Germany’s secret service has greatly restricted its cooperation with the US National Security Agency following a row about their alleged joint spying on European officials and companies, reports say.
The foreign intelligence agency BND stopped sharing internet surveillance data with the NSA, passing on only fax and phone intercepts, according to German media on Thursday.
Berlin now demands that the NSA provide a justification for each online surveillance request, reported the Süddeutsche Zeitung, public broadcasters NDR and WDR, and the news agency DPA.
The NSA had been unable to meet the new request at short notice, the reports added. However, such a rule had long been in place for fax and phone surveillance conducted by the BND for the NSA.
“This is definitely a dramatic step,” said Konstantin von Notz, a Green party MP who serves on a parliamentary panel investigating the NSA’s surveillance activities.
“I think they’ve pulled the emergency brake because, even in 2015, they still can’t control the search terms for internet traffic,” he said, adding that
Angela Merkel’s government was unable “to protect German and European interests”.
About 120 BND staff and several NSA technicians have long worked together at the German agency’s monitoring base in Bad Aibling. The facility in Bavaria is a former US military surveillance station.
German media have reported that BND-NSA targets have included not just suspected extremists and criminals but also, among others, the French presidency, the European commission and the Airbus group.
The scandal has rattled Berlin and has caused a rift in her coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats.
The German government has so far declined to release a list of the NSA’s requested search terms for IP and email addresses and mobile phone numbers, citing its ongoing consultations with Washington.