Probe Into NSA Activity Reveals Germany Spying On Germans

cold fjord writes The Local (DE) reports, "The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence service, spied on some citizens living abroad, a former lawyer for the spies told MPs on Thursday. Dr Stefan Burbaum ... said that some Germans were targeted as "office holders," a legal loophole the spies used to circumvent the law that protects Germans citizens from being spied on by its own intelligence agency. ... the German spies argue that a citizen working for a foreign company abroad is only protected in his private life, not in his professional communications ... "The office holder is the legal person," Burbaum said. ... "This construct of an office holder is just as absurd in practice as it appears in the law," Konstantin von Notz of the Green party said. Further, foreigners' communications conducted abroad are not protected, even if they are in contact with German people or work for a German company. MPs ... criticized the BND's ability to operate in a "lawless zone" when it came to spying on foreigners. ... the BND regularly retains traffic which it had not received specific permission to investigate which it collects during such trawls. In this way, access acquired under the "G10 law" becomes a "foot in the door" to otherwise closed-off sources of data, Burbaum said." The parliamentary investigation was initiated by reports that Chancellor Merkel's phone was being tapped by NSA, but later it was found that at least five countries were tapping Merkel's phone.

Comments

A feature of Western *democracy*?

[Taco Cowboy]

USA supposed to be a democratic country. Ditto for Germany and Britain, right?

In USA, NSA spies on the American citizens while GCHQ spies on the Brits, and seems like the Germans are doing the same

Is this one of the "feature" of the so-called "Western *democracy*" ??

News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany spying on Germans is not news. As usual, Shitdot is reporting the news a century late.