Less than 10% of Germany’s SIGINT Spying Targets Terrorist
Sorry I’ve been AWOL. I’ve been on a trip to DC.
Among the things I did was attend a presentation from Konstantin von Notz, one of the Bundestag members who is investigating Germany’s SIGINT spying in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
He made a comment that was really telling. They asked the BND (their NSA) to reveal how many of the selectors being targeted are terrorist targets. It’s less than 10% of the selectors.
I’m not (too) surprised by the number. But it’s a telling detail. For all the fear-mongering about how the government needs dragnets to combat terrorism, the bulk of what the Germans, at least, are doing is spying to serve the self-interest of their country.
Vielen dank. At least the Germans are satisfied with a pin cushion, rather than trying to hoover up every hay stack around the world.
“is spying to serve the self-interest of their country”
edited to: – is spying to serve the self-interest of the rulers –
FIFY
Who needs the Stazi when you have the BND. At least they don’t have to use 10 floors of office space to hold physical paper dossiers. ..er..wait..
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/08/behold-the-nsa-s-dark-star-the-utah-data-center.html
It’s been apparent that the two-way data transfer between government and the private sector has much to do with competitive business intelligence
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms
quote”It’s been apparent that the two-way data transfer between government and the private sector has much to do with competitive business intelligence”unquote
Supposedly spoken by Benito Mussolini in 1939. Of course, he was only at the beginning of his reign of fascism and had yet to murder his son.
Was KvN talking about the combined BND-NSA selector list or the BND only one?
As I understand it, this was separate from the review of the selectors NSA gave them (which I understand from other things, not his report, was quite detailed). They were not permitted to see BND’s selectors — this was just based off what the BND told them.
So it is BND self-reporting what their own selectors consist of, and is based off a total-selector count, not total amount of data or comms collected.