• Military
• WMD

• Intelligence Menu               

• Systems
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Imagery
• Links

• Homeland Security
• Space

Germany was NSA stronghold for years - report

19 June 2014, 19:32 -- No other country in Europe plays host to a secret NSA surveillance architecture comparable to the one in Germany, said the report, published by the German Der Spiegel magazine on Wednesday. The report is based on classified documents exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.'NSA has developed an increasingly intimate relationship with Germany over the past 13 years while massively expanding its presence. Itis more active in Germany than anywhere else in Europe,' reports the paper.

Germany has for years been hosting a 'web' of sites that secretly collect information, including data used to 'capture and kill' suspected militants Der Spiegel writes. One key facility, known as the European Technical Center, is based in the southwestern city of Wiesbaden. 'From here, a Snowden document outlines, huge amounts of data are intercepted and forwarded to 'NSAers, warfighters and foreign partners in Europe, Africa and the Middle East,'' states the article.According to the article, this web was defined as much by a thirst for total control as by the desire for security.

The report also claims that spying operations in Germany have a much broader scale than previously disclosed and asks whether the government, actually, has a hand in this.

While previous Snowden-related links showed that the US had been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's communications and prompted an investigation by Germany's federal prosecutor, some experts suspected the German government has directly collaborated with the NSA behind closed doors.

The article argues that the NSA is expanding its power in Germany. Now the 'Consolidated Intelligence Center,' a new spy center, is under construction in a US military complex in Wiesbaden at a cost of $124 million, mintpressnews reports. 'When finished, the US government will be even better equipped to satisfy its vast hunger for data,' Der Spiegelreports.

As of 2011, the 'Dagger Complex' in Griesheim, not far from Wiesbaden, employed 240 intelligence analysts who used programs like XKeyscore 'not only to collect metadata—e.g. the who, what, where, with whom and at what time—but also the content of actual communications,' the article reveals.

In June 2013, Snowden leaked top secret US government spying programs, under which the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and internet data.

'The German public has a right to know exactly what the NSA is doing in Germany,' mintpress has cited the authors, listed as Spiegel staff.

Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_06_19/Germany- was-NSA-stronghold-for-years-report-0375/