteria for distinguishing public figures from private individuals.”
And honestly, folks. What would a digital natives summit to tackle surveillance be without him?
He’s been looking for digital freedom or something. And damned if he didn’t find it. Here of all places. Hey, just because you can’t read or carry a note doesn’t mean you can’t keynote.
Der Saal ist gut gefüllt, voll ist er nicht.
And it looks to me like they’re trying to save on energy these days or something.
Hey, who needs the NSA when you’ve got the Telekom right here at home in your own backyard in Germany? Doing the wiretapping, I mean.
Hello? Hello out there! Where’s all the excitement about this? The Telekom just got a little more transparent and admitted that it taps 50,000 phone connections a year. It hands out information on a million IP addresses annually, too. No, not to the NSA. To certain German “state agencies” that wish to remain unnamed.
Well there is a big difference here, you know. The difference being, of course, that the Telekom “sticks to the rules” and no one here has any reason to doubt them because the Telekom would not lie to us, I mean you, and besides, Germans snooping on Germans in a country like Germany when not following the rules precisely and to the letter is absolutely unimaginable and thoroughly ausgeschlossen (impossible). Here, I mean.
Die Telekom ist verpflichtet, in bestimmten Fällen mit Behörden zusammenzuarbeiten. Wie viele Anfragen es jährlich gibt, erstaunt dann doch. Neben tausenden überwachten Telefonanschlüssen gibt die Telekom Daten zu fast einer Million IP-Adressen preis.
Google Maps Street View has released a revolutionary new “time travel” feature that will allow, among other things, German users the novel opportunity to “go back in time” and see how the blurred out images of their homes in the past compare to the blurred out images of their homes in the present.
Google spokesmen regret that time travel to blurred out images of homes in the future is not yet available but will certainly be introduced as soon as googly possible.
Aus Datenschutzgründen ist die neue Funktion in Deutschland nicht abrufbar.
Sort of. Jeepers creepers already! This ought to stop old Vlad Putin dead in his tank tracks.
Germany should remove a pair of World War Two-era Soviet tanks standing on pedestals next to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in protest at Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine, Germany’s best-selling newspaper Bild said on Tuesday.
Launching a petition to get rid of the two green T-34 tanks that have stood in front of the Soviet war memorial since it was built in 1945, Bild and Berlin tabloid B.Z. urged readers to send letters of protest to parliament against the war symbols.
Wir wollen keine Russen-Panzer am Brandenburger Tor!
