What’s the point of the Inquiry? There is a formal document (pdf) that defines its task which can be found on the website of the inquiry. Main topics of the investigation are mass surveillance by the Five Eyes in Germany and/or in cooperation with Germany, on the population of Germany and on government and its institutions. Germany’s cooperation in the US drone war either through intelligence or the military base in Ramstein on German soil are a specific aspect of the Inquiry. The first major conflict was whether Edward Snowden should be called to testify in the inquiry. Until today the German government evades necessary decisions about the possibility for him to come to Germany.

Since September of last year I’m senior advisor for the Left party in Inquiry. My talk about the first year at the CCC Camp in August:

I also did a slightly different talk about the inquiry at the camp in German which was translated into English and dubbed. In this talk I went more into detail for some legal aspects and presumed some general knowledge of German parliamentary procedures:

After the since talks a group of people who attended set up an English language website to inform about the inquiry since there is very little reporting outside of Germany. You can find the website at germantransparency.org/, its Twitter account @GermanInq and via the hashtag #GermanInq . Let them know if you have news clips or other English language material that should be added.

Also if you have more questions about the Inquiry feel free to ask me here or via Twitter, my English language account is @Anne_Roth.

With Jacob Applebaum, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Smári McCarthy, Henrietta Williams, George Gingell, James Orwell, many others, and us.

Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing:

Journeyman Pictures‘ short documentary „Naked Citizens“ is an absolutely terrifying and amazing must-see glimpse of the modern security state, and the ways in which it automatically ascribes guilt to people based on algorithmic inferences, and, having done so, conducts such far-reaching surveillance into its victims‘ lives that the lack of anything incriminating is treated of proof of being a criminal mastermind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZxd8w11YSA

From the film’s website:

„I woke up to pounding on my door“, says Andrej Holm, a sociologist from the Humboldt University. In what felt like a scene from a movie, he was taken from his Berlin home by armed men after a systematic monitoring of his academic research deemed him the probable leader of a militant group. After 30 days in solitary confinement, he was released without charges. Across Western Europe and the USA, surveillance of civilians has become a major business. With one camera for every 14 people in London and drones being used by police to track individuals, the threat of living in a Big Brother state is becoming a reality. At an annual conference of hackers, keynote speaker Jacob Appelbaum asserts, „to be free of suspicion is the most important right to be truly free“. But with most people having a limited understanding of this world of cyber surveillance and how to protect ourselves, are our basic freedoms already being lost?

One of the articles that got a lot of attention was this one German Police eavesdropping Facebook, Gmail, Skype Conversations by The Hacker News. Unfortunately it mixes up some details:

An eavesdropping tool allegedly used by the German government to intercept Skype calls is full of security problems and may violate a ruling by the country’s constitutional court, according to a European hacker club. The information was released as part of a move towards financial transparency. The government released figures of expenses incurred by the Federal Ministry of the Interior following a parliamentary inquiry.

The ‚eavesdropping tool‘ is the trojan virus analysed by the CCC (the ‚European hacker club‘) one year ago. This was not released now and certainly not as a move towards financial transparency. The released figures mentioned in my blogpost two weeks ago very likely also cover payments for the trojan by Digitask – the company that sold the trojan to the government – but that’s not entirely evident from the covered document by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in July.

The Chaos Computer Club obtained several versions of a program that has allegedly been used by German law enforcement in possibly hundreds of investigations to intercept Skype calls, said Frank Rieger, a member of the club. On page 34 and page 37 of the report the cost …

Frank did say that, only not just now. While the report is all new.

I do think it’s great the issue got coverage from the Hacker News and I completely agree with the conclusion:

Tapping a phone is acceptable in today’s democracy because there are procedures in place for that sort of surveillance, But we are sort of sleep walking quietly from one level to the next.

Just wanted to be clear about what’s what: There’s been one year in between the latest publication of news by the CCC about the government trojan and then my blogpost about public spending on surveillance equipment. My impression is that the post on Hacker News got a bit confused over that. Or that maybe too much got edited out of the original version?

And THEN, one week later, the government had to admit that they haven’t found anyone who’d develop a brandnew trojan virus for them so they won’t have to buy more from DigiTask, contrary to what they promised. But that’s a different story again. (Which I’d love to see on some more news sites).

 

Recent answers of the interior ministry to questions by Jan Korte (DE), MP Left party, clearly state that the ministry one year later is still lacking the capacity to do as promised: to develop a software for lawful interception that complies with a decision by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court.

(Questions and answers in German, pdf)

The original „state trojan“ by Digitask did far more than what is allowed by German law:

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has recently received a newer version of the „Staatstrojaner“, a government spyware. The comparison with the older version, already analyzed by the CCC with the actual Sniffer-code from December 2010, revealed new evidence. Despite the claims of the responsible parties, the Trojan can still be remote-controlled, loaded with any code and also the allegedly „revision-proof logging“ can be manipulated. (CCC, 26 Oct 2011)

Also see Several German states admit to use of controversial spy software (Deutsche Welle).

The German minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, then promised that the software was going to be produced in-house (DE).

The new replies by the ministry prove him wrong:

The software by DigiTask GmbH that was used in the past for computer surveillance (lawful interception) is not currently being used by federal public authorities anymore.

The software that will be used for computer surveillance will be developed by a competence centre established within the Federal Criminal Police Office. It will be safeguarded that the source code will be audited regarding its range of functions by qualified experts. It will also be accessible for the relevant authorities for data protection (among others the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection).

For the time until the afore mentioned in-house development is completed the Federal Criminal Police Office is preparing a commercial interim solution. The source code of that software has to undergo extensive audits with respect to the demands by the Federal Constitutional Court. (my translation, A.R.)

In a reply to the second question by MP Korte the ministry states that it doesn’t know whether software by DigiTask or other commercial developers designed for lawful interception is being used by state police forces in Germany. Further details are classified and only accessible to MP Korte.

The spokesman on domestic policy of Angela Merkels conservative party in parliament, Hans-Peter Uhl, commented (DE):

The development of a software by the Federal Criminal Office is presumably going to take months if not years. We may even have to ruefully admit that we lack the capability completely.

Coverage in German media:

• Zeit Online: BKA muss neue Überwachungssoftware kaufen
• Tagesschau: „Kompetenzzentrum fehlt offenbar die Kompetenz“
• Netzpolitik.org: Staatstrojaner in Deutschland: Behörden wollen Quellcode prüfen, genaueres regelt ein Vertrag

Download the document in English (pdf) or German (pdf).

The answers were far more detailed than one would expect.

There’s 43 pages (this includes questions), 20 of which are tables that list who was contracted, how much money was paid, what for and how each paid item was used. Even though 12 out of 30 answers were defined as classified information – e.g. questions regarding Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services or the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) –  there’s still some interesting news to be found.

The German ministry for home affairs and thus the German police clearly state that they are monitoring Skype, Google Mail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Facebook chat if deemed necessary. Money is spent on trojan viruses and we can be quite certain which company produces the IMSI catchers used by German police. We know how much money was spent by the Federal Police on border control biometrics, on passenger information systems and telecommunications surveillance. Digitask, a company whose reputation was clearly damaged after its trojan virus was found and analysed by the Chaos Computer Club in 2011, seems to still be a regular contractor of German authorities. Altogether more than a billion Euro was spent on private services by German police and other public authorities in the realm of the ministry of home affairs in the years 2002 – 2012.

The translation into English, commissioned by MP Korte, leaves out the 20 pages that contain tables with data who was paid how much for what exactly. If your preferred translation website can’t be of help, let me know and I’ll do my best. I noticed one mistake in the translation of question no. 10: „Federal Agency for the Protection of the Environment (BfV)“ should instead be the domestic secret service „Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz BfV“.

Picture: Toban Black, Flickr, CC licence

The starting point was an article about his doctoral thesis (law) containing a number of plagiarisms, published maybe three weeks ago. This led to a vast wiki-based online collaboration of many people looking for pieces in the thesis that were in fact copied from elsewhere. Within days it turned out that approx. 70% of the 400+ pages didn’t have the necessary footnotes. The collaboration on this was started on Google docs but was moved to a proper wiki shortly after: http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com/wiki/GuttenPlag_Wiki

Guttenberg and his political allies – including the chancellor – tried to belittle the whole affair as irrelevant to his being minister of defense. Alongside wild public debates an open letter was set up by doctoral students protesting against the belittlement of their academic work. Within days 30.000 signatures were collected online and handed over to the chancellor. Almost – the students were refused at the entrance of the Office of the Federal Chancellor and told that because of terrorism dangers the signatures couldn’t be accepted.. (not sure if this is really true but it could be). They were all over the news anyways.

Lastly Berlin’s first demonstration took place last saturday that was organised solely through Twitter and social networks. Some 500 people gathered in Berlin’s commercial center and marched to the ministry of defence holding up shoes – a reminiscence to the Arab shoes. This got attention in virtually all of Germany’s news, major tv news included. I’ve never participated in a demonstration that small – there wasn’t even music – that got this much national attention. (Some pictures here http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/guttbye/interesting/)

Another Twitter revolt, style: western industrialised country? I don’t think so. Both tv and big printed papers played the decisive role. But what’s interesting is how public attention is moving ‚our‘ way. Why would less than 500 people protesting against a corrupt defense minister play any role at all? Because ‚the net people started it‘, via Twitter.

The fact that the amount of plagiarism in the dissertation was detected so fast by using a wiki played a role. It was noted widely that online collaboration can be very different and very effective in campaigning against politicians who didn’t have to fear this kind of attack so far.

Both the plagiarism detectives and the doctoral students wouldn’t have been able to get together, do something and go public this waybefore.

We’ve had Twitter, wikis, open letters online for a while. What’s new is the way this is being discussed. And the resignation of the most popular politician Germany’s had for years.

In the book there’s also a chapter by Andrej Holm and me, reflecting life with surveillance.

The details:

Prevent and Tame.
Protest under (Self)Control

Florian Heßdörfer, Andrea Pabst, Peter Ullrich (Eds.)

The common dualistic approach to social movements tends to see power and resistance as separate and independent antagonists. The contributors to this book aim to transcend that approach, arguing that to adequately analyze ongoing struggles, it is also critically important to trace the constitutive interconnectedness between social movements and power. This is the aim of the title “Prevent and Tame”: emergent strategies to prevent and tame protest―whether they are undertaken by the state or by factions within the movements themselves―have given rise to new kinds of social relations and regulations that call for a new approach to research on social movements and protest.

Inspired by Foucault and others, this book offers theoretical and empirical investigation into the implications that governmentality studies and subjectivation perspectives may have for a deeper understanding of the dynamics in the relationship between power and movements. The articles reflect on the effects of current neo-liberal or neo-social transformations on social movement practice, including the impact of surveillance, the criminalization and stigmatization of protest, and how these can lead movements to engage in self-taming behavior amongst themselves.

Taken as a whole, this book suggests that to take the struggles of social movements seriously, requires to acknowledge the complexity of the power dynamics in which they are involved. In so doing, the authors‘ aim is not to tame protest by over-amplifying its apparent obstacles, but to prevent its energy from being pointlessly wasted or misdirected (i.e. by being spent in the wrong places, in false conflicts, or even in fighting the clouds they cast themselves).

Includes contributions by
Stephen Gill, Peter Ullrich, Florian Heßdörfer, Andrej Holm, Anne Roth, Marco Tullney, Michael Shane Boyle, Darcy K. Leach, Sebastian Haunss and Nick Montgomery

Bibliographic Information
Heßdörfer, Florian; Pabst, Andrea; Ullrich, Peter (eds.) 2010: Prevent and Tame. Protest under (Self)Control, Berlin: Dietz, ISBN 978-3-320-02246-4, 122 pp., € 9.90.

Free download
http://www.rosalux.de/publication/37206/prevent-and-tame-protest-under-selfcontrol.html

order your copy (free copy for reviews)
info@dietzberlin.de
Table of contents

Stephen Gill
 Preface: Political Protest in the Age of Neoliberal Austerity

Peter Ullrich, Andrea Pabst, and Florian Heßdörfer
Introduction: Prevent and Tame.
Ideas for a New Perspective on Social Movements and Protest

Peter Ullrich
Preventionism and Obstacles for Protest in Neoliberalism.
Linking Governmentality Studies and Protest Research

Florian Heßdörfer
Anti-Social or Childish:
Protest and Youth under the Eye of Prevention

Marco Tullney
Organizing Employees Under Surveillance:
My Boss is Spying on Me, So I Better Keep My Mouth Shut

Andrej Holm and Anne Roth
Anti-Terror Investigations against Social Movements―
A Personal Experience of a Preventive Threat

Michael Shane Boyle
The Criminalization of Dissent: Protest Violence, Activist Performance,
and the Curious Case of the VolxTheaterKarawane in Genoa

Darcy K. Leach and Sebastian Haunss
»Wichtig ist der Widerstand«: Rituals of Taming and Tolerance
in Movement Responses to the Violence Question

Nick Montgomery
Beyond Civil Disobedience and Counter-hegemony:
Legitimacy, Strategy and Tactics in the 2010 Anti-Olympics Movement

Update: It did get published, in Digital Security for Activists (pdf, 4mb, p. 11-21) by the Riseup collective.

Blogging against surveillance, or: who’s the terrorist?

On July 31 of last year, at 7 in the morning armed police stormed into the apartment where my partner Andrej Holm, I and our two children live. We learned that day that he was a terrorism suspect and that an investigation had been going on for almost a year. Andrej was arrested and flown to Germany’s Court of Justice the next day. The search of our home lasted 15 hours. I was forced to wake my children, dress them and make them have breakfast with an armed policeman watching us. That day my new life started, a life as the partner of one of Germany’s top terrorists.

Andrej spent three weeks in investigative detention. The arrest warrant was signed on grounds that caused a public outcry, not only in Germany but also in many other countries. Open letters were sent to the court that were signed by several thousand people protesting against the arrests. Among the signatures were those of David Harvey, Mike Davis, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett and Peter Marcuse.

What had happened?

Some hours before Germany’s federal police came to us, three men were arrested near Berlin, who were said to have tried to set fire to several army vehicles. The original investigation was started against four other men, of which Andrej is one, who are suspected to be the authors of texts by a group called “militante gruppe” (mg, militant group). The group is known in Germany for damaging property for years, but never using violence against people. The texts claim responsibility for arson attacks against cars and buildings in and around Berlin since 2001. German anti-terror law §129a of the penal code was used to start an anti-terror-investigation against the four. All of them write and publish online. Andrej works as a sociologist on issues such as gentrification and the situation of tenants. Outside academia he is actively involved in tenants‘ organizations and movements that deal with gentrification and urban development. Using words such as ‚gentrification‘, ‚marxist-leninist‘, ‚precarisation‘ oder ‚reproduction‘ in their texts was enough to start complete surveillance (a linguistic analysis by the Federal Police later showed it’s most unlikely they wrote these texts). As we saw later in the files, the profile for the ‚militant group‘ was based on several assumptions: Members of the ‚militant group‘ are assumed to

• have close ties within the group (all four have been good friends for years)
• be political activists (of the left)
• have no prior police record
• use ‚conspiratorial behaviour‘, such as encrypting email, using anonymous mail addresses (not made of proper first and last names)
• be critical researchers and as such have access to libraries and a variety of daily papers, a profound political and historical knowledge.

How to make a terrorist

The initial suspicion based on an internet research for similarities in writing and vocabulary led to different measures of surveillance: phone tapping, video cameras pointed at living spaces, emails and internet traffic being monitored, bugging devices in cars, bugging operations on people’s conversations etc. None of these produced valid evidence, so every two or three months surveillance measures were extended. Anti-terror-investigations according to §129a of the penal code are known and infamous for the fact that they are carried out secretly and only less than 5% ever produce enough evidence to lead to actual court cases. The vast majority entail lengthy investigations, during which huge amounts of data (mostly on activists) are collected and after years the case is dropped without anyone ever knowing about it.

Not the ‚terrorist‘ deeds themselves are being prosecuted, but rather membership or support of the said terrorist organization. Therefore investigations focus on ‚who knows who and why‘. For the time being we know of four such cases carried out against 40 activists in Germany last year. Participation in protests against the G8 played a prominent, but not the only role. In all four cases the names of more than 200 people were found in the files that were handed over to the defendants: a good indication of what these investigations are really good for.

In ‚our‘ case most likely all people who had any kind of interaction with Andrej during 2006/07 were checked by the police. Doing this they noticed two meetings that allegedly took place in February and April of 2007 with someone who was later included in the investigation as a fifth suspect, and then two others who were in touch with this ‚No. 5‘.  The two meetings took place under „highly conspiratorial circumstances“: no mobile phones were taken along, the meeting had been arranged through so-called anonymous email accounts and during the meeting – a walk outside – the two turned around several times.

The three who were later included in the investigation are the same three who were arrested after the alleged attempted arson attack. Some hours later special police forces stormed our home and Andrej became ‚the brain behind the militant group‘. My identity changed to being ‚the terrorist’s partner‘.

Becoming ‚the terrorist’s partner‘

I was in shock. All of Berlin was on summer break. The few of us who were not away got together to gather the little we understood about the accusation. The media rejoiced with headlines such as ‚Federal Police finally succeeded in arresting long searched for terror group‘ and we had to deal with media inquiries, talking to lawyers, talking to relatives, talking to friends, colleagues, neighbors and our children. We had to find out about life in prison, start a campaign for donations to pay for lawyers, make a website, agree on how to proceed between a rather heterogeneous group of suspects and even more heterogeneous network of friends and supporters and discuss how to deal with the media.

I realized slowly that my children and I were the collateral damage to this case. My computer was confiscated, things were taken from my desk, all of my belongings searched. My kids (2 and 5 years old last summer) lived through two searches carried out by armed police. Their father was kidnapped and disappeared for weeks.  Being a political activist myself, I am of course aware of the fact that phones can be tapped and that this is used extensively against activists. In Germany close to 40.000 phones (including mobiles) are tapped each year – we have a total population of 80 million. (http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/media/archive/13600.pdf). To realize and later to read on paper that this concerns you is an entirely different thing from the somewhat abstract idea that you may be subjected to it.

When Andrej was released on bail after three weeks, Germany’s Federal Prosecutor filed a complaint and wanted him back in detention right away, based on the idea that he might flee the country or the danger of repetition. How do you repeat membership in a terrorist organization? One of the many mysteries inside the prosecutors mind. The complaint was not granted right away, but instead Germany’s Court of Justice decided it needed time to reflect thoroughly on the details of the arrest warrant (which was the origin of the huge wave of solidarity that was perceived widely in the media), the question of whether the so-called group actually qualified as ‚terrorist‘ and whether the presented evidence justified detention.

Obvious surveillance

It was impossible to overlook that Andrej was the focus of police observation. Our phones went crazy – not just once did people try to call Andrejs mobile number but ended up in my phone instead. When I in turn also tried to call him, I got my own mailbox talking to me. Our TV behaved oddly (as a result of silent, or stealth pings that were sent to Andrej’s mobile phone regularly to locate him). Emails disappeared.

At some point in the middle of this, I considered starting a weblog about it. Nobody to my knowledge had ever done a blog about living with anti-terror surveillance. It was not an easy decision: were people going to believe me? Would I be portrayed as crazy or paranoid? On the other hand, unlike many other people, I know for certain that surveillance is taking place and why not write about what it feels like? Germany had a major debate about data retention last summer – the law was just passed and was to go into effect 2008 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention for details). A new anti-terror federal police law was discussed in parliament and a public debate about data protection grew to dimensions nobody had thought possible some months before. The War on Terror serves to justify more repressive laws here as well. A blog about the consequences of such an investigation to a family that is admittedly interested (and actively involved) in politics, but otherwise not exactly your typical terrorist stereotype opened many eyes.

The idea of blogging had not appealed to me very much before, precisely because I am quite fond of my privacy. Why present my personal daily life to a widely anonymous public? Absurd. But now, when my privacy was already violated beyond anything imaginable, why not talk about what it feels like to people who are more sympathetic than the Federal Prosecutor? Why not talk about how ridiculous the ‚facts‘ to prove the case really are? And there are so many amazingly strange interpretations in the files of how we live our life, of what Andrej said on the phone, of what my mother said on the phone, that I thought nobody would believe these details just a few months later.

A weblog to protect my privacy

I can’t think of many situations when it would make sense to publish details about yourself on a website with the intention to protect your privacy. In this case it did make sense. We were subjected to a powerful and (for us) uncontrollable invasion of our life: we had the said video cameras pointing at the doors of the house we live in, phones tapped, email and internet traffic monitored, mail read, the stealth pings sent to Andrejs mobile phone to locate him every hour, undercover agents following him around and who knows what else. It’s likely that this is going on until now. Surveillance by police and secret services done in a very obvious way for you to notice is (also) meant to scare you, maybe to provoke reactions. Is also meant to scare others who just might have the same inclination to want to make the world a better place. Fear works best when your alone with it.
Publishing details about how this fear is incited is not only a good way to open eyes about how the ‚War on Terror‘ looks likefrom the receiving end but is also a great method to stay sane and get it of (some of) the fear.

And so I started blogging. Mostly in German, basically because I don’t find the time to translate more and maybe also because I thought tha there would be more German readers interested – it is a minor case of terrorism, if you want, and hardly known outside Germany. You can find some texts in English here: http://annalist.noblogs.org/category/en.

Reactions

I wasn’t familiar with the world of blogs, and probably still am not very much. I didn’t have time to find out how to ‚make your blog popular‘ and was not particularly interested in that. I wasn’t really sure how much attention I’d like, and so I started by publishing in the blog the same things I had previously sent by email to people interested in the development of the case and in how we personally were doing. And I only told people I knew about it. It took about three weeks until some of the more popular political German blogs picked it up, wrote about us and the number of visits exploded. In the beginning people wondered whether this, whether I ‚was real‘. The blog got lots of comments and it was obvious that many people were completely shocked about what was going on. They compared the investigation to what they imagined having taken place in the Soviet Union, in China, North Korea, East Germany, but not ‚here‘, in a Western democracy, a constitutional state. Another group consists of people who want to help us secure our privacy by explaining about email encryption, switching SIM cards in mobile phone and the like, not realizing that at least in the first months we actively avoided anything that could only appear as though we wanted to behave in a conspiratorial way, as this was one of the reasons Andrej became a suspect to begin with.

I thought it was pretty funny that being ‚the sociologist’s wife‘ (we are not married), people seemed to assume that Linux or encryption is something I’d never heard of. Many people expressed fear that already by reading my blog or even commenting on it they might endanger themselves. I was glad they did anyway. Others expressed admiration for us to have chosen to be so public about the case. All of this was great and very important support that made it much easier to deal with the ongoing stress and tension that come with the threat of being tried as a terrorist.

Development of the investigation

Fortunately Germany’s Court of Justice took several decisions that were very favorable for Andrej. In a first, two months after the prosecutor’s objection to his release on bail, the court decided not only to not allow the objection, but instead completely withdrew the arrest warrant, arguing that ‚pure assumptions are not sufficient‘. This decision was perceived as a ’slap in the face‘ of Germany’s Federal Prosecutor by many journalists. One months later the same court had to decide whether the ‚militant group‘ can be considered a ‚terrorist organization‘ and decided against this. The German definition for terrorism demands that a terrorist act is meant and able to shake the state to its very foundations, or else to terrify the population as such. When Germany’s minister of justice, Brigitte Zypries, was asked in an interview with Der Spiegel, one of the biggest political weekly magazines, about the case against the alleged members of the ‚militant group‘, she said that she thought that the attacks of September 11 are a terrible tragedy, but in her definition not a terrorist act as it didn’t manage to endanger the American state. We were rather surprised by this, to say the least. In November the Court of Justice decided that the ‚militant group‘ can’t be considered to be terrorist and ordered the other three arrested to be released on bail. At this point, the investigation is being conducted on the basis of §129 (instead of §129a), which prosecutes criminal instead of terrorist organizations, with possible sentences of up to five instead of ten years.

When Andrej was arrested for ‚being terrorist‘, on the grounds of being intelligent, knowing many people from different spheres of society, accessing libraries and publishing texts, being an activist, behaving in what is seen as a conspiratorial way (not always taking the mobile phone along or using encryption) it felt that if this is possible, then it is thinkable that they’d even sentence him to a prison term. With months of public support and more details of the investigation becoming public, like many others, I started believing that this nightmare is terminal, that the case would have to be dropped eventually. Most people don’t realize that the investigation is actually still going on. All of our phone calls are still being listened to, our emails read, Andrej’s every step is being watched. Germany discusses online searches of computers and using hidden cameras in people’s living spaces to detect terrorists, and we know that the secret service is using what the police only dream of. It has been an extremely straining life for a year and a half now, but I am convinced that a good way to survive something like this, which terrorized us, our children, families and friends, is to not go into hiding. I understand the feeling very well of wanting to not move anymore until it’s all over, to not provoke any (legal) action when you’re in the focus of this kind of attention. To do the contrary – seek as much public attention and thus support as possible – was the best thing we could do.

More:

Statewatch, Oct 2007: Crime by association

Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen, Oct 21, 2007, The Guardian: Guantánamo in Germany. In the name of the war on terror, our colleagues are being persecuted – for the crime of sociology

Teil 2 Teil 3 Teil 4 Teil5

by xkcd,

Die US-amerikanische Bürgerrechtsorganisation ACLU hat heute gemeldet, dass inzwischen eine Million Namen auf der Terrorist Watch List der Vereinigten Staaten stehen und ruft Menschen, die davon ausgehen, dass sie auf der Terror-Liste stehen und etwa Probleme beim Fliegen hatten, dazu auf, sich über das Watchlistformular zu melden.

Mehr dazu in Drop the Pilot und bei der ACLU: ACLU Backgrounder on Aviation Watch Lists. Auf der Liste stehen z.B. bereits Tote (Saddam Hussein), Robert Johnson (und es gibt mind. 12 Männer mit dem Namen, die über Schwierigkeiten berichten), Evo Morales (Präsident von Bolivien), diverse US-Senatoren etc. Viele tatsächlich als Terroristen gesuchte Personen stehen nicht drauf, angeblich um die Fahndung nicht zu gefährden.

Die ganze Meldung

Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names (7/14/2008)

ACLU launches online watch list complaint form

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON, DC – The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one
million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil
Liberties Union based upon the government’s own reported numbers for
the size of the list.

"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ’suspicious
characters,‘ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become
trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of
escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington
Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening
Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it
has to be done soon."

Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology
and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch
list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Civil
Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite
possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an
American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at
the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.

"America’s new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for
what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s
unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the
innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives
of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt,
director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed
without delay."

"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the
list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of
innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security
resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning," said Steinhardt. "I doubt
this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."

Controls on the watch lists called for by the ACLU included:

• due process
• a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based
• tight criteria for adding names to the lists
• rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the lists.

The ACLU also called for the president – if not this one then the
next – to issue an executive order requiring the lists to be reviewed
and limited to only those for whom there is credible evidence of
terrorist ties or activities. The review should be concluded within 3
months.

In February, the ACLU unveiled an online "watch list counter," which
has tracked the size of the watch list based on a September 2007 report
by the inspector general of the Justice Department, which reported that
it was growing by 20,000 names per month.

The ACLU is also announcing today the creation of an online form
where victims of the watch list can tell us their stories. We will
collect those stories and use them (with permission) in various ways to
advance our advocacy. A link to the form is available online at www.aclu.org/watchlist or directly at www.aclu.org/watchlistform.

The watch list counter and other materials are available at: www.aclu.org/watchlist