Documents show that Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America’s NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database. Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation?The headquarters of Stellar, a company based in the town of Hürth near Cologne, are visible from a distance. Seventy-five white antennas dominate the landscape. The biggest are 16 meters (52 feet) tall and kept in place by steel anchors. It is an impressive sight and serves as a popular backdrop for scenes in TV shows, including the German action series “Cobra 11.”Stellar operates a satellite ground station in Hürth, a so-called “teleport.” Its services are used by companies and institutions; Stellar’s customers include Internet providers, telecommunications companies and even a few governments. “The world is our market,” is the high-tech company’s slogan.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-targeted-private-german-companies-a-961444.htmlAlso see:NSA listed Merkel among leaders subject to surveillance – report
The National Security Agency appears to have included Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on a list of world leaders subject to surveillance.The news, the latest extracted from documents supplied to media outlets including the Guardian by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, was reported on Saturday by the German magazine Der Spiegel and The Intercept, a website set up by the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald with the support of the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/29/nsa-merkel-leaders-surveillance-documents-snowdenNSA’s UK partner targets German companies, says report
A new report based on the trove of NSA documents leaked to journalists last year by Edward Snowden says the agency’s UK counterpart, the GCHQ, spied on German Internet firms, and it provides more information on the NSA’s efforts to monitor German Chancellor Angela Merkel.The report, published in German magazine Der Spiegel, quotes one of the documents as saying that Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, sought “development of in-depth knowledge of key satellite IP service providers in Germany,” with an eye toward, as the publication puts it, “developing wider knowledge of Internet traffic flowing through Germany.”
http://www.cnet.com/news/nsas-uk-partner-targets-german-companies-says-report/