BERLIN (Sputnik) – The German Chancellor's office became aware of the inappropriate use of selectors, which are targets like IP addresses, mobile phone numbers or email accounts, only in March 2015, while the country's foreign intelligence service, BND, is suspected of having been aware of it much earlier.
A government probe into the misuse of the selector request system was launched in summer 2013 after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had revealed documents concerning the NSA's mass surveillance practices.
Last week, German media reported that the BND could have been spying on EU targets at the requests of the NSA that allegedly passed a list of some 800,000 IP addresses, phone numbers and email addresses to the German agency for monitoring.
