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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."

2 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Networks are not private by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a big difference between freely exchanging information and having someone scoop up all that information when it's not addressed to them.

    When you sit on a bench in the park talking to your girlfriend, you don't expect some stranger in a trenchcoat to lean in between you and listen to everything you say.

    But, yes, it's unfortunate that the warnings from the 90s were ignored, and we didn't get automatic encryption by default across the Net to ensure this couldn't happen.

  2. Re:Networks are not private by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, they're not. Networks are supposed to take data from one machine and deliver it to another. They're not designed to deliver it to anyone else along the way. That's an attack on the network, not part of the design.

    And automatic encryption can easily be handled by pushing public keys into DNS. Yes, the NSA could force people to push fake keys into DNS, but then no-one would trust it any more.