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(Last edited: November 23, 2015) Almost unnoticed, the Austrian member of parliament Peter Pilz recently disclosed new information about operation Eikonal, under which NSA and BND cooperated in tapping some fiber-optic cables at a switching center of Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt, Germany. As part of the NSA umbrella program RAMPART-A , Eikonal was set up to gather intelligence about targets from Russia, the Middle East and North-Africa. Because the cables that were tapped came also from countries like Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, there were fears that their communications were intercepted too. Here, the newly disclosed information will be discussed and combined with things we learned from the hearings of the German parliamentary commission that investigates NSA spying, including operation Eikonal. > See also: New details about the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal Overview of the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal (2004-2008) (Click to enlarge) Leak The ...

(Updated: August 24, 2016) Since last Spring, the German parliamentary commission investigating NSA spying is trying to find out whether the Americans secretly tried to spy on German and European targets. During the hearings it became clear that the German foreign intelligence service BND wasn't able to fully prevent that selectors, like e-mail addresses and phone numbers, provided by the NSA , were fed into the collection system. A special investigator was allowed access to the lists of rejected selectors and he reported about his findings last week. Here follows the background of this affair and the most important and interesting details from the investigation report. > Many more details pieced together from the commission hearings can be found here The BND satellite intercept station at Bad Aibling, Germany (Photo: AFP/Getty Images) Satellite interception The origins of the selector affair go back to 2004, when the Americans turned their satellite intercept station Bad Aib...