Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, monitored European and American government ministries and the Vatican - SPIEGEL

Governments and NGOs: Germany Spied on Friends and Vatican

 

Efforts to spy on friends and allies by Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, were more extensive than previously reported. SPIEGEL has learned the agency monitored European and American government ministries and the Vatican.

 

DPA

 

The BND's listening station in Bad Aibling, Bavaria: In addition to spying on friends, German intelligence also monitored Oxfam, Care International and the Red Cross.

 

Three weeks ago, news emerged that Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), had systematically spied on friends and allies around the world. In many of those instances, the BND had been doing so of its own accord and not at the request of the NSA. The BND came under heavy criticism earlier this year after news emerged that it had assisted the NSA in spying on European institutions, companies and even Germans using dubious selector data.

SPIEGEL has since learned from sources that the spying went further than previously reported. Since October's revelations, it has emerged that the BND spied on the United States Department of the Interior and the interior ministries of EU member states including Poland, Austria, Denmark and Croatia. The search terms used by the BND in its espionage also included communications lines belonging to US diplomatic outposts in Brussels and the United Nations in New York. The list even included the US State Department's hotline for travel warnings.



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REUTERS

World | Wed Nov 11, 2015 9:24am EST

Related: World, Germany

 

Germany seeks clarity on whether spy agency snooped on own diplomat

BERLIN

 

Germany's BND foreign intelligence service spied on a German diplomat, possibly violating the constitution, and on allies including French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, a German radio station reported on Wednesday.

Officials firmly declined to comment on the report, but the parliamentary committee that oversees intelligence agencies was due to meet later in the day with the issue to be discussed.

The report by the Berlin-based rbb Inforadio was the latest twist in a growing scandal over the activities of Germany's BND stemming from revelations in 2013 by U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

Without identifying its sources, rbb said the BND had monitored German Hansjoerg Haber, from 2008-2011 head of the EU's observer mission in Georgia and then a senior diplomat in Brussels. He is now head of the EU's mission in Turkey and married to a state secretary in the Interior Ministry.
The BND declined to comment. A government spokeswoman, quizzed for about 20 minutes at a regular news conference, declined to comment on the report directly and said the oversight body worked "without discussing everything in public".



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France

‘Nothing surprising’ about Germany spying on France

 

© AFP archive | French President François Hollande with German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Text by FRANCE 24 

Latest update : 2015-11-13

No one should be surprised that Germany’s foreign intelligence service spied on French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, a former French Air Force intelligence officer told FRANCE 24 Friday.

 

Berlin public radio reported this week that the BND intelligence service had listened in on its French allies, prompting a show of indignation from French President François Hollande.

"We ask that all the information be given to us," Hollande said Thursday on the sidelines of a migration summit in Malta. "These kinds of practices should not go on between allies.”

"I know that the chancellery will do everything it can to explain the circumstances to us in detail,” he added, saying he had been assured that such spying "had completely stopped".

According to former French Air Force intelligence officer Alain Charret, who is a member of the French Intelligence Research Centre (CF2R) thinktank, Hollande’s show of outrage is just hot air designed to calm public opinion.

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