Word: german
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...According to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel, the results of the surveillance, codenamed "Operation Alberich," were discussed at the highest levels. President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were updated on its progress over the past year, and the two leaders discussed the operation during the meeting of G8 leaders of industrialized countries in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June. The U.S. ambassador to Germany and Michael Hayden, the CIA director, brought it up regularly with German counterparts...
...Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff repeatedly raised the case with Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who reassured his counterpart that German authorities were taking the case seriously. The two, German officials say, have a close personal chemistry. Chertoff and his wife visited the Schaeubles at their country home and in the German capital, Berlin. "There is a level of understanding and trust on the important issues," one said...
...addition to trumpeting their collaboration, both German and U.S. officials have seized on the case to push for the implementation of controversial eavesdropping measures, including greater powers of electronic surveillance. In Germany, Schaeuble is arguing for measures that would include the secret installation of spying software via the Internet on suspects' personal computers in order to monitor their communications. "The experts agree that terrorists communicate with each other more and more through the Internet," he told reporters on the day of the arrests. "Therefore, in exceptional cases, we need to have the power to get into computers." But the proposal...
...Senate hearings this week, McConnell was asked by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, an advocate of the new law, whether the law, called the Protect America Act, helped with the German arrests. "Yes, sir. It did.... The ability to listen in on plotters.... allowed us to see and understand all the connections among members of the suspected terrorist cell," McConnell said. "Because we could understand it, we could help our partners through a long period of monitoring and observation." Critics, including several Congressmen, have argued that the most important intercepts in the German case were obtained before the updated...
...person, on-the-ground surveillance. Off and on during the past nine months the suspects knew they were being watched. At one point, a suspect even stopped at a traffic light, got out of his car, and slashed the tires of the car behind him to thwart the German agents who were following him. One of the suspects, less than discreetly, chanted anti-U.S. slogans outside a nightclub frequented by servicemen while being watched. No need for a wiretap to pick that...