Sun, Aug 03, 2014 page6

• Germans view NSA spies in ‘natural habitat’

  • The Guardian, GRIESHEIM, Germany
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  One morning in July last year, the German intelligence service knocked on Daniel Bangert’s door. They had been informed by the US military police that he was planning to stage a protest outside the Dagger Complex, a US intelligence base outside Griesheim in the Hesse region. Why had he not registered the protest, and what were his political affiliations, they asked.

  Bangert explained that he was not planning a protest and that he did not have any links to political groups. All he had done was put a message on Facebook inviting friends to go on a nature walk to “explore the endangered habitat of NSA spies.” Eventually, the agents left in frustration.

  Twelve months later, Bangert’s nature trail has become a weekly ritual in Griesheim and the frontrunner of a new multi-generational German protest movement against digital surveillance.

  

  People hold up placards featuring US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden during a protest march outside a US spy facility in Griesheim, near Darmstadt in central Germany, on July 26.

  Photo: AFP

  On Saturday, around 130 “spy spotters” from across the country joined Bangert and his “Society for the Protection of NSA Spies” for the first anniversary of his ramble from Griesheim’s town square to the Dagger Complex.

  The 29-year-old heating engineer, who is retraining as an IT worker, first became interested in the US intelligence service after the publication of Edward Snowden’s revelations in June last year.

  When the US National Security Agency (NSA) advertised a job for a security expert in the area, it seemed to confirm his suspicions about the fenced-off site in his home town.

  “There had always been rumors that the Dagger Complex was full of US spies when I grew up,” he said. “The incredible thing is that those rumors have now turned out to be true.”

  German media outlets report that the Dagger Complex is the central base for US surveillance operations in Europe, containing the NSA’s military branch as well as the European Cryptologic Centre, in which several hundred NSA employees collect and analyze data with the help of tools such as the notorious XKeyscore program.

  Usually, Bangert’s spotters carry at least a pair of binoculars and a couple of surveillance cameras made of cardboard. Registration numbers of cars parked at the facility are logged, but sightings of NSA employees are rare: “Spies are shy creatures,” Bangert said.

  On Snowden’s birthday, the walkers brought along cake in order to “lure the spies out of their hiding holes.”

  When the owners of the Dagger Complex complained to police about the rubbish left behind by the protesters, they brought rakes and brushes and offered to clean up inside the complex.

  For the anniversary, the organizers built a “bed for Snowden,” as a symbolic reminder of their ongoing campaign for Germany to offer asylum to the US whistleblower.

  So far, Bangert’s only interaction with those working in the Dagger Complex is the time a departing employee called him a “dumb-ass motherfucker” from a moving car.

  “My aim is to get on the NSA’s nerves whenever I can,” Bangert told the Guardian. “And I think they are pretty irritated at the moment.”

  The protesters include students in their late teens as well as pensioners.

  Frieder Haug, a 67-year-old retired priest who is a member of the activist network Attac, joined the walks because he felt the protests against digital surveillance had managed to bring together different people in the way the peace movement had in the 1980s.

  “Originally, I didn’t want to join Attac because it was only full of people my age. Now there is finally a new generation of young people who are not only politicized, but also stubborn in getting their point across,” he said.

  Bangert said he planned to continue the nature walks indefinitely.

  “Over the last 12 months, in spite of all the politicians expressing their outrage, absolutely nothing has changed. So of course we have to keep on going,” he said.
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