It emerged last week that Germany's intelligence service the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) had violated the country's Constitution by helping the US National Security Agency (NSA) spy on European politicians and companies.
However, in an official government statement to the Bundestag on April 14, the Interior Ministry said:
"We have no knowledge of alleged economic espionage by the NSA or other US agencies in other countries."
In view of the emergence of collusion between the BND and the NSA, Linke Party (Left Party) MP Jan Korte told Der Spiegel "the parliamentary answer from April 14th is very clearly a lie" and that he would not believe "one more word" from the government relating to spying.
Can they do that? ~ Govt 'lied' to parliament about NSA spying http://t.co/uh2s22Lz0j via @TheLocalGermany #UFO4UBlogEurope #Germany
— UFO4U@NEWS (@UFO4U) April 29, 2015
Politicians and Companies Targeted
Former NSA executive Thomas Drake told Sputnik on Monday that the US agency had passed a list of some 800,000 IP addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses to the BND for monitoring in Germany on their behalf.
Some of the IP addresses belonged to European politicians and companies, including the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company. Drake said the NSA-BND relationship has been extraordinary close for years, and expanded significantly after the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States.
"Here you have the BND in total violation of the German Constitution, but it doesn't matter [to them]."
"If there is no accountability, then they are not incentivized to stop," Drake said.
