Mass Data: Transfers from Germany Aid US Surveillance

Well now, the plot thickens! I'd say it's reaching a consistency around pudding strength but still has a way to go to call done. This adds to the mix though, doesn't it?

The profession of love for the Bavarian lifestyle and the large surveillance base southeast of Munich is among the documents in the possession of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, some of which SPIEGEL has seen. The surveillance facility is known for its large "radomes," giant golf ball-like structures which contain state-of-the-art surveillance technology. They were officially closed in September 2004.

The Americans, though, were quietly replaced by telecommunications experts from the German military, part of the Fernmeldeweitverkehrsstelle der Bundeswehr. They moved into the Mangfall barracks, only a few hundred meters from the abandoned NSA structures, laid cables to the radomes and secretly took over the NSA's large-scale surveillance of radio and satellite communications.

Tyranny by Super-Snoop. It's not just an American thing anymore! It seems to be a full international sport as we're learning more and more. I'd suspected as much but hearing it slowly confirmed does nothing to ease the feeling of privacy gone the way of the Do-Do bird.

After all, it's a hard job watching 7 billion people and everything they do in life, I'm sure. It takes a group effort from all sides to make the meal come out right in the end.

Day after day and month after month, the BND passes on to the NSA massive amounts of connection data relating to the communications it had placed under surveillance. The so-called metadata -- telephone numbers, email addresses, IP connections -- then flow into the Americans' giant databases.

In fact, the Germans aren't 'just as good'. It seems, in some areas, they may have out spooked the spooks within the NSA?

In addition, it wasn't just Germans using American surveillance programs. According to the documents, US agents also showed an interest in two BND programs, which, according to American experts, were to some extent even more effective than their own solutions.

Source

Tell the world it ain't so! ....just don't snoop the reaction of every last one of us after saying it, eh? What a world this is turning out to have been without so many being aware of the scope of the operations to watch us.

Are you ready for the new "American Cold War"

reply to post by OpViper7

I'm not sure I get what you mean?

The more we're learning? The more it seems America is the lead and public face to a truly multi-national effort for cataloging and recording everyone, everywhere for everything.

That's a long article but down toward the bottom and over what I could really quote and stay decent about things, is a paragraph giving raw numbers of daily German intercepts of what I presume are service names any German would be familiar with anyway. It was somewhat breathtaking, given the relative population they are watching.

I've always known Australia and the UK were "legs of the triad" for Western intelligence efforts at omniscience. However, this is a bit surprising considering the loud indignation with which the German Government has come out against the NSA ...in public anyway. Talk about different faces between public and reality, eh?