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German Intelligence Traded Citizen Data For NSA Surveillance Software

Posted by Soulskill on from the throw-in-a-couple-rookie-cards-and-call-it-square dept.

An anonymous reader sends news that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, was so impressed with the NSA's surveillance software that they were willing to "share all data relevant to the NSA's mission" in order to get it. "The data in question is regularly part of the approved surveillance measures carried out by the BfV. In contrast, for example, to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BfV does not use a dragnet to collect huge volumes of data from the Internet. Rather, it is only allowed to monitor individual suspects in Germany -- and only after a special parliamentary commission has granted approval. ... Targeted surveillance measures are primarily intended to turn up the content of specific conversations, in the form of emails, telephone exchanges or faxes. But along the way, essentially as a side effect, the BfV also collects mass quantities of so-called metadata. Whether the collection of this data is consistent with the restrictions outlined in Germany's surveillance laws is a question that divides legal experts."

1 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Blame sentient network? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lets be clear about this, its not accidental snooping by some sort of sentient 'network'.

    NSA has been faking certificates, Backdooring encryption, faking websites, installing taps into fibre optics around the world, hacking into servers to install back doors, writing malware, blocking encrypted connections force unencrypted fall backs etc. etc.

    It didn't accidentally wake up and find it was building 7 massive exabyte class data centers!

    "You will also never have "automatic encryption" across the network they way they are designed now"
    Thats simply not true, you can exchange a first time key, and to defeat that key exchange, NSA would have to intercept all communications all the time. If it missed the first exchange, it fails, if it missed ANY subsequent exchange, the tap is revealed.

    The problem currently is the certificate authorities and key cancel are a back door the NSA uses.