Germany convicts married couple of spying for Indian intelligence service
December 13, 2019 Leave a comment
A court in Frankfurt has found a married couple guilty of spying in Germany on behalf of India’s external intelligence service. Due to Germany’s strict privacy laws, the couple have been identified only as 50-year-old Manmohan S. and his wife, Kanwal Jit K., who is 51.
According to the prosecution, Manmohan S. was recruited by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in January of 2015. His wife joined his intelligence-collection activities in July 2017. Following their arrest, the couple told German authorities that they held regular meetings with a RAW case officer who was serving as a diplomat in the Indian consulate in Frankfurt. They also said they were paid nearly $8,000 for their services.
The two convicted spies said at their trial that they were tasked to spy on adherents of the Sikh religion and members of the Kashmiri expatriate community in Germany. The central European country is believed to host as many as 20,000 Indian Sikhs, many of whom openly proclaim secessionist aspirations. Many Sikhs in India and abroad campaign for the creation of a Sikh state in parts of northwestern India and Pakistan, which they call Khalistan. India is also concerned about the secessionist aspirations of Kashmiris, a predominantly Muslim population of 10 million that lives in the region of Jammu and Kashmir. Delhi has long claimed that expatriate groups living in Europe and the United States provide funding for secessionist groups that operate in the region.
On Thursday, Frankfurt’s Higher Regional Court found the couple guilty of conducting illegal espionage activities on German soil. It handed Manmohan S. a one-and-a-half-year suspended jail sentence, while Kanwal Jit K. was given a fine that equates to 180 days of income.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 December 2019 | Permalink
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German court stops spy agencies from conducting mass surveillance of foreigners
May 20, 2020 by Joseph Fitsanakis 3 Comments
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, is uniquely positioned with access to a vast volume of telecommunications data and content. This is because Germany hosts some of the busiest and highest-capacity Internet exchange points in the world. The country’s extensive telecommunications infrastructure includes the so-called DE-CIX exchange in Frankfurt, believed to be the world’s second-busiest Internet node. It is believed that the DE-CIX Internet exchange alone carries over a trillion messages per day to and from Western Europe, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa.
The BND is not allowed to spy on the communications of German nationals. However, according to German media reports, the agency had until now assumed that Internet messages sent by foreigners, which passed through German-based exchanges, were fair game for interception and analysis. This was because, according to the BND, foreign nationals were not protected under Germany’s Basic Law —a term that refers to the German Constitution— which means they and their communications had no privacy protections under German law.
But this assumption was dispelled on Tuesday by the Federal Court of Justice, which is Germany’s highest court. The court ruled that telecommunications surveillance against foreigners is subject to Article 10 of Germany’s Basic Law, which affords German citizens the right to privacy. In other words, the law also protects the telecommunications of foreigners, according to the court, which means that surveillance of foreign communications should be carried out only in a targeted fashion, in response to specific cases or to target specific individuals. The court challenged the mass-surveillance —as opposed to a targeted surveillance— model of the BND’s data collection, and said that it the spy agency’s activities required more stringent oversight, especially in relation to the communications of reporters and lawyers. Finally, the court agreed with the plaintiffs that the constitutional safeguards against the BND’s ability to share its intercepted data with foreign spy agencies were insufficient.
In its ruling, the court gave the German government until December of 2021 to propose a new law governing telecommunications surveillance against foreigners, which will be compliant with the German Constitution.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 20 May 2020 | Permalink
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