Deutsche Welle, 17 July 2013
As Germany's interior minister faced a special select committee, another surveillance program - also called Prism - has come to light. Unlike its more famous global namesake, this Prism is said to be used in Afghanistan.
As Germany's interior minister faced a special select committee, another surveillance program - also called Prism - has come to light. Unlike its more famous global namesake, this Prism is said to be used in Afghanistan.
German
mass-circulation daily Bild first found reference to the Afghanistan Prism
program in an order sent out to regional command posts from the NATO
headquarters in Kabul.
The
communiqué told ISAF staff to use this Prism database for any data gleaned from
monitoring telecommunications or emails, starting on September 15, 2011.
The German
government said it knew nothing about the database, run by the US but
accessible to ISAF troops across Afghanistan - including those with Germany's
Bundeswehr - until Wednesday's report.
"I can
only tell you that this was a NATO/ISAF program, one that was not classified as
secret - according to the BND," Chancellor Merkel's spokesman Steffen
Seibert said. Seibert was referring to a press release from Germany's
equivalent to the Washington’s National Security Agency (NSA), the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The BND also said this Prism was "not
identical" to the now renowned program revealed by NSA contractor turned
whistleblower Edward Snowden in May.
Another
ministerial spokesman, Stefan Paris with the defense ministry, said it was
quite normal for information like this not to filter back to Berlin unless
there was a specific need.
Friedrich
faces closed-door drilling
Elsewhere
in Berlin, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich completed two days in front
of the special committee for internal affairs on Wednesday, facing further
questions after his impromptu visit to Washington at the weekend.
Opposition
politicians, who see increasing mileage in the alleged NSA espionage
activities, said after the session that Friedrich's appearance shed little
light on proceedings.
"Everywhere
people seem to accept the way the US side is acting with a shrug of the
shoulders, while there's no clarity anywhere," Social Democrat
parliamentarian Michael Hartmann said, adding that he felt the chancellor's
office should be answering questions instead of the interior ministry.
"My
personal impression: Before September 22, nothing is meant to be put on the table
here," Green party politician Wolfgang Wieland said, naming the date of
federal elections in Germany.
Friedrich
has so far stressed the NSA's supposed contribution to stopping five terror
plots in Germany, offering data on two of them to date, when discussing the
issue. The minister controversially said on Monday that there was a
"super-fundamental right" to protecting public safety that trumped
even privacy laws.
British
blow to EU data dreams?
Free
Democrat politician Hartfried Wolff, a member of the Bundestag's interior
committee, said on Wednesday that Friedrich had outlined one blow to Chancellor
Angela Merkel's proposed response.
Merkel said
in a key television interview on Sunday that she would be seeking unified EU
rules on data protection to allow the bloc to handle the issue better.
According
to Wolff, Friedrich said that the UK was unlikely to support such a move. Since
Snowden went public, a UK espionage program called "Tempora" has also
come to light.
Friedrich
is a member of the Bavarian sister arm of Merkel's Christian Democrats, the
CSU. Bavaria votes in state elections one week before the German ballot.
msh/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters)
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German spy agency: 'No plan for NSA base in Wiesbaden'
European commission backs Merkel's call for tougher data protection laws
Snowden elusive, Germany queries Britain's Tempora tapping program
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
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