NSA spied on EU politicians and companies with help from German intelligence

Germany's intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has been helping the NSA spy on European politicians and companies for years, according to the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The NSA has been sending lists of "selectors"—identifying telephone numbers, e-mail and IP addresses—to the BND, which then provides related information that it holds in its surveillance databases. According to the German newspaper Die Zeit, the NSA sent selector lists several times a day, and altogether 800,000 selectors have been requested.

Source

The BND realized in 2008 that some of the inquires were not permitted according to it's own internal rules regarding intelligence cooperation. They still went unchecked and operated illegally for five more years. They only started performing inquires into all of the NSA's requests after Snowden exposed their corruption in 2013. I guess in the spy world, it's only wrong if you get caught.

According to Der Spiegel, investigators found that the BND had provided information on around 2,000 selectors that were clearly against European and German interests. Not only were European businesses such as the giant aerospace and defense company EADS, best-known as the manufacturer of the Airbus planes, targeted, so were European politicians—including German ones.

The BND refused to inform the German Chancellor's Office (they probably already knew), and said they were not made aware of the illegal activity until March 2015. Give me a break. The US were let off with a slap on the wrist and the NSA were told to make requests that were fully covered by the anti-terrorism agreement. Some felt they got off so lightly in order for Germany to retain its own flow of intelligence data from the NSA. If exposed, the flow of data into the BND would decrease significantly.

The information about this activity has finally come out thanks to a long-running committee of inquiry, set up by the German Bundestag (federal parliament), which has been trying to get to the bottom of the NSA activities in Germany, and of the BND's involvement in them. The committee's investigation suggests that as many as 40,000 of the selectors were targeting European and German interests—far more than the 2,000 found by the BND.

They are expecting considerable political fallout, but I wouldn't expect much. The responsibility ultimately rests on the bosses shoulders and keeping the misuse of intelligence gathering in the dark for so long will hopefully have it's consequences. The head of the BND, Gerhard Schindler will likely be forced to resign. The Germans citizens are already pissed as well since this isn't the first time the US has been caught spying on them. Their own government is in on it because of the intelligence the NSA provides their leaders.

That, in its turn, could make it even harder to persuade them to accept the huge US-EU trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The Germans are already the leading skeptics: over a million of them have signed an online petition calling for the TTIP talks to be halted, while thousands took to the streets earlier this month to protest against the proposed deal.

The bottom line is, the NSA, BND, GCHQ, Five Eyes or any intelligence agency for that matter, exist for the monitoring of the world's citizens first while stopping threats second. When the government no longer has the peoples support, they in turn become the enemy and we as citizens become the threat. Everything they know will be used against you.

Translator - Some links are in German

It does make you wonder: If they collect all this info and stop so little, how much DID they stop and what sort of communication do the "terrorists" use, who are able to conduct their terrorist activity's ?

Because if all the terrorists are using messages via carrier pigeon, then why does the NSA need to tap every electronic communication at all?



Or am i way off the mark and they have SO MUCH data coming in that they are decades behind actually analyzing it. Message to bad guys out there planning something; you are sooo going to regret it in a decade or two, possibly!

The same was happening at GCHQ, politicians also knew about the blanket spying of the population, question is, did they think that they were excluded?

a reply to: Biigs

The system was designed to moniter civil unrest across the globe. All those feel good stories you hear on the news about stopping crime are done by local heroes.

The "new" police force will avoid confrontation at all costs and will soon rely on intelligence alone to flush out anyone, anywhere. You'll be tagged and on the ground before you can say "don't shoot".

I guess to answer your question, the reality is since we can't stop it all, how can we use it to our advantage. Its what we're currently doing with ISIS.

NSA: "We hear you loud and clear, but since we both have the same enemy, we'll allow you to operate and help when we think its necessary."

Sometimes that enemy is another country's government, sometimes it is it's own people. ISIS is being used as an offensive weapon overseas and a psyop to remove rights and increase defenses at home.

Its hard to see your backside unless you place a few mirrors around your imperialistic body.

I thought I heard the German govt. was pissed off because they found out we were watching them!

Now you're saying they were helping us watch their people while we were watching them and they were watching our people and our government while we watched them watching our government but they knew we knew they know?

Sure.

a reply to: eisegesis

Seems to me that the NSAs primary target and focus is pretty much everyone who draws breath. They take kudos for the prevention of deadly attacks, but let's take a walk through recent headlines to see how effective the NSA has been on a global scale. Are we safe?

~ Did they aid in preventing the Boston Bombings? They had Intel. Viable intel and people died and lives forever altered due to the failings of the NSA and many agencies.
~ The ISIS killings, kidnappings, rapes, etc. have increased under the all knowing gaze of the watchdog agency, the global sleeper cells rising by unfathomable levels, killings of Christians and Jews.
~ The Russian downing of the passenger plane in Crimea.
~ The recent hijacking of the airline by the copilot, who locked out the pilot killing all on board.
~ The extreme vandalism to the PGE power station in San Jose, Ca,

~ Charlie Hebdo ~


The NSA stick their collective fingers into all global communications under the guise of safety.

Do YOU feel safe?


Edward Snowden gave us opportunity to peer into and get a very tiny glimpse into the over reaching of the NSA.


It is my opinion the NSA perpetuates its own existence. It covertly recruits dissidents and encourages revolutions for their end game: complete control of every action, comment, movement of humanity.

No-fly lists. Long time alliances broken, opposing countries both embraced as ally and enemy simultaneously (Iran). Cold War with Russia looming on the horizon. Yemen. Crimea. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Egypt.

All of these evil doings under the noses of the all powerful NSA and their foreign partners.

Why should politicians, both foreign and domestic, be exempt from the spying of the NSA?

originally posted by: highfromphoenix
I thought I heard the German govt. was pissed off because they found out we were watching them!

Now you're saying they were helping us watch their people while we were watching them and they were watching our people and our government while we watched them watching our government but they knew we knew they know?

Sure.

Exactly, apart from one thing. Who's to say that the thousands of people collecting, or more importantly the fewer collating all the information are whizz bang, American Patriots, Defenders of the Realm or Defenders of the Fatherland?
My guess is that many of them are as bent as a nine bob note, and that our politicians are buck lazy to even think that, or are just happy to reign superior over the rest of us in their privileged position.
Anyone remember William Hague?



He had high office in the current UK government until he made that remark after the breaking news of Snowden, then got kicked sideways. The remark is supposedly attributed to Goebbels, or Orwell 1984ish in the past. I don't know about Goebbels, but it is classic Orwellian, and could be spoken by anyone who might think that remark applies to anyone other than themselves...it rings so true doesn't it!

a reply to: eisegesis

Nothing is stopped. Things continue as before, if not then even faster and better.

Labels has been switched. Ops has been morphed. Anything pointing to earlier, knowingly hazy actions and what was before - is gone. And still, it is not as such "gone", but it has been renamed, rebranded, re-organised, re-shaped, hence given a whole new identity. It is a totally new ops, greatly incorporating the lessons-learned of any previous mishaps. It is a better version of our past, without being as polished as our front.

And everybody's happy. Its a win-win situation: politicians get their votes and ego boost, and our paranoid fantasy games can continue as before.

Life is good.

a reply to: smurfy

Btw, I do not like what Mr Haige is saying. "If you have nothing to hide - you've nothing to worry".

Intelligence services have hole bunch to hide, and all the reasons to worry. And are def not law abiding by any moans.

So, to teach public that sort of logic, where words like "law abiding", "nothing to hide" and "nothing to worry" are expressed in a same sentence, that is least to say - unpatriotic, and unconstructive criticism towards our intelligence services.

I can't wait for the world-wide revolution.

Now the BND is even trying to re-gain trust with a moronic story about how they prevented a "nazi coup" that was coming from some army officers ! ahahaha