back to article Germany's BND muscles in on metadata mass surveillance

Germany's external spy agency saves tens of millions of phone records every day, according to leaked files that expose its NSA-style mass surveillance programme for the first time. The Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, collects metadata on 220 million calls every day, with at least some of …

  1. Michael Habel
    Black Helicopters

    Great so its kinda like we'll scratch your Back if you scratch ours?

    Well I guess that's One way to offload some work, and not have to worry about pissing off the Proletariat... Much

    Just get Someone else to sniff the "Data", after you tell them were to look for it. 'Cause you know that the NSA already has EVERYTHING EVER committed to Flash deep down in their Bunkers.

    I just wonder if the NSA feels confident to share back such Data with us... (e.g. Not so much Germany, but the E.U. as a whole. Perhaps it could have alerted such agencies about 7/7 Bombings or the French Attack, a few weeks back.)

    All the while they'll keep insisting that if we have nothing to hide, then we should allow 'em ever more greater powers to keep learning as much about us as possible. And Security?! Well I sure somebody must have heard of it somewhere....

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Great so its kinda like we'll scratch your Back if you scratch ours?

      FWIW the proletariat rarely seems to care as long as there is food and drink on the table and "Dschungelcamp" on the telly.

      All this data slurping doesn't make anyone safer (as tools like Bosbach will admit). While it might be useful in a subsequent investigation (great help to any victims) there's rarely nothing that in it that the authorities can't get with a court order obtained after routine police work. Data centres are expensive to build and run and require skilled employees who can't be do anything more useful while they're spying on teenage text messaging.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Great so its kinda like we'll scratch your Back if you scratch ours?

        "FWIW the proletariat rarely seems to care as long as there is food and drink on the table and "Dschungelcamp" on the telly."

        Fair enough. Perhaps I was alone in labouring under the misapprehension that Germans were paranoid about surveillance due to the history.

  2. AceRimmer

    It's not Metadata...

    ...it's Data.

    The "Metadata" moniker came about when the NSA tried to downplay how much data they were capturing

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's not Metadata...

      Ace....game set and match.

  3. Dan Paul

    And you guys were

    worried about the NSA and Google.

    I wonder how Angela Merkel feels....

  4. Anguilla

    From TWTWTW - Never trust a "Krauthead"

  5. shovelDriver

    " the information hoovered up includes records of phone numbers involved in a call or text message, the time of a communication and the length of a call (but, crucially, not the content of a communication)."

    " . . . NOT . . ."

    You believe this? Because it came from a "trusted" source? Such as the BND? Or worse, some politician?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    USELESS EXCEPT FASCIST STATE..

    so those guys realy think this is gonna stop terrorism? bull-shut this is NOT designed to stop terrorism as these are very well encrypted and steganographycally distributed data, what PERVASIVE. communication tapping does it allows governments to KEEP WATCH ON ANTI GOVERNMENT DISSIDENTS EXACTLY LIKE IN USSR !

    Any claim that massive interception is against crime is ludicrous as real crime in neither predictable like murders and such OR needs to be VERY CAREFULLY TARGETED EAVSDROPPING, like in mafia cases where you need to EXACTLY record EVERY POSSIBLE TYPE of communication from mafiosi as THEY OBVIOUSLY WLL NOT use the phone as single media but MANY DIFFERENT THINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY....

    we are heading straight towards Big Brother state run fascism and no one has the balls to shout it out loud before it is too late , just like 1932 !

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