 Just a few words in English. I'm going to do the same talk in English at the Berlin Venech BR Dome, I think about six in the evening. So you are very welcome to listen to basic the same thing tomorrow in English. No back to German. Thank you for the introduction. She was almost right. I don't sit in for the left. I am a referentine, and I work with the two persons. And my job is I want to explain it exactly. I actually want to talk something about something else today. It's what happened in the last year, a few facts. How does this one, the review committee, how does it work technically? What themes are there, and who does it help? And what do we get from that? So who will do it? You can see it a bit, but not completely. This is the repetition. CSU and CDU are 80 persons. So that's the way it is also in this review committee. SPD has two, two-thirds, and one for each of the others. And that plays a big role in how the votes run. And that's pretty much the way it works in the Bundestag. And that's which rights are there for the minority. And for example, the opposition doesn't have that rights right now. And we can have a look. But the people from the reigning fractions do have, must have, must review what is being done. So that is always swinging from they have to defend their own government. And on the other side, they have to find something out as a member of the parliament. So it's for each and every member, it's very important to say independent. And that's very, and that they have to try to have consensus. For example, if the opposition says, if we want to have a look at this and that operation, then the group starts to swim around. Do you really want to look at that or not? You can actually work with that. It's pretty practical. The Enquirer Committee has existed since March of last year. The parliament unanimously decided to establish this committee. Before it happens, it's established whether it should come into force first. And finally, it's decided in parliament. And three quarters of a year after the Snowden leaks were published, the pressure was so high that the coalition thought it had to be investigated. I'm not sure if the same thing would happen today. And there's this decision. You see it on the right-hand side, the first page of a five-page paper, what the committee is supposed to find out. There are three important sections. The first one is to investigate the five eyes buying in Germany, mostly by the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, this strong cooperation from Germany to Germany or within Germany. The second section is about us buying on the federal offices. And finally, it's about how Germany can be protected, about recommendations. And when it's about buying on the federal government and officers say it's not the business of the committee, we can tell them that, yes, it is a committee, and we often have these kind of quabbles. And there are more than 30 sub-points. You can read them online. Two interesting of them that haven't been talked about yet that are very important and are going to play an important role soon. One is the secret war, the war that happens on Rammstein with drones and how far the federal government knew about it and if Germany supplied data to the American government. And if the concrete physical military base in Germany plays a role in the coordination of the drone world, there are uncertainties there. But it's a role from our perspective. It's unambiguously illegal because it's not legal to support this kind of war. And secondly, the role of Americans in the question of immigrants, that's a long practice. And we've been doing this for a year. And in practice, it means that the investigation committee works differently than other committees. It's mostly oriented towards criminal processes. So the members of the committee look at the actions of the government. And it can do provisional slurs. So the committee decides it wants to seal all the files in various offices and secret agencies on the top jokes that are touched by the Snowden documents. One effect of this is that we have got a lot of material. There are lots of these provisional slurs. And the government has to hand these to the committee. And in consequence, the committee gets witnesses to speak in public hearings. And besides, there are non-public meetings where the committee talks about what to talk about next, what witnesses to ask to appear, and in what order the different topics are going to be talked about. And should we invite Snowden? On the right-hand side, you can sort of see, and you can find it online, the Heysbushluss number one. No, it's not number one. I'll have it later. It's a document, BK1, that proves that we get them. And there are different kinds. There are some NFD documents, which is only for the people who are allowed to see it. There are some which you can see. File SV is next one, more secrecy. It's confidential. And then you've got secret and very secret. And there is some very special secret stuff. About the investigation, we had 58 who went there, 50 time. And there will be a document. We cannot change the law. We can just tell the people to do it, the Bundestag to do it. And then they do have the option to change it or not to change the law or not. So this is the way, this is more or less the place where we can move around. This is the calendar. There are only some, it's not always in session. Only in the red weeks, there are some sessions. Here you can have a look at how much stuff it is. It is only the first half of what we have looked at. On the other, you can see the different ministries, which lots of ministries. And on the left, what did we get? Documents from the Snowden documents, other documents which do have to first with the first part of the inquiry, organograms from the ministry's third, that would be the third column. You can see it much better here. And at the end, when they have to be given, what time, what day, you can show how much material we have to work with. And that is a table, I did myself, that it's not an official document. The green ones are the ones who already have been delivered. There are some which are in light red. They say they don't have anything, but some other ones are simply incomplete. There are some BND26, and there is a document. And the Zootopia title reported that there were cases of espionage with selectors which search for data that had related with the Eurocopters and other confidential information. And the German government had was responsible for giving all the data that was available to the BND. Because in the beginning, it was important to understand that how this technical surveillance actually of the NSA, because the USA was not willing to provide much information. And therefore, they had to investigate the participation of the BND in this issue. In April, it was known that the selectors were used against German interests. Even gathering of data by BND selectors that contain their target selectors, like phone numbers, or names, or email addresses, or check IDs, and various identification points that the NSA has that are formally correct, it is said, just to prevent terrorism and organize crime, or the IS, or illegal arms trade. But it turned out that, well, 2000 and later, 12,000, and now we're at 40,000 of these selectors, are about politicians, about governments, the European Union, or German companies. And the scandal started in April, and it's far from over yet. Which topics have we treated so far? I'm not going to list all of them. If you've been reading the news somewhat carefully, we'll have noticed that it's changing very rapidly, which also is due to the fact that we're trying to find a certain structure of how we're treating all these subjects. But there are also lots of leaks in the press that I'm not going to complain about, because they have often made our work easier, because they often talk about topics that are a secret that we know about, but we're not allowed to talk about. But if it's been in the papers, we were, of course, able to say, we want to speak about this in a public hearing, because the public already knows about it. And that's why I'm going to just, you know, tentatively talk about some of these topics. You'll have read about some of them. The papers, the first of them is the witness, Edward Snowden. It's Z1. The committee has unanimously said that we want Edward Snowden as a witness. The discussion was about whether or not we'd invite him to appear. And the coalition said, no, we refuse. And in September, the opposition sued at the highest gym court, but that didn't work for formal reasons. I only start in September, but the rest of them had several hearings with experts at law, some judges, whether it's legal that the BND surveils everybody abroad who isn't, who aren't German citizens, which is sort of the difference between the BND and the Fafassung Schutz, one of them abroad with the other spies in Germany. And there are no restrictions on the surveillance of non-German citizens for the BND, at least that's what they think of themselves. The federal judge has said that this is not negotiatable. It's not based on citizenship. And Hans-Jürgen Papier, former judge at the federal court, was also a witness. And he confirmed this. And the federal government accepted this, but ignores it. That was really surprising. Nobody, not the coalition, didn't expect this, that its own experts would say this sort of thing. That was in summer. And in September, the actual hearing starts, the whole ICONAS story started. And it transpired that the BND, inspired for the NSA in Frankfurt, they don't quite know how, gathered data and sends it to the NSA. And the BND thinks it's legal. I don't think anybody else does. At least that's what was very surprising, even for the G10 members, the committee of the parliament that investigates in which cases the BND had violated that Article 10 of the Basic Law, in which cases it might be allowed to spy on non-German citizens. And a former member of this G10 committee was visibly surprised and said, if they'd known that the BND had gathered data for the NSA and that in that order of magnitude, they'd never allowed it. And the whole buzz about the project, ICONAS stretched from autumn into winter. I don't know which of you listened to the Landesverrard story in the other 10 earlier. Landesverrard is treason. So it should not have been public based on the opinion of the government. And there has been a letter which makes there was a letter, a strong letter from the government against members of the committee, which about the November, it was known that the general federal lawyer did not proceed with the police work on understanding why Merkel's handy was wiretapped in December the lawsuit. The lawsuit. So someone, the person from the BSI who actually looks at the hardware, and these people, people thought that when the BSI actually checks it, they have a look at the hardware and look at what happens. And in this interview, it appears that they get a description. And if that's OK, then the secret service does get the certification, which is weird. And it was what people actually liked that, especially that the controls from which everyone goes that, yeah, it works, but it is only a masquerade. It's not a check. And then there was different letters. You can read them online. Let's go on. There was in February another, and there was no previous discussions about that, about strongly secret, well, some documents, there are some documents which are so secret and so problematic for the security of the state that. They're critical. So only one person or one person from its fraction, which would be four people, actually is allowed to read these documents. These documents are in the Chancellor Amt, which is in the place. They have to go there. They are not allowed to make notes. And they have to remember what they have seen. And they can only talk about it with other people who actually have the very secret clearance. So that is almost no person is allowed, or only people who have been cleared for very secret or strongly secret clearance. For example, I don't have. I only have the lowest. And I tried. I wanted to get in September. It lasted six months until I actually had the clearance for the lowest setting, for the lowest clearance, which means that I must talk face to face with the secret service without lawyer or without anyone. And I had to ask. And this means that the SU2, which is the clearance, they don't need any secret service activities. They only have to use public material to check my clearance or to make my background check. There was to have a look at the Wikipedia entry for my name and how exactly it lasted six months. I'm not sure. But anyway, I am not allowed to see the secret documents, but not the strongly very secret documents. And I didn't try to get the very secret clearance or strongly secret clearance. We were back to the secret operation in the public. Could be spoken. There was a very spectacular event that only the four people knew what was going on. And then there was a session where the president of the BND, Schindler, and the coordinator of secret service, Matt, and there they, I was not there part of the session because it was top secret. And they talked about things where the representatives from the German government, sorry. They broke up of the session at all factions and they agreed to stop the session because they were unsure why they were being told so many things that are so very secret. And not 24 hours later, a lot of it was in the focus magazine, things that hadn't even been talked about in the session. Some representatives thought they'd been set to trap. And who told whom about what? Nobody really knew. And who talks to the press? And it's still being investigated. It's also part of the London's Farad case with different materials, not about the investigation committee. But it's the same thing that the government at least transports conveys being under pressure, in this case from the British and American governments, that if so much in Germany is given to the press and if they can't keep things secret, that the British and American governments will stop their secret service corporations. And this happened in February with the UK, at least that's what the focus wrote. And later in April or May, when it was about selectors, the same thing happened with the US. I'm not sure which of you has been reading site online recently. They published yesterday that the government has said certain things can't be talked about about the selectors and can't be given to the committee. And the US now said, that's not true. The government just made it up. And so there are different tales being told about who has what kind of degree of secrecy that always go to the committee in kind of questions of form. And there was a story of the hack mobile phone of Zensburg, a committee member. And in April, the SPD started wanting to change the first BND law. And there's also the Frankfurt internet note had been planning to sue the government. And then in April, the selector scandal started in May. They transpired that the NSA was stopping the online surveillance. But the government said that it was because of you. And it all goes back and forth. Nobody really knows who gives secrets to whom these informations about selectors were initially in the chancellor's office and the BND and other ministries. They're given to others, maybe the parliament, where there's an office that classifies these sort of things. And then it goes to the committee. So there are many people who hold the material in their hands and could theoretically give it away, starting with the BND itself. So the government says the committee has given away their secrets. And then the members don't accept that. As a result of that, it was said that the NSA thinks the whole trans thing is too insecure. And they were going to stop the surveillance. From our perspective, that's a very positive result. But fundamentally, there's the threat that Germany wouldn't know about planned attacks. I admit that I would not have been surprised if, after this, there would have been attacks. Luckily it was not the case. But I would not have been surprised if that had been the consequence of it. In May as well, there was a debate about the no-spy agreement that Pofala in September 2013 had presented to the public with these weird emails between the German and American government about the question of the Snowden Leagues, there were negotiations between the two governments of not spying on each other. And the emails that weren't very nice for the German government but had not been treated publicly, the whole subject hadn't played a big role because that would have been treated later in the committee. But because it was so embarrassing for the government, it was celebrated publicly. After that, WikiLeaks started leaking protocols of the sessions of the committee because even though the sessions are public, the protocols are not, which is very weird to a lot of people. It's illogical because if people are sitting in these public hearings and blog about it or write down the right notes, why can't we publish the protocols? Personally, I agree. But working in the committee, I'm the only and I can at least understand the argument against it why they shouldn't be publicized, or at least not after the work is done or after the work on a certain subject is done so that the witnesses that are yet to appear can't use the material to prepare for their hearings. It's a very technical argument. It's a matter of interrogation technique and try to avoid surprises to or from the witnesses. And that's the reason why they weren't public. It has been solved by WikiLeaks because at least now they are partly public. In my, there was quite a lot. There was the big dispute about the selectors, the opposition tried to do something and the majority didn't and there were some special sessions organized or tried to. There were some nodens to fighting votes and where the opposition was... You don't get the selectors nor... There will be any special rules where the Minister of Interiors and it shows how nervous the Federal Parliament is with regard to... So the Minister of Interiors said in July that he has trouble dealing with such situations and it was clear that the air is really thin. After that, the coordinator of the Secret Services clapper in the US, he said that the Committee of the Germans is more dangerous than Snowden itself. So what is the result of all of this? There are many topics. There are two very fundamental things. The first one is the dealings with the contents itself, which is witnesses and questioning these witnesses and there were some surprises to me. The Committee first asked for material and it depends on what the Federal Government is willing to give, to provide. Normally it is the Committee that actually decides what secrecy level a document has, formally. But in fact, the government tells us what the secrecy is and we keep to it. And the people can lie to us during the hearings and we cannot do anything. Actually, it is against the law, but they might be attacked in front of law, but I'm pretty sure that in such a situation where the Committee has 80% majority and the form is important about the contents, and if you cannot check out what the witness has said, you cannot really find out what happened. So actually quite a lot of things came out. So when you look at the big picture, there are lots of small details for the BND, like databases with some tartan shoots, which is data protection problems, but that's details. And there are some other things which also are illegal, but there is some discussion with the government. The theory, when they send data from satellites, okay, when satellites could get data and send it to the BND, well, they are created in space, not in Germany, so data protection does not apply. That's one detail, there are lots of details which does not exactly fix the details. It's fuzzy, but it's actually small stuff and they're going to do what they want to do, so we can actually say that there are lots of rules and laws which are there for the Secret Service and because no one looks at it and because there has been no review committee, well, these rules are being broken. Well, they're very, very free interpretation of the law. For example, the space theory is a very nice example. I explained that before. They're also an example where the SPD started to write a law to stop this practice, to stop this way of doing things. I think this is a good thing. Personally, I am very skeptical if it really helps. If the illegal practices of the Secret Services are written in a law, I'm not sure I really expect a lot of things, but we'll see. There is lots of these small things. There is also the witnesses from the BND think that metadata are not data about persons, so they have explained to us about phone masks, for example, the drone war in Pakistan and so on, and that these data cannot be used to localize a person. So this is not a problem to send the mobile masks data to the NSA because they still get killed. But there are lots of small details and we are accumulating them. We are getting them and we complete this list so we can actually get an image. We get a picture. We are still at the start of our research and I'm pretty sure a lot of it, lots of things will come to light. We haven't yet looked at the Fire Vies, we haven't looked at the Fafasung Shuts, the inside Secret Service and I'm pretty sure lots of things will come out. The other big part is about the form. There was a content known as the form, who controls whom? There is theoretically in the necracy, it's not an interesting question because the form is, of course it should be controlled. And normally the parliament controls the government. And members of government are always in the hearings, at least 15 of them, and watch what the committee does. And the chancellor's office members, they always take part in the hearings. And these are different points where these debates happen and they take up almost as much room as the actual discussions. So there are massive parts of the documents being blacked out, as you can see in this tweet by Thomas Oppermann. The photo is also very useful because I'm not sure if I would be committing a crime if I'd published this sort of thing, because I'm quite happy that Oppermann did it, that now acts completely differently in the government on this matter. The government allows all its witnesses to speak, so people can't just come in and say what they want to say. They get a three to four page paper that tells them what they're allowed to say and what they're not allowed to say. There's also the question of classification of documents. Some are not only for official use, they're not very interesting, there are lots of them. So I have an office in Parliament and there's a room next to my office, it's full of this kind of thing. These exist digitally as well as PDFs, but you can't really search them or any archive them in another way. And in that room there are also some shells that contain secret documents. And then there are, in a different place, there are documents that are more highly classified. And documents are classified in that way, can't be treated in the public hearings, so they're not going to be discussed publicly unless they'd appeared in the news before. And that, well, that's how the public only gets a small part, the less interesting part of the topics that the committee talks about. The more highly classified documents will not be published in the final report. There's going to be a public section and a non-public section in the final report and that section will only be able to be read by certain people. But, you know, nobody can really use it because none of it can be used in a matter that's going to end up publicly. And there are also massive restrictions in the work. The consultation procedure has been treated several times in the press, the government thinks that it has agreements with its partners in the Secret Service Corporation, that all material about this, about the cooperation, even if they're German, like protocols about sessions that it has, this material can't just be given to the committee, but instead the American or British governments have to agree to give them to the committee, which is completely absurd because the parliament is supposed to control the government, you know. And the government just says, no, we're not going to play along, we're just going to ask the US government first if you're allowed to have the documents, which means that in factually we have a few papers with American documents, but most of the cooperation between NSA and GCHQ, we haven't seen it. So the next election is in September 2017, until then our committee has to finish. And if we're going to be able to look at the US view and invite witnesses, I'm skeptical, we'll have to see. And finally, of course, there are threats of lawsuits against the committee. That's not very easy to have it in your head. This sort of barrier, these are secret documents I'm not allowed to talk about, these are public that I can't talk about. It's a problem, it's not a problem. But when you think that as soon as you say one wrong word, you're going to be facing a lawsuit, it doesn't make the whole thing any easier. And the perspective of government, from the perspective of the government, it's not a problem because it's not my job to publish secrets, but rather to help the representatives so far, so good. But then again, the parliament's job is to talk about subjects publicly. And the investigation committee has to start a public discussion and to allow that public discussion. So we're sort of between a rock and a hard place. Assuming that there are going to be investigations against us who could have given something to the press, it doesn't make the whole thing any more relaxed. What else is there? We're not done with a B&D yet. The Fafasang Schutz hasn't even started yet. The question that's still open is, what happened after Icona, how did the technical cooperation between the B&D and the NSA and after 2006, what happened? The cooperation with the UK has almost not been a subject either. The Fafasang Schutz plays a role. And after the debates of the last weeks, this hasn't, you know, this is even more interesting. We'll try to look at the five eyes. So after, you know, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And the question of secret war, drone war, Ramstein is going to be a big one as well. And of course, IT security and protection against surveillance. And the question there is, what did the government know about it? What did they know about the surveillance measures and what did they do to protect itself, the parliament and the German people? That's going to be quite entertaining. What's the point of all this? I've mentioned that the committee can't do that much. We can write a report. And there's going to be a joint one between the operation and the coalition. There's also going to be a shadow report from the opposition alone. There's going to be a secret report that the public is never going to be able to see. All of this is presented to the parliament and the parliament can then choose to start new laws. Everybody says that we need more control from the parliament. Many people say that the control bodies don't really work so far, because people don't really understand what they're being shown here. And we need more people for the secret service. I personally think that as long as control of the parliament, if the people in the parliament don't understand the technical implications and if they are just being told what is going on without any way to verify that, then we will have no more improvement even if we have more people in the committee as long as they don't understand the technical implications. But I assume that this is going to be one of the results of the final report just because nothing else can come out of it. And finally, I think that there's an interesting quote from... So the quote is, after every scandal of secret services, the secret services themselves tended to be much more stronger than before. So we don't have enough people, but we couldn't do anything because so in the end, more people will be responsible for surveillance in BND and Verfassung Schutz. And therefore the critical point is that I think it's important that as much information as possible should go to the public from this committee. And I also say this... I'm not talking about leaks, I'm talking about... I'm talking about the thing which is spoken about in the public hearings. We are trying to get more documents. We are having lawsuits against the government so we get more documents to get the list of selectors. We have... There are further reflections how this obviously illegal way of doing things, how we can sue them, for example, about... So actually we can... Well, at least stop it to slow it down even though the government thinks it's okay. We are talking about the cooperation between the government and the secret service and something that helps is getting on the streets and protesting. Information... We need the information so the society can actually start resisting the surveillance. And that would be the end. I'm done. Big applause. Thank you for... First thing, thank you, that was quite a nice applause and very interesting theme. I think that we still have a few minutes for questions and there are microphones around. People who don't have any questions, please do stay seated. So if there are no questions, I can provide... I can tell you, I talked about a lot of themes and if some people are interested about what I actually do or further questions, just talk to me and we can find some other time. So there is one question on the microphone. First, thank you. The question I have is about the fight about having Snowden as a witness. There has been... It has been... It's all been based on formalia to not have it. The Federal Court of Law just thought, you know, didn't... The whole thing... Well, the whole thing is still up in the air and we're still debating if we can still get in front of the Federal Court of Justice. I find it remarkable that you're here up on the stage. My question is, what is your motivation to stand here in front of a group of nerds and people who have or want information, giving them more information and an incentive to ask more questions? And your motivation to get up on this stage to speak about what you're allowed to speak about publicly? Because I hoped it would awaken your interest in the subject and that's obviously what happened. And finally, also, because I have to say that when this job was being offered, I thought it'd be really cool. You're never going to get the chance to look at these documents again. I really wanted to do it. I'm interested in the topic of surveillance, taking that opportunity to look into the cards, how the whole thing works technically, how surveillance agencies work. It seemed a one-time opportunity and then I don't do it because it interests me personally but because I also think that it's important for society and there's no point if it's all in my head. I want to reach as many people as possible because I want it to stop. Next question. It's just a short question of understanding. The degrees of classification. I understood that there's something beyond top secret that you wanted to talk about later. Yes, there are top secret documents and there are documents that can be looked at in the so-called Treptor process. Those are documents that the Parliament doesn't get because it's too secret and those are usually very unpleasant negotiations with the governments and initially people had to go to Treptor near Berlin and now there's room in the Chancellor's office where these people can go and look at the documents. I think that was it and that's the time as well. Thanks again to you, Anna.