Fiberglass tapping, real-time Internet traffic analysis, encryption cracking, computer hacking: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst is massively expanding its Internet surveillance capabilities. [...]

The BND now wants to be able to perform wiretapping on its own. The Snowden revelations about skills and financial resources of the Five-Eyes Intelligence Services aren’t seen as a warning but rather transformed into a wish-list for the BND: The German agency wants to play „on an equal level with the western partner services“ [...]

According to BND head of department Pauland, who testified before the parliamentary investigatory committee, the interception of „routine traffic“ is causing almost 50 per cent of notifications – in other words, the so-called groundless mass surveillance of entire channels of communication, such as entire fibreglass lines. This field is now going to be expanded and modernised. [...]

Despite the fact that the BND already massively wiretaps Internet communication from fibre optic cable lines at (at least) twelve different locations, another such „measure in intelligence gathering“ was scheduled to start in 2014. [...]

https://netzpolitik.org/2015/strategic-initiative-technology-how-bnd-wan...