The German Federal Intelligence Service BND has been allegedly spying on European politicians and businesses ordered by the NSA for more than a decade.
Der Spiegel reports that for years the NSA has been working with its counterparts in Germany by collecting data from thousands of targets.
The German cyber-spies fed this data into their own surveillance systems. The reports that were being created were rated by BND before remitting them back to the NSA.
On a practical level, it appears that BND had access to and watched the Frankfurt DE-CIX Internet Exchange Point, at least from 2009.
The results of these mass follow-ups were, at least in part, passed on to the Americans as part of a collective agreement that existed between the two agencies.
The targets included European politicians and European aerospace and defense companies such as European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) and Eurocopter.
All right with the spy company so far.
BND employees collected data from these strange targets (which had nothing to do with those mentioned in the US-Germany bilateral agreement signed by 2002) without complaining, at least until 2008. The US-Germany bilateral agreement aimed at bringing together the two agencies' efforts to combat global terrorism.
However, only when his revelations came to light Edward Snowden in 2013 the German intelligence service began to question the practice, which had more of a financial espionage profile.
It is estimated that around 800.000 selected requests they went from the NSA to the BND overall during their partnership. An internal probe into the Edward Snowden revelations concluded that at least 2.000 of those spying requests were against German or wider EU interests.
Η BND help her NSA to spy on European ministers and businesses, no one knows from the German Parliament.
The BND Administration did not transfer the findings of the service to the Prime Minister's office, simply asking the NSA not to filter requests that might be against the German political and economic interests.
As soon as the German Parliament was informed about the NSA's actions, the BND was asked to review its data before concluding that some 40.000 targets were directed against the interests of the EU and Germany.
The report issued by BND on the practices that followed has again provoked a huge political controversy over spying in Germany, as De Welt says.
The conflict threatens to torpedo the already strained relations between Berlin and Washington. Germany is still in the process of healing its wounds from last year's revelations, which reported mass surveillance of German citizens by the NSA, and interception of data from the German Chancellor's mobile phone. Angela Merkel.
