This emerges from a draft law, which NDR, WDR, and Süddeutsche Zeitung are reporting on again. The powers of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) are to be extended as if the Snowden revelations had never happened. The foreign intelligence service could thus act more independently
The plans are also explosive in the area of active cyber espionage. Under the heading “Computer Network Exploitation”, the BND is to receive another official license to hack. If US tech giants like Google, Meta, or X do not cooperate with requests, the BND would be allowed to penetrate their systems secretly. This would even apply to IT infrastructures within Germany, provided it is necessary to defend against hostile cyberattacks. The line between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering would thus be difficult to maintain.
Eh, what the fuck Germany?
I’m sure this will never be used beyond the proposed scope /s
End of NSA dependence
Former allies are being unpredictable, and reliance on existing intelligence sharing arrangements are falling apart. It’s not so surprising that countries want to continue using the access they already have, even if one door is closed to them.
I doubt it’s just Germany drawing up contingencies after the past year.
End of NSA dependence
If US tech giants like Google, Meta, or X do not cooperate with requests, the BND would be allowed to penetrate their systems secretly.
I’ll take it.
The powers of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) are to be extended
This would even apply to IT infrastructures within Germany, provided it is necessary to defend against hostile cyberattacks. The line between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering would thus be difficult to maintain.
Or maybe not…
Roughly 10 years ago people talked a lot about Big Data and how it maybe isn’t the best solution to Everything™. What happened to that? Oh yeah, the AI hype, cheap storage etc.
This is like Stasis wet dream
The service would be granted the power to completely store up to 30 percent of all data traffic for six months
Average traffic for DE-CIX last year was 19.12 Tbit/s
Storing 30% of all traffic for six months would require:
19.12Tbit * 60s * 60m * 24h * 30d * 6m = 297,354,240 Tbit = 37,169,280 TB = 37.2 Exabytes of storage
I know they probably just want to scan this amount and save only the things that they are interested in but still, thats a lot of data.
oh boy, I can’t wait to have my own codename and 2-5 agents tailing me /s
For heise articles you can also use archive.org as it is transparent who runs it and long time availability is safer.
