Anyone who thinks this is about terrorism is pathetically naive. The NSA is a top-notch Tax & Economic Espionage (TEE) organization; with terrorism so low on the agenda, it is laughable. You do not collect every phone call worldwide of billions of people to sort out even 100 terrorists. They store all that data and can input your name and wham – up pops everything. I am waiting for some smart lawyer in a divorce case to subpoena such a file to prove someone has been cheating to get a pile of money.
In theory, the existence of such files should be open to everyone just like the Nixon Tapes. They must have copies of all the emails Hillary erased to hide her dealings with foreign governments to get money for the pretend Clinton charity. They all exist. Why has someone not demanded that the NSA turn them over? Well, it would open the floodgate on everyone else. The NSA didn’t build that immense storage facility for nothing. They erase nothing – retain everything. They remembered their childhood songs of how Santa Claus knows everything and said gee, we can do that. So why is Congress or even Trump demanding the NSA turnover all her emails? Guess to they do not want to publicly admit Snowden was correct.
The NSA is a strategically aligned intelligence agency that has brought “1984” to life. The NSA has been deeply engaged in economic and industrial espionage. Combating terrorism, global money laundering, corruptions, and the fight against proliferation, are all excuses used to justify tracking every dollar. They might as well put a GPS chip in the currency. Terrorism is just a fig leaf for what they have been building. If they were interested in just terrorism, they would have no need to store every phone call, email, text, and written letter they can get their hands on.
New revelations claim that the NSA was spying on the French military industry, what they were producing, and to whom they were selling. Due to restrictive granting of export permits imposed by Germany, the German armaments industry is blocked. The French defense industry can count on the support of their government to ship to foreign lands. This is what distinguishes the French key industries from their German competitors. This has made the French military industry an interesting target for the NSA. This we can understand, but going beyond that opens Pandora’s Box.
The key to understanding the NSA’s mission profile for economic and industrial espionage began when the dividing line for “national security” expanded following 9/11. This has become a paradigm shift where everything from money flows, transport, energy, telecommunications, critical infrastructure, and the IT sector, has been designed to track and control eventually everything. The gathering of information is only one part of a much broader intelligence operation. They are operating in secret, not even Congress knows what they are really doing with the data. Snowden reported that staff created programs to collect nude photos that girls sent to their boyfriends, which certainly had nothing to do with national security.
This is especially true when it comes to long-term, strategic economic goals. The French newspaper “Libération” recently reported that around 100 major French companies, including almost all of the members of the Paris stock exchange CAC 40 index, will be affected by NSA spying activities. The NSA is probably tracking all German companies since they would be even more critical, given the German export economic model. The economic ties between German politics and economics contain politically interesting export markets, such as Russia or China, represents extremely valuable info regarding even the embargo against Russia.
However, there is a significant difference between the French and German key industries: German DAX companies were listed often on the U.S. stock market, whereas a French company was not. After the investigations in the course of compliance bribery scandal against Siemens unfolded, rethinking began within German industry with respect to U.S. listings. DAX companies such as Daimler (2010), the German Telekom, and even before the Alliance, BASF, Bayer, Infineon, and E.ON have retired for good reasons from the U.S. market. Siemens followed in early 2014.
Unbeknownst to most people, the Patriot Act (2001) imposed administrative requirements. The SEC obtained new compliance powers for any company traded on the U.S. stock exchange. This has resulted in many foreign companies de-listing from the USA in a mass exodus. Listing on the U.S. exchange opened the door for the NSA and other security authorities (FBI) to engage in investigations and control beyond the U.S. borders, expanding even the FBI outside the USA all in the name of terrorism. This has led to the mass exit of foreign companies from U.S. listings.
Foreign banks exposed themselves to U.S. law, even in their home offices, by merely having an office in the USA. The U.S. authorities went after and destroyed the Swiss banks by imposing all sorts of charges. This is why UBS suddenly donated to Hillary’s charity in return for her intervening on their behalf. That is outright criminal bribery, but Hillary seems to think she walks on water.
An example of a ZDF-post on May 17, 2000, shows that the NSA spied on German companies for the benefit of American companies. “The most spectacular case is probably the case of VW, where the NSA from this station has intercepted video conferencing from VW with the later manager Lopez while then, the results in the United States General Motors and then leaked to the German subsidiary Opel.” The U.S. intelligence is abusing their power for private purposes. One must wonder what the U.S. companies gave in return for such assistance. This was just the tip of the iceberg.
Systemically, the NSA has been spying on foreign banks, looking for Americans at least since the mid-90s. This includes Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg. This transformed into claiming they were concerned about financing terrorism, which would not take billions of dollars. In addition, the IT used by the banks has been ineffective in blocking access by the NSA.
The NSA has developed a massive means to follow the cash flows as supported by the documents of Edward Snowden. The involvement of the NSA in tracking all capital flows is documented in the global monitoring of payments, including all banks. The documents showed also that the Belgium-based SWIFT organization was an NSA intelligence target. SWIFT standardizes the remittances of the world for more than 10,000 banks and is considered a bottleneck for international payments. Tap into that and you have everything.
This activity has contributed to the DEFLATIONARY world we live in as capital flows have reduced because of crazy regulation. FATCA has prevented Americans from operating overseas. Only prior multinational are exempt. No American citizen can possibly expand into the world economy for foreign banks will not accept Americans, be it in Asia or Europe. This is the hunt for money to document every account and movement of money. This is reducing global capital flows and threatens to unwind everything that was built since World War II. Foreign companies have been delisted in the USA because of crazy regulation hidden inside the Patriot Act, and then add FATCA, and one must wonder how much longer the world economy can stand before it topples over.
