"The US government has the ability to access many politicians' emails in Europe" | Hacker News Reader

"The US government has the ability to access many politicians' emails in Europe"

republik.ch

19 pointsdoener9 comments

Because of extraterritorial rights they have over data centers and facilities to intrude into otherwise secured communications. Bert is right to flag this, but it is (as I understand it) a statement to capability not evidenced to be happening.

You would think by now European and other geopolitical circles were considering how they want to become more resilient in the face of a US state prepared to rip up informal and formal agreements to modus operandi. That said, wasn't the evidence the US actively snooped European political leaders phone communication revealed some years ago?

It is happening because they were caught doing it before, including with the help of various European intelligence agencies.

German BND helped the NSA even without the German government's knowledge.

Danish intelligence helped the NSA spy on the German Chancellor.

Etc.

Some of you maybe thinking why would the German BND help the NSA without the German Governments Knowledge? The answer is not CLASSIFIED, it could be:

1) The NSA can do it themselves but they are asking for it for convenience 2) There is a lot of intelligence sharing among the agencies and they can cut them off easily

Bert's been on a bit of a tear on this topic for a while, e.g., https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/you-can-no-longer-base-you...

> "The US government has the ability to access many politicians' emails in Europe"

Many ? Maybe all.

One more evidence that European States are just vassals of America.

well it may seem like it but they don't pay taxes to the US Federal Government and NATO is good for the US to offload the costs while maintaining control over the military equipment.

russian propaganda?

Nope. Simply the reality of the market -- cheaper to buy in the US than to build your own (particularly if you don't bother taking security into account, which most political and financial types consider too inconvenient or incomprehensible technobabble).

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