The National Intelligence Organization, also known by its Turkish initials MIT or MİT, or colloquially as the Organization is an intelligence agency of the Turkish government tasked with gathering information of national interests. It gathers information for the Presidency and the Armed Forces about the current and potential threats from inside and outside against all the elements that make up Turkey's integrity, constitutional order, existence, independence, security and national power and take precautions when necessary.
Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German author, journalist, politician, and executive.
German–Turkish relations have their beginnings in the times of the Ottoman Empire and they have culminated in the development of strong bonds with many facets that include economic, military, cultural and social relations. With Turkey as a candidate for the European Union, of which Germany is the largest member, and the existence of a significant Turkish diaspora in Germany, these relations have become more and more intertwined over the decades. Relations with Turkey significantly deteriorated after the 2016–17 Turkish purges including the arrest of journalists such as Die Welt's Deniz Yücel.
Jacob Appelbaum is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker.
Hans-Peter Friedrich is a German politician of the Christian Social Union (CSU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since 1998. Under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, he served as Federal Minister of the Interior (2011-2013) and as Minister for Food and Agriculture (2013). Friedrich resigned from that position in February 2014. Friedrich has a controversial history with minorities in Germany, causing outrage in 2013 after telling journalists that Islam in Germany is not something supported by history at any point.
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and cypherpunk activist. He was convicted in Australia for hacking in 1996. He founded WikiLeaks in 2006; the organisation came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is an American lawyer and former CIA employee who was arrested, charged, and convicted of violating the Espionage Act for revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen. The case was based on what the judge called "very powerful circumstantial evidence." In May 2015, Sterling was sentenced to 3½ years in prison. In 2016 and 2017, he filed complaints and wrote letters regarding mistreatment, lack of medical treatment for life-threatening conditions, and false allegations against him by corrections officers leading to further punitive measures. He was released from prison in January 2018.
FinFisher, also known as FinSpy, is surveillance software marketed by Lench IT Solutions plc, which markets the spyware through law enforcement channels.
Edward Joseph Snowden is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
Heiko Josef Maas is a German lawyer and former politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs (2018–2021) and as the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection (2013–2018) in the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since 2022, he has been practicing as a lawyer.
The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.
The global surveillance disclosure released to media by Edward Snowden has caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union. In August 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of "a review group on intelligence and communications technologies" that would brief and later report to him. In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the National Security Agency (NSA) to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using "backdoors" in hardware or software. Geoffrey R. Stone, a White House panel member, said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.
Global mass surveillance can be defined as the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders.
Harald Range was a German jurist and was Attorney General of Germany.
The Zone 9 bloggers are a blogging collective from Ethiopia, who maintain a blog in Amharic. On 25 and 26 April 2014, the Ethiopian government arrested six members of the Zone 9 bloggers network and three other journalists, who faced terrorism charges for their writing at the time. The action had sparked an online protest.
The German Parliamentary Committee investigation of the NSA spying scandal was started on March 20, 2014, by the German Parliament in order to investigate the extent and background of foreign secret services spying in Germany in the light of the Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present). The Committee is also in search of strategies on how to protect telecommunication with technical means.
Pegasus is spyware developed by the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android. Pegasus is able to exploit iOS versions up to 14.7, through a zero-click exploit. As of 2022, Pegasus was capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device's microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. It is a Trojan horse computer virus that can be sent "flying through the air" to infect cell phones.
The Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr) is a committee of the German Bundestag responsible for oversight of the intelligence agencies of Germany. The PKGr monitors the Federal Intelligence Service, the Military Counterintelligence Service, and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Under the Control Body Act, the federal government is obliged to inform the PKGr comprehensively about the general activities of the federal intelligence services and about events of particular importance.
Peter-Herbert Frank is a German jurist who has been serving as Public Prosecutor General since 5 October 2015. Prior to this, he served as Attorney General of Bavaria in Munich.
Kunstler v. Central Intelligence Agency is a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Undercover Global S.L., and David Morales Guillen filed by a group of American lawyers and journalists associated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The lawsuit alleges that the CIA violated their Constitutional rights by recording their conversations with Assange and copying their phones and computers after suspicions were raised that Assange was working for the Russian intelligence services.
