An article in the German Spiegel online should be a "must read" for everyone who shrugged off the incredible hoovering up of all things digital as "they have always done it".
The author of the piece points out the simple fact that the scope and the targets have changed from what we used to broadly call "state secrets" to "everybody".
And this includes the milk cows of the local farmer who has them hooked up to the internet.
If this is not clear enough, think Stuxnet for cows, say MilkNet, to torture your cows remotely, turn the milk sour and make them kick the farmer. If you have enough cows kick enough farmers at the same time, you could manipulate the milk prices or shut down the local dairy supply.
Have your pick.
On a slightly more serious note, the past month has been a wonderful time for the K-Landnews resident linguist.
He or she perked up when the first denials came that said "the NSA does not have direct access" to company servers.
Our linguist went "okay, that means there is either a little software program that you can qualify as "not direct" or the FBI runs the equipment".
Judge for yourself how correct the statement was.
We also wrote an early post about the spin doctor basics and sat back and watched the noise unfold.
By now, you must have heard that the German population reacted more vigorously than other people, and you heard of the lingering Nazi and Stasi concerns.
What you probably have not heard of is that the NSA (as well as the UK) have pretty much unfettered access to German communications via old Cold War agreements that are still legally binding.
These agreements go so far that spies captured by the German authorities can be held and spirited out of the country by the U.S.
We learned this from an article in the sueddeutsche zeitung by a historian who described the origin, the evolution and the German government collusion in all of this.
Fascinating, to say the least.
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