This means that some 120 BND agents working at the Bavarian monitoring station, alongside US technicians, are now only intercepting faxes and telephone calls for the US security service.
On Wednesday, Altmaier and his predecessor, incumbent Interior Minister Thomas de Maisiere gave evidence to the German parliament's committee investigating NSA espionage.
The German government has faced scrutiny following media reports that Merkel's office knew about the NSA’s use of the Bad Aibling listening post in Bavaria to spy on a wide range of European targets, including French authorities, EU institutions and businesses.
This is the German government's first real step to rein in unchecked US surveillance activities on its soil. German weekly Der Spiegel suggested on Thursday that cutting Internet-monitoring traffic to the NSA was an attempt by the Merkel administration to silence criticism that it was not acting on the problem. Up until now, Berlin only spoke about oversight lapses in its own BND agency.
