swalk—sealed with a loving kiss

Mental Floss has a delightful review of a book just published called To the Letters by historian and linguist Simon Garfield that lists some romantic and racy shorthand employed by soldiers in the 1930s to navigate around the censors and their superiors—showing that texting and sexting is not such a new phenomenon. In fact, there are examples from epistles from the ancient Romans: SVBEEQV for the Latin si vales bene est, ego quidem meaning that I am happy when you are or I hope this letter finds you well. I'd really like to incorporate some of these abbreviations into my vocabulary and would like to learn more about what we find lamentable about communication, and at any distance being something magical, and form that's not necessarily warranted moving from sonnets to spam.

übergelagert

Though not previsioning what was to come nor a admission to a separate history, in 2012 when plans were being finalised to consolidate the operations of the Bundes- nachrichten- dienst (the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency) in Berlin and to uproot establishments created in the former West German Republic, a small suburban community of München called Pullach im Isartal, making preparations for closure and realignment, revealed how secrets can cause forgetfulness. What lie on the BND's broad campus was no secret itself, but cordoned off from the public since shortly after the conclusion of Word War II, few voices were raised regarding what it contained. The ensemble of residential and office buildings occupied by the intelligence service were original designated as a model suburban settlement, named after Rudolf Heß, for the families of Nazi party members who were not conferred special recognition or had humbler roots. Many German children orphaned by the war also found adoptive parents here. Later, the community also became the headquarters for Organisation Todt, the party's engineering corps who build the built the Atlantic Wall. This covert history was hidden for years, villas as time-capsules and the stories of former residents going untold, incident only to its new management.

outsourcing oder linkin park

Süddeutsche Zeitung presents another angle by which German reconnaissance may be becoming more and more mired in American control through indirect means and the decision to contract out some of its own intellect functions. The relatively innocuous-looking office building, located in Abraham-Lincoln-Park just outside one of the US Army installations here and just across from the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and just opposite the cemetery where I was seeking out another link to the the past the other other, is the headquarters of the German branch of the company. The Germany government has awarded CSC numerous, lucrative contracts to carry out spying and security related missions, usually executed with far less public scrutiny and government oversight than through ministry channels.
As if using mercenaries does not create big enough ethical problems on its own, the US-based company also performs extensive information-technology and logistics support for American intelligence services, much like the infamous Blackwater Corporation. By choosing to downwardly delegate some of its functions to a company whose loyalties and discretion are by definition already compromised, Germany has surely exposed itself to more mingling of data and lowered expectations of privacy without even the challenge of what it attempted to keep close-hold.

key-f.o.b. or check-point, checkmate

The latest reports (EN/DE) that transmogrify espionage into all-out basing forward the prosecution of shadowy wars and unconventional diplomacy seemed at first only nuance to activities already being established as taking place on German territory. The outrage and response—considering that usually silence prevails and if an answer is deigned, it is a carefully measured and delayed one, which was rather instant and uncensored, much like the unfiltered distrust aired by the German public over the whole developing situation or more through official channels, the recent, unmediated reaction to US accusations that German export policy was destabilsing the euro zone, however, suggests that the criticism may have been a little to close to home. Though maybe with no more or no less officious cooperation or ignorance—innocence on the part of the Germany than when it came to snooping, prosecuting unsanctioned campaigns under the cover of a host nation, off-shoring aut dedere aut judicare.
Investigative journalism with contributions from more than twenty reporters that American legionnaires are not only using its diplomatic missions as listening posts, siphoning internet traffic off of the major hub in Frankfurt and keeping handy insider read-aheads on European political and trade affairs, but are also using Germany as a launch-pad for its dirty and secretive drone-wars in Africa, helping to craft a post-revolutionary region more sympathetic to American interests and with methods and friendships not fit for open debate or public knowledge, even targeting newly arrived refugees for debriefing and plotting coordinates for the next attack.