Ausmaß des Überwachungsskandals: Friedrich vs. Greenwald

Bundesinnenminister Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU):

Derzeit gebe es in der öffentlichen Diskussion die Vorstellung, „da säßen irgendwo Tausende von Amerikanern und würden unsere Mails lesen und unsere Telefone abhören“, sagte Friedrich laut dpa am Montag bei einer Sicherheitskonferenz mit sächsischen Unternehmern in Riesa. „Das ist eine völlig unsinnige Vorstellung, was man da den Leuten erzählt.“

vs. Guardian-Reporter Glenn Greenwald:

The way that I know exactly what analysts have the capability to do when they’re spying on Americans is that the story I’ve been working on for the last month that we’re publishing this week very clearly sets forth what these programs are that NSA analysts — low-level ones, not just ones who work for the NSA, but private contractors like Mr. Snowden — are able to do. The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years. And what these programs are, are very simple screens like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address and it does two things: it searches a database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered. And it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address of that IP address do in the future.

And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst. There are legal constraints for how you can spy on Americans. You can’t target them without going through the FISA court. But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.

(Hervorhebungen von mir)

Die Analysten von denen Greenwald spricht sind nicht nur NSA-Mitarbeiter sondern auch, wie Edward Snowden, normale Mitarbeiter von Subunternehmen.