MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Agents of the German intelligence service BND told the investigative committee there was little control of what data they passed on to their NSA colleagues, in what the panel described as "total chaos."
The NSA chief at Bad Aibling, named R.U., said he did not check the lists of so-called selectors – search terms, names, email addresses and telephone numbers – that were submitted to BND by NSA for inquiries.
"I've never specifically looked at them," the BND witness told the parliament's committee.
He said lists of selectors provided by NSA were passed on directly to BND headquarters in Pullach, near Munich, where they were fed into computers for matches with the agency's database. The remaining selectors were then used to sift through BND's vast database at Bad Aibling, with the returns going first to Pullach and then to NSA.
NSA's search data was never checked manually due to its sheer volume, the Tagesspiegel magazine reported. The head of Bad Aibling argued it was not his duty to monitor NSA data requests as it was impossible to do.
Following the revelation of NSA's mass illegal surveillance program by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, BND rejected around 2,000 NSA selectors that seemed to violate German regulations. The next check took place only in 2015 and yielded as many as 40,000 suspicious search targets.
According to the Tagesspiegel, some panel members called the whole situation around NSA dealings at Bad Aibling a "total chaos," with SPD commissioner Christian Flisek saying there were apparent "organizational lapses" in the monitoring station's work.
The German government has faced scrutiny following media reports that it knew about the NSA's use of the Bavarian outpost to spy on a wide range of European targets, including French authorities, EU institutions and businesses.
