Off the wire
• Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, May 12  • OPEC questions factual accuracy of Wall Street Journal article  • WHO draws lessons from Ebola for future disease epidemics  • 182 civilians killed in six days in Yemen: UN agency  • EU, Turkey pledge to modernize custom union  • EU grants protection to over 185,000 asylum seekers in 2014  • British PM promises "different gov't" in first all-Conservative cabinet meeting  • Ukraine hopes to wrap up FTA talks with Canada as soon as possible  • China Voice: An end to irresponsible China military report  • Spanish military rescue personnel return from Nepal, bodies still missing  
You are here: 　 Home

Germany's BND delivers NSA huge amount of metadata: report

Xinhua, May 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Germany's Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) collected raw data about communication activities at a huge scale for its U.S. partner, German media reported on Tuesday.

The BND, in addition to allegedly conducting surveillance via the so-called "selectors" provided by the United States, has also delivered unfiltered communications information to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Zeit Online reported, citing confidential files of the BND.

Up to 1.3 billion metadata -- a large proportion of the data that the BND collects around the world -- is sent to the NSA per month via BND's listening station in Bad Aibling in the southern German state of Bavaria, according to the report.

The data, said the report, is at least as important as the content of communication activities for intelligence agencies, and Germany has sent much more information to the United States, as whistleblower Edward Snowden previously revealed.

German media reported earlier that the BND had targeted European interests for surveillance on behalf of the NSA for years.

On basis of the "selectors" -- internet IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and other identifying information -- the BND had allegedly spied on not only suspected extremists and criminals, but also European companies and government leaders as well as EU institutions.

The German government has so far declined to release a list of the NSA's requested search terms, citing its ongoing consultations with Washington. The BND has reportedly restricted cooperation with its U.S. partner in response to the scandal. Endit