This is not the first time the U.S. has purportedly threatened an allied government to withhold evidence of possible terror plots as punishment. In 2009, a British national, Binyam Mohamed, sued the U.K. government for complicity in his torture at Bagram and Guantánamo. The High Court ordered the U.K. government to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with notes and other documents reflecting what the CIA told British intelligence agents about Mohamed’s abuse.

In response, the U.K. government insisted that the High Court must reverse that ruling because the safety of British subjects would be endangered if the ruling stood. Their reasoning: the U.S. government had threatened the British that they would stop sharing intelligence, including evidence of terror plots, if they disclosed what the Americans had told them in confidence about Mohamed’s treatment — even if the disclosure were ordered by the High Court as part of a lawsuit brought by a torture victim. British government lawyers even produced a letter from an unnamed Obama official laying out that threat.

In the case of Germany, no government official has previously claimed that they were threatened by the U.S. as an excuse for turning their backs on Snowden, whose disclosures helped Germans as much as any population outside of the U.S. Pointing to such threats could help a German political official such as the vice chancellor justify what is otherwise an indefensible refusal to protect the NSA whistleblower from persecution at home, though it seems far more plausible — given far more extremist U.S. behavior in the Snowden case — that Gabriel’s claims are accurate.

Nonetheless, one of two things is true: 1) the U.S. actually threatened Germany that it would refrain from notifying them of terrorist plots against German citizens and thus deliberately leave them vulnerable to violent attacks, or 2) some combination of high officials from the U.S. and/or German governments are invoking such fictitious threats in order to manipulate and scare the German public into believing that asylum for Snowden will endanger their lives. Both are obviously noteworthy, though it’s hard to say which is worse.

These fake towers, known as “interceptors,” were discovered in July by users of the CryptoPhone500, one of the ultra-secure cell phones released after Edward Snowden’s leaks about NSA snooping. The phone is essentially a Samsung Galaxy S3 customized with high-level encryption that costs around $3,500. While driving around the country, CryptoPhone users plotted on a map every time they connected to a nameless tower (standard towers run by wireless service providers like Verizon usually have names) and received an alert that the device had turned off their phone’s encryption (allowing their messages to be read).

While the abilities of these interceptors vary, the full-featured versions available to government agencies are capable of a panoply of interceptions. For example, the VME Dominator can capture calls and texts, and can even control the intercepted phone. (In an interview with NBC, Snowden revealed that with this kind of technology the NSA is capable of turning on a powered-down phone and essentially using it as a bug.)  

This NSA-style surveillance is spreading to local cops. A growing number of police departments are using tower-mimicking devices, “stingrays,” to track a cell phone’s location and extract call logs. Though little is known about the use of these devices, watchdog groups have scored small victories in their attempts to punch through this veil of secrecy.

In January, Tallahassee, Florida, police used one to track a stolen cell phone to a suspect’s apartment. The police then entered the home without permission, conducted a search, and arrested the suspect in his home. Not only did the police not have a warrant, but they did not disclose to a judge that they were in possession of a stingray because the department had received it on loan from the manufacturer on condition of secrecy.

Only after a judge granted a motion filed by the ACLU to unseal the transcripts of the case (the federal government had previously demanded the proceedings be sealed, going so far as to try to invoke the Homeland Security Act as the reason) was it was revealed that between 2007 and 2010 the department used stingrays without getting warrants around 200 times. Additionally, the department had two devices; one mounted on a police vehicle, and the other carried by hand—and both were evaluating nearby cell phones in order to find a suspect. This means that information like location and phone data was pulled from innocent bystanders as well as the target of an investigation.

“The representative of the U.S. intelligence services at the Embassy of the United States of America has been requested to leave Germany,” [German government spokesman Steffan] Seibert said. Continued cooperation would require “mutual trust and openness,” Seibert added. “The Federal Government continues to be ready for this and expects the same from its closest partners.”

Last week, German police arrested a 31-year-old employee of the German foreign intelligence agency, the BND, who is accused of selling secrets to the CIA. Seibert said the decision to oust the CIA officer was made “against the backdrop of the ongoing investigations of the Federal Prosecutor General as well as the questions pending for months about the activities of the US intelligence services in Germany.”

The latter was a reference to leaks last year by Snowden showing that the United States was intercepting communications of Germans and citizens of other European nations on a massive scale. Documents also showed that the National Security Agency had been monitoring Merkel’s cellphone for years. The operation was halted and the Obama administration was forced to apologize.

Last week’s arrest of an alleged CIA informant may have been particularly galling to German officials because the suspect is accused of selling information to the CIA on the progress of that parliamentary probe, according to reports.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, an official in Germany’s Green Party and member of the parliamentary inquiry, described the CIA expulsion as “a necessary symbolic act to show our friends on the other side of the Atlantic how serious this matter is.”

On Friday the Chinese government declared the Apple iPhone a threat to its national security through its state controlled media outlet.  Reuters reported on the communist station's disdain for the American company and its product:

A report by broadcaster CCTV [Chinese Central Television] criticized the iPhone's "Frequent Locations" function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.

"This is extremely sensitive data," said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country's economic situation and "even state secrets," the researcher said.

Apple was not available for immediate comment.

Apple has frequently come under fire from Chinese state media, which accused the company of providing user data to U.S. intelligence agencies and have called for 'severe punishment'. It has also been criticized for poor customer service.