WikiLeaks: German Government Aided NSA Spying in Europe

WHISTLEBLOWING - SURVEILLANCE, 18 May 2015

TeleSur – TRANSCEND Media Service

A new document released by WikiLeaks contradicts the German government’s claims that it was not aware of the NSA spying activities in Europe.

Conservative Chancelor Angela Merkel | Photo: Reuters

The government of Angela Merkel actively helped the massive surveillance of the U.S. National Security Office, WikiLeaks revealed on Tuesday [12 May 2015].

The organisation published 10 months of transcripts from the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into the NSA activities in Germany, which started in March 2014, after 2013 revelations that Merkel’s phone had been wiretapped by the U.S. agency.

During the parliamentary sessions, the lawmakers came across a possibly even more controversial element of the investigation: its own intelligence services, the BND, have collaborated with its U.S. counterpart in the spying of European companies and state officials.

Moreover, while the German government claimed it had no knowledge of this collaboration when the information leaked, according to the WikiLeaks document it was not only aware of it but it also actively assisted it.

For instance, the German Chancellery directly addressed a letter to the then CEO of Deutsche Communication, Kai-Uwe Ricke, asking him “to facilitate the continuous mass surveillance of German and international internet and telecommunications data at Deutsche Telekom’s Frankfurt exchange point,” explained WikiLeaks.

Although the letter was addressed to be read by him personally, Ricke denied during the session he had ever seen the letter. Shortly after, however, BND was allowed to access the telecommunication data, before sending them to the NSA.

The targets included various prominent EU companies like the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), Eurocopter, and the European aviation consortium Airbus, as well as officials from the French government, for at least a decade of spying.

“This put into question Germany’s suitability in taking a leadership role in the European Union,” WikiLeaks points out. “It also showed that international cooperation on mass surveillance, which has been marketed in public as a counterterrorism measure, is in practice also used by the United States for the purposes of industrial espionage and geopolitical advantage vis-a-vis members of the European Union.”

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