Leaked – German BND also uses XKEYSCORE for data collection

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Over the past few years we learned a lot about Germany’s foreign intelligence serviceBND, although not from leaks, but from the public hearings of the parliamentary commission that investigates NSA spying operations and its cooperation with German agencies.

Recently however a secret government report was leaked to German media, which not only identifies violations of the data protection act but also reveals the codenames for several BND systems and the fact that BND uses the American XKEYSCORE system not only for analysis, but also for collection purposes.

Here, the new information from the secret report is combined with things we know from earlier sources and reportings.

– A secret report
– The SUSLAG liaison office
– Selectors provided by NSA
– Operations SMARAGD and ZABBO
– Metadata analysis: VERAS
– Analysis and collection: XKEYSCORE
– Integrated analysis: MIRA 4
– Legal defects

The BND satellite intercept station at Bad Aibling, Germany
(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

A secret report

The report that now has been published goes back to September 2013, when the then federal data protection commissioner Peter Schaar ordered a thorough inspection of the BND satellite intercept station in Bad Aibling, which took place on December 3 and 4 of that year.

In October 2014, Schaar’s successor Andrea Voßhoff conducted a second visit to Bad Aibling, which in July 2015 resulted in an extensive and detailed report (German:Sachstandsbericht) about all the systems used at this BND station. This report was (and still is) classified as Top Secret.

Additionally, Voßhoff made a legal assessment based upon the Sachstandsbericht. This was finished in March 2016 and sent to then BND president Schindler and the federal chancellery. It was classified as Secret, but was leaked to regional broadcasters NDRand WDR and a transcription of the full document was published by the digital rights platform Netzpolitik.org on September 1.

Both reports are about the cooperation between BND and NSA, which goes back to 2004, when the Americans turned their satellite intercept station Bad Aibling(codenamed GARLICK) over to German intelligence. In return, BND had to share the results from its satellite collection with the NSA, for which the latter provided selectors, like e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc. of the targets they were interested in.

Google Maps view of the Mangfall Barracks in Bad Aibling, Germany.
The building at the very top seems to be the BND facility,
the one nearby with the white roof NSA’s “Tin Can”.

The SUSLAG liaison office

After taking over the Bad Aibling satellite station, BND seems to have moved the control facility to the nearby Mangfall Barracks, which were taken over from the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) in 2002. For the Special US Liaison Activity Germany (SUSLAG), which is the liaison office of NSA for Germany, a new highly secure container building was built on the Mangfall Barracks premises in 2003 (nicknamed “tin can” or Blechdose).

According to the commissioner’s report, the SUSLAG building and the building with BND servers and equipment are connected through a 100 MBit/s fiber optic cable. SUSLAG also has a technical data link to the NSA’s primary communications hub in Europe, the European Technical Center (ETC) in the Mainz-Kastel district of the city of Wiesbaden.

Cooperation between the US and Germany in the Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA, 2004-2012) took place inside the BND building, for which NSA personnel had access permissions. After the JSA was terminated, SUSLAG personnel kept their entrance rights for the BND building, but it has separate rooms for highly sensitive information to which none of the Americans have access.

A letter from BND from October 15, 2015 says that at that moment, 10 people from NSA worked at SUSLAG, with following access rights:

– 2 have access to building 7 (SUSLAG) only
– 4 have access to building 7 and building 4 (Administration)
– 4 have access to building 7 and building 8 (BND)

The SUSLAG building is only used by NSA personnel and BND claims that the data protection commissioner has no jurisdiction over the SUSLAG, but she disputes that and says the SUSLAG building is simply part of the BND complex. She also regrets that SUSLAG doesn’t recognize her oversight authority.

Selectors provided by NSA

For the satellite interception in Bad Aibling, some 4 out of 5 selectors come from NSA, the rest from BND. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, NSA provided BND with roughly 690.000 phone numbers and 7,8 million internet identifiers between 2002 and 2013. That is an average of something like 60.000 phone numbers and 700.000 internet identifiers a year, or 164 phone numbers and over 1900 internet identifiers each day.

From the parliamentary hearings we already knew that BND personnel pulls the American selectors from an NSA server, and the commissioner’s report now reveals that this server is in NSA’s ETC in Wiesbaden. On this server BND puts back any results for these selectors. These data transfers from and to ETC go through the SUSLAG facility, but BND is able to get direct access to the NSA server in Wiesbaden through an FTP-gateway (a “BACOM system”).

Selector databases

From an earlier parliamentary hearing we know that BND stores the selectors from NSA in two databases: one for IP selectors (from NSA only), and one for telephone selectors (from both NSA and BND). Each agency had access to its own IP database; the phone database was managed jointly, but BND could only approve or disapprove NSA selectors, and NSA could only do so with those from BND.

The names of these databases were not known until now, but the commissioner’s report mentions them, along with some additional details:

– Target Number Database (TND), which exists since 2008 and holds the telephone selectors from both NSA and BND. The latter either come from BND’s own tasking database PBDB or are provided by domestic security services.

– SCRABBLE, which only holds selectors for packet-switched (internet) communications provided by NSA, after their format has been converted. These selectors initially had no description (Deutung, like a justification for the target). Because of this, BND temporarily stopped using them as of May 2015, and for the commissioner any results from them are unlawful because BND was not able to determine whether they are necessary for its mission.

Their names indicate that these database systems were provided by NSA, and together with the fact that they also contain NSA-provided selectors, this is likely the reason why these names were never mentioned during the parliamentary hearings – unlike those of BND’s own systems.

Update: it was noticed that TND and SCRABBLE were actually mentionedonce during the parliamentary hearings, when former BND president Schindler said that “the US has [its own] databases TND and SCRABBLE”.

Approval

Before being stored in the SCRABBLE and TND databases, both the telephone and internet selectors have to pass the DAFIS filtering system, which checks whether they belong to German citizens or companies or may otherwise contradict German interests. Accordingly, the selectors are marked as “allowed” or “protected”.

Those marked “allowed” are subsequently being activated (“tasked”) on the actual data collection systems. The report says that for this, hard selectors like phone numbers and e-mail addresses can be freely combined with content search terms (Inhaltssuchbegriffe) like key words, which could refer to the GENESIS language used for more complex XKEYSCORE searches.

According to the report, selectors marked as “protected” are send back to NSA and are also deactivated in the TND and SCRABBLE databases – to make sure that they won’t get activated when NSA provides them a second time (this confirms that there’s no separate database (Ablehnungsdatei) with rejected selectors as was suggested during the earlier parliamentary commission hearings).

BND refused the data protection commissioner access to TND and SCRABBLE, so she wasn’t able to check the individual selectors. She regarded that as a massive restriction of her supervision authority.

Operations SMARAGD and ZABBO

Selectors that have been approved are send to the systems that filter out communications that match those selectors. Some of these systems are in Germany, others are abroad. The report of commissioner Voßhoff for the first time discloses two specific data collection operations and their codewords:

– SMARAGD, a cable tapping operation somewhere outside Europe and in cooperation with another foreign intelligence agency.

– ZABBO, collection in Bad Aibling of satellite communications from Afghanistan.

There’s no explanation for why the commissioner only mentions these two operations. The satellite antennas in Bad Aibling undoubtedly collect from many more countries, but maybe these are the only operations from which, during the investigation period, data were shared with NSA.

SMARAGD = WHARPDRIVE ?

The way SMARAGD is described perfectly fits a certain type of operations in which a 3rd Party partner of NSA like in this case BND, cooperates with yet another country that secretly provides access to data traffic, which is then also shared with NSA. According to the book Der NSA Komplex, BND and NSA conducted about half a dozen of such operations in recent years.

In its english version of the news report about this issue, the website Netzpolitik.org points to an NSA document that was published earlier by Der Spiegel. In it, we see EMERALD mentioned as an alternate codename for the NSA operation WHARPDRIVE, which is exactly such a trilateral program in which a third secret service participates.

WHARPDRIVE was still active in 2013, but in the Spring of that year, employees of the private company that operated the communication cables, accidently discovered the clandestine BND/NSA equipment, but the operation was rescued by providing a plausible cover story.*

The NSA report from April 2013 however said that “WHARPDRIVE has been identified for possible termination due to fiscal constraints”, but this may have been coincided with the exposure of the program in the book Der NSA Komplex in March 2014.

It should also be noted that Netzpolitik.org came up with this identification by translating the German codename SMARAGD into its English equivalent EMERALD. It is possible that the Americans also translated the German codeword SMARAGD into EMERALD, but just as likely is that it’s a different program (maybe as a successor with the same set-up).

Operation Eikonal

But there’s another codeword connection: from 2004 till 2008, NSA cooperated with BND in operation EIKONAL in order to get access to fiber optic cables from Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt.

From the parliamentary hearings we know that operation EIKONAL had GRANAT as its internal BND codename. And with GRANAT being German for garnet, and SMARAGD for emerald, we see that both operations are actually named after a gemstone, which often indicates some kind of similarity.

In October 2014, the Danish paper Information reported that the WHARPDRIVE access was opened in February 2013 and had the same size as EIKANOL. This operation EIKANOL or EIKONAL was a typical example of the way NSA cooperates with 3rd Party partner agencies under its RAMPART-A program, but unlike the SMARAGD/WHARPDRIVE operations with the cable access point being inside Germany:

Left: bilateral cable access operation (RAMPART-A) – Right: trilateral cable access operation
In the cases discussed here, Germany would be “Country X”
(click to enlarge)

It is tempting to identify SMARAGD and ZABBO as the two collection programs (SIGADs US-987LA and US-987LB) from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart for Germany that was published in July 2013. For both facilities together, more than 552 million metadata records were counted between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013.

Provided that this chart shows the only data shared by BND, it’s very well possible that the satellite collection program ZABBO is one of them. For the cable access SMARAGD this is less certain and depends on when this program started and whether it is identical with WHARPDRIVE (which started in February 2013).

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot showing metadata provided by BND
(click to enlarge)

Data transfer

The report of the data protection commissioner also provides an impression of the BND networks through which collected data are brought back to headquarters.

Data collected abroad are send back to Germany over the operational network ISNoVPN (apparently something that goes “over VPN” for secure tunneling) and then arrives at a dedicated demilitarized zone (DMZ) network for data collection (Datenabholungs-DMZ).

In this DMZ network there’s a virtual machine (VM) that acts as a host for data that come in from each collection facility (Erfassungsansatz). The report mentions the virtual machines “Import VM SMARAGD” and “Import VM ZABBO” for the operations SMARAGD and ZABBO respectively.

In these virtual machines, the metadata go through an Application Level Gateway (ALG), which is a security components combined with a firewall. Such an ALG is able to detect, filter and when necessary, delete data from an incoming data stream. Again, there’s an ALG for each collection facility: for example SMARAGD-ALG for data from the SMARAGD collection effort.

Finally, the collected data arrive at a network called NG-Netz, which is the back-end in Bad Aibling of the transfer system that pulls in data collected at a front-end access point (Erfassungskopf) somewhere abroad.

(click to enlarge)

Metadata analysis: VERAS

The system that BND uses for analysing bulk metadata from circuit-switchedcommunications is called VERAS, which stands for Verkehrs-Analyse-System or Traffic Analysis System. VERAS stores metadata only for up to 90 days and according to the commissioner’s report they are derived from two sources:

– Metadata that come with communications collected after matching with specific selectors (the related content goes to the INBE database)

– All the metadata from selected communication links (satellite frequencies and fiber optic channels) that are regarded useful for intelligence purposes, but only after passing the DAFIS filter.

According to the manual for VERAS version 4.3.x from 2010, the system has a topology mode, in which connections can be created level after level, similar to the “hops” we know from the NSA’s contact chaining method. There’s no limitation to the number of levels that can be added and analysts can also focus on specific targets to create patterns-of-life (Bewegungsprofile) for them.

This kind of contact-chaining and metadata analysis inevitably involves metadata from innocent people. BND distinguished between directly and indirectly relevant. Directly relevant are metadata related to people who are already known or suspected for being relevant for intelligence purposes.

Indirectly relevant are metadata related to people who have some kind of connection to directly relevant people, or when such metadata are being stored from a “geographical point of view”, which apparently refers to metadata of people being somewhere near a target without having been in direct contact.

The report says that metadata connected on such a geographical basis results in much more people being involved than when using call or connection chaining. Data related to indirectly relevant people are also used by BND, for example as new selectors.

VERAS was introduced in 2002 and recently, VERAS 4 has been replaced by VERAS version 6, which was developed by the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) as part of the VERBA (VERkehrs-Beziehungs-Analyse) project.

For VERAS 6 there’s not yet a database establishing order (see below), but in February 2015 BND sent the commissioner a draft version, which she already considers illegal because BND admits that it is technically impossible to prevent that data of innocent people are being used in the VERAS system.

Analysis and collection: XKEYSCORE

Already in July 2013, Der Spiegel reported that BND president Schindler had informed the parliamentary intelligence oversight commission (PKGr) that his agency was using NSA’s XKEYSCORE system since 2007, but only for analysis, not for data collection. This was confirmed by W. K., a sub-division manager in the BND’s Signals Intelligence division, during a parliamentary hearing.

But now, the report of the data protection commissioner says that BND usesXKEYSCORE not just for analysis, but also for the collection of both metadata and content.

The report explains that in its data collection, or front-end function, XKEYSCORE uses selectors, single ones or freely combined ones in the form of fingerprints, to search for matches in IP traffic of both public and privat networks, and stores anything that matches these selectors.

Remarkably enough, the commissioner writes that XKEYSCORE searches all internet traffic worldwide (“weltweit den gesamten Internetverkehr“), which seems to be a copy/paste from sensationalistic press reports, as XKEYSCORE can only search data which are collected at some physical access points and not even NSA has access to all the world’s communications traffic, let alone BND.

Slide from an NSA presentation about the XKEYSCORE system

Besides picking out and storing communications that match specific selectors, XKEYSCORE is also able to store a so-called “full take”, a temporary rolling buffer of all data from a particular link. This in order to find files which aren’t directly associated with specific selectors – which was heralded as its unique capability.

The commissioner’s report only mentions this buffer function when it cites a BND response calling XKEYSCORE “a local and temporary buffering of data” which in their opinion doesn’t make it a database. The commissioner disagrees and says it’s a database, because even when it’s just for a short time, the data are available for usage. This means a there should have been a database establishing order for XKEYSCORE (see below).

Front-end and back-end

The report doesn’t explain what XKEYSCORE actually does in its function as a back-end analysis tool. But maybe instead of distinguishing between collection and analysis, we should look at the difference between the front-end and the back-end functions of the system, which is explained in a manual for its so-called Deepdive version.

This learns us that the back-end performs high-speed filtering and selection using both strong selectors (like e-mail addresses) and soft selectors (like key words), and also uses various plug-ins to extract and index the metadata, which are also used for the rolling buffer-functionality of XKEYSCORE:

Diagram showing the dataflow for the DeepDive version of XKEYSCORE

The front-end is where the intercepted data streams come in, which are first reassembled by the METTLESOME and xFip components. Then, only the most useful streams are forwarded based upon rules using country codes, keywords and such. Finally, the Defrag component conducts full sessionizing, which means that the separate IP packets that travel over the internet are reassembled into their original readable form again.

The commissioner’s report says that initially the sessionizing of data from a particular communications link was conducted by another NSA system codenamed WEALTHYCLUSTER (WC, which is for lower data rates), but that this kind of processing was more and more taken over by XKEYSCORE (XKS).

So, if the distinction between collection and analysing corresponds to that between front-end and back-end, that means that the new thing we learned from the commissioner’s report is that BND apparently also uses XKEYSCORE for sessionizing the data they collect, and not only for filtering and analysing them.

This sessionizing might seem rather obvious, but real-time filtering and sessionizing at data rates as high as 10 Mbit/s requires very fast, specialized and expensive equipment. Well-known manufacturers are Narus and Verint, and it seems likely that their equipment is used for XKEYSCORE too.

As XKEYSCORE is only used for internet communications, the NSA selectors are derived from the SCRABBLE database. The results of the collection are transferred to NSA, after having been filtered by DAFIS to get rid of data related to Germans.

Integrated analysis: MIRA 4

Besides all the systems mentioned before, BND also uses MIRA 4, which stands forModulare Integrierte Ressourcen Architektur or Modular Integrated Ressource Architecture, version 4. According to a letter from BND from February 2015, this system is used to store all the content, whether from e-mail, voice, fax or teletype messages, within a certain BND station and apparently also enables software to process and select raw data in order to create intelligence reports (Meldungen).

This was however contradicted by a letter from BND from December 2015 which said that MIRA 4 is only used to store just those Meldungen. The commissioner replied that she would be thankful when BND could clarify this discrepancy.

Apparently not noticed by the commissioner is an NSA report from 2006, which was published by earlier Der Spiegel, and which says that German analytic tool suites like MIRA 4:

“integrate multiple database analytic functions (such as viewing voice and listening to fax [sic]), much like NSA Headquarters has UIS (User Integrated Services). In some ways, these tools have features that surpass US SIGINT capabilities. Among a series of interesting items, NSA analysts noted that BND analysts could seamlessly move from VERAS (call-chaining software) to the associated voice cuts.”

Later on, the 2006 NSA report says: “The BND responded positively to NSA’s request for a copy of MIRA4 and VERAS software, and made several requests from NSA concerning target and tool development and data”.

During a parliamentary hearing in October 2014, BND’s own data protection officer Ms. H. F. said that in 2010, MIRA 4 was replaced by INBE as a system that apparently not only stores the content of communications, but also makes it available for analysis.

The 2016 commissioner’s report says that data stored in MIRA 4 were not migrated to INBE, when the latter system became operational in 2011. Data in MIRA 4 seem to have been automatically “aged off” after 90 days and the last backup of the system was destroyed in the Summer of 2014.

Legal defects

The purpose of the secret report by federal data protection commissioner Andrea Voßhoff was to determine the legality of the data collection, processing, storing and analysing systems at the BND field station in Bad Aibling. The two main problems she identified are about necessity and the lack of database establishing orders.

Necessity

According to the German data protection law, BND is only allowed to receive, store, process and analyse personal data after checking that they are necessary and relevant for its foreign intelligence mission as authorized by German law. In various cases, especially when it comes to bulk collection of metadata and receiving the selectors from NSA, the agency doesn’t or cannot check the necessity for each piece of data. This makes it unlawful for BND to posess and use those data.

The problem behind this is that when such laws were made, there was no awareness of secret services using large sets of metadata, which also includes those of innocent people. Also in this particular case, almost all data collected in Bad Aibling and shared with NSA will be collected from crisis zones like Afghanistan, which makes them more relevant for BND’s mission and less likely of containing German communications.

Database establishing orders

Another major legal defect the commissioner found was that for the BND databases VERAS 4, VERAS 6, XKEYSCORE, TND, SCRABBLE, INBE, and DAFIS there was no database establishing order (Dateianordnung) and that they were also set up without prior approval by the commissioner. This makes the existance of these databases unlawful, which means the data they contain should be deleted immediatly until an establishing order is provided.

BND argued that the absence of a database establishing order is just a formal defect and doesn’t affect the legal status of a database and its content. The commissioner doesn’t agree with that and says that one of the functions of an establishing order is to determine the purpose of a database, which limits and restricts the use of the personal data in it. The lack of such an order also means that there are no rules for when approvals by oversight bodies are required, thus making the use of these databases both unlawful and uncontrolled.

In response

Meanwhile, on September 7, the German interior ministry released a draft for a new data protection act, in which it is proposed that in the future, the data protection commissioner will not have the authority anymore to impose sanctions or fines on the secret services – so restricting the commissioner’s authority rather than strenghten it.

Finally, on September 15, Edward Snowden also mentioned the commissioner’s report on Twitter, saying that it “confirms mass surveillance”. Apparently he didn’t read the report, as it is actually about the lack of specific legal restrictions, not about the scope of BND’s collection efforts.

Links and Sources
– Rolf Weber: Der geleakte BND-Bericht der BfDI Voßhoff — wie gewohnt bei näherem Hinsehen wenig skandalträchtig
– Netzpolitik: Secret Report: German Federal Intelligence Service BND Violates Laws And Constitution By The Dozen
– Der Spiegel: NSA-Standorte in Deutschland: Wiesbaden

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Doppelleben zwischen STASI und BND – Film

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Exposed – New details about the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal

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Under operation Eikonal, the NSA cooperated with the German foreign intelligence service BND for access to transit cables from Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt. Here follows an overview of what is known about this operation so far. New information may be added as it comes available.

– Initial reporting – Parliamentary hearings –

– Disclosures from Austria –

Initial reporting

Operation Eikonal was revealed by the regional German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the regional broadcasters NDR and WDR on October 4, 2014. They reported that between 2004 and 2008, the German foreign intelligence service BND had tapped into the Frankfurt internet exchange DE-CIX and shared the intercepted data with the NSA.

For this operation, NSA provided sophisticated interception equipment, which the Germans didn’t had but were eager to use. Interception of telephone traffic started in 2004, internet data were captured since 2005. Reportedly, NSA was especially interested in communications from Russia.

To prevent communications of German citizens being passed on to NSA, BND installed a special program (called DAFIS) to filter these out. But according to the reporting, this filter didn’t work properly from the beginning. An initial test in 2003 showed the BND that 5% of the data of German citizens could not be filtered out, which was considered a violation of the constitution.

Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that it was Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) that provided BND the access to the Frankfurt internet exchange, and in return was paid 6000,- euro a month. But as some people noticed, Deutsche Telekom was not connected to DE-CIX when operation Eikonal took place, so something didn’t add up.

As we will see, this was right, and the actual cable tap was not at DE-CIX, but took place at Deutsche Telekom. Nonetheless, many press reports still link Eikonal to the DE-CIX internet exchange.

Operations center room in the former BND headquarters in Pullach
(Photo: Martin Schlüter – Click to enlarge)

Eikonal as part of RAMPART-A

As was first reported by this weblog on October 15, 2014, operation Eikonal was part of the NSA umbrella program RAMPART-A, under which the Americans cooperate with 3rd Party countries who “provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment”.

Details about the RAMPART-A program itself had already been revealed by the Danish newspaper Information in collaboration with The Intercept on June 19, 2014. The program reportedly involved at least five countries, but so far only Germany and, most likely, Denmark have been identified.

On October 20, Information published about a document from NSA’s Special Source Operations (SSO) division, which confirms that an operation codenamed “EIKANOL” was part of RAMPART-A and says it was decommissioned in June 2008.

The slide below shows that under RAMPART-A a partner country taps an international cable at an access point (A) and then forwards the data to a joint processing center (B). Equipment provided by the NSA processes the data and analysts from the host country can then analyse the intercepted data (C), while they are also forwarded to NSA sites in the US (D, E):

Parliamentary hearings

Because of the confusion about the role of Deutsche Telekom in operation Eikonal, the NSA investigation commission of the German parliament (NSAUA) decided to also investigate whether this company assisted BND in tapping the Frankfurt internet exchange.

During hearings of BND officials it became clear that operation Eikonal was not about tapping into the Frankfurt internet exchange DE-CIX, but about one or more cables from Deutsche Telekom. This was first confirmed by German media on December 4, 2014.

Hearing of November 6, 2014 (Live-blog)

According to witness T.B., who was heard on on November 6, 2014, it was just during the test period that the filter system was only able to filter out 95% of German communications. When the system went live, this percentage rose to 99% with a second stage that could filter out even more than 99%. When necessary, a final check was conducted by hand.

Hearing of November 13, 2014 (Live-blog – Official transcript)

During this hearing, the witness W.K. said that Eikonal was a one of a kind operation, there was targeted collection from traffic that transited Germany from one foreign country to another.

This was focussed on Afghanistan and anti-terrorism. Selected data were collected and forwarded to NSA. The internal codename for Eikonal was Granat, but that name wasn’t shared with NSA. There was even a third codename.

For Germany, Eikonal was useful because it provided foreign intelligence for protecting German troops and countering terrorism. The NSA provided better technical equipment that BND didn’t had. In return, BND provided NSA with data collected from transit traffic using search profiles about Afghanistan and anti-terrorism. BND was asked to cooperate because NSA isn’t able to do everything themselves.

Eikonal provided only several hundred useful phone calls, e-mail and fax messages a year, which was a huge disappointment for NSA. This, combined with the fact that it proved to be impossible to 100% guarantee that no German data were collected and forwarded, led BND to terminate the program.

For Eikonal, the cable traffic was filtered by using selectors provided by both NSA and BND. Although not all selectors can be attributed to a particular country and there may have been up to several hundred thousand selectors, witness W.K. said that BND was still able to check whether every single one was appropriate: only selectors that could be checked were used.

Hearing of December 4, 2014 (Live-blog – Official transcript)

During this hearing, BND-employee S.L., who was the project manager of operation Eikonal at BND headquarters, testified. He told that BND had rented two highly secured rooms of ca. 4 x 6 meters in the basement of a Deutsche Telekom switching center in the Frankfurt suburb Nied.

These rooms were only accessible for BND personnel and contained the front-end of the interception system, existing of 19 inch racks, with telecommunications equipment like multiplexers, processors and servers. These devices were remotely controlled from the headquarters in Pullach.*

Based upon analysis of public information about telecommunication networks, BND choose specific cables that would most likely contain traffic that seemed useful for the goals of the operation. It became clear that for redundancy purposes, cables only used 50% of their capacity. For example, 2 cables of 10 Gbit/s carried only 5 Gbit/s of traffic, so in case of a disruption, one cable could take over the traffic of the other one.

The switching center of Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt-Nied
where some cables were tapped under operation Eikonal
(Screenshot: ZDF Frontal21 – Click to enlarge)

After a specific coax or fiber-optic cable had been selected, technicians of Deutsche Telekom installed a splitter and a copy of the traffic was forwarded to one of the secure rooms, where it was fed into a (de-)multiplexer or a router so the signal could be processed. After they got rid of the peer-to-peer and websurfing traffic, the remaining communications data, like e-mail, were filtered by selectors from BND and NSA.

The selected data were sent back to BND headquarters in Pullach over a leased commercial line, of which the capacity was increased after the internet collection became fully operational. From Pullach to the JSA in Bad Aibling there was a 2 Mbit/s line.

Timeframe

Eikonal started with access to a telephone cable (Leitungsvermittelt). Project manager S.L. told that the first cable was connected (aufgeschaltet) in December 2004, but that it’s signal was too weak. Therefore, in January 2005, an amplifier was installed.

In February, March and April additional cables were connected, so telephony collection started in the spring of 2005. By the end of 2006, Deutsche Telekom announced that its business model for dedicated transit cables would be terminated, so in January 2007 the telephone collection ended.*

BND also wanted access to internet traffic (Paketvermittelt), for which the first cable became available by the end of 2005, but because the backlink was missing, collection was technically not possible. This was solved in 2006, and in the spring of 2006 a second cable was added, and they tested the front-end system and subsequently the filter systems until mid-2007 (Probebetrieb).

During this stage, data were only forwarded to the joint NSA-BND unit JSA after a manual check. Fully automated forwarding only happened from late 2007 until operation Eikonal was terminated in June 2008 (Wirkbetrieb).*

Legal issues

The collection of telephone communications from transit cables was done under the general authority of the BND Act, with details specified in the “Transit Agreement” between BND and Deutsche Telekom, which for the latter was signed by Bernd Köbele.

For the collection of internet data it was impossible to fully separate foreign and domestic traffic, so it couldn’t be ruled out that German communications were in there too. Therefore, BND requested an order from the G10-commission, which, like the FISA Court in the US, has to approve data collection when their own citizens could be involved.

A G10-order describes the communication channel (Germany to/from a specific foreign country) that BND is allowed access to, the threat profile and it also authorizes the search terms that may be used for filtering the traffic.*

Such an order allows the collection of G10-data (communications with one end German), which were processed within BND’s separate G10 Collection program. As a bycatch, this G10-interception also yielded fully foreign traffic (Routine-Verkehre), which was used for operation Eikonal:

Some employees from Deutsche Telekom and from BND had doubts about the legality of this solution, which seemed to use a G10-order as a cover for getting access to fully foreign internet traffic.

Eventually, the federal Chancellery, apparently upon request of the BND, issued a letter saying that the operation was legal. This convinced the Telekom management and the operation went on. It didn’t become clear under what authority this letter was issued.

After BND had learned how to collect internet traffic from fiber-optic cable, it applied for G10-orders to intercept (one end German) communications from 25 foreign and domestic internet service providers in 2008. This time these cables were being tapped at the DE-CIX internet exchange, which is also in Frankfurt.

Results

The collection under operation Eikonal resulted in only a few hundred intelligence reports (German: Meldungen) a year, each consisting of one intercepted e-mail, fax message or phone call. These were burned onto a CD to hand them over to NSA personnel at the JSA.*

According to S.L., metadata (containing up to 91 fields) were “cleaned” so only technical metadata (Sachdaten) were forwarded to the JSA, where they were used for statistical and analytical purposes.

Personal metadata (personenbezogene Daten), like e-mail and IP addresses were not shared. Technical metadata are for example used to identify the telecommunication providers, transmission links and the various protocols.

Hearing of December 18, 2014 (Live-blog – Official transcript)

During this hearing, a talkative general Reinhardt Breitfelder, head of the SIGINT division from 2003-2006, confirmed many of the details from the earlier hearings of his subordinates. He also gave impressions of the dilemmas in dealing with the NSA and what to do with the equipment they provide.

Hearing of January 15, 2015 (Live-blog – Official transcript)

In this hearing, the commission questioned two employees from Deutsche Telekom (Harald Helfrich and Wolfgang Alster), but they provided very little new information, except for that Deutsche Telekom personnel only knows between which cities a cable runs, but they don’t know what kind of traffic it contains – they are not allowed to look inside.

A room where hearings of the parliamentary committee take place
(photo: DPA)

Disclosures from Austria

On May 15, 2015, Peter Pilz, member of the Austrian parliament for the Green party, disclosed an e-mail from an employee of the Deutsche Telekom unit for lawful intercept assistance (Regionalstelle für staatliche SonderAuflagen, ReSa), who notified someone from BND that apparently a particular fiber-optic cable had been connected to the interception equipment. The e-mail describes this cable as follows:

Transit STM1 (FFM 21 – Luxembourg 757/1), containing 4 links of 2 Mbit/s:

Channel 2: Luxembourg/VG – Wien/000 750/3
Channel 6: Luxembourg/CLUX – Moscow/CROS 750/1
Channel 14: Ankara/CTÜR – Luxembourg/CLUX 750/1
Channel 50: Luxembourg/VG – Prague/000 750/1

STM1 stands for Synchronous Transport Module level-1, which designates a transmission bit rate of 155,52 Mbit/second. A similar multiplexing method is Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) commonly used in submarine fiber-optic cables. The latter having a much larger capacity, generally STM-64 or 9,5 Gbit/second.

The number 757 is a so-called Leitungsschlüsselzahl (LSZ), which denotes a certain type of cable. In this case it stands for a channelized STM-1 base link (2 Mbit in 155 Mbit), which seem to be used for internal connections.

According to the meanwhile updated LSZ List, the number 750 stands for a “DSV2 Digitalsignal-Verbindung 2 Mbit/s”, which is a digital signal path.

The cable mentioned in the e-mail therefore only has a small capacity, which seems to indicate that NSA and/or BND selected it carefully.

FFM 21 stands for “Frankfurt am Main 21”, which according to Deutsche Telekom’s network map is the name of the Point-of-Presence (PoP) located at its facility in the Frankfurt suburb Nied – the location where that Eikonal tapping took place.

This means we have a physical cable running between Luxembourg and the Deutsche Telekom PoP in Frankfurt, but containing channels to cities which are much further, so they have to connect to channels within other physical cables that run from Frankfurt to Moscow, Prague, Vienna and Ankara, respectively:

As the e-mail is from February 3, 2005, it must relate to telephone collection, because for Eikonal, the first cable containing internet traffic only became available by the end of that year.

The Transit agreement

On May 18, the Austrian tabloid paper Kronen Zeitung published the full “Transit Agreement” (pdf) between BND and Deutsche Telekom, in which the latter agreed to provide access to transit cables, and in return will be paid 6.500,- euro a month for the expenses. The agreement came into retrospective effect as of February 2004.

This disclosure got little attention, but is rather remarkable, as such agreements are closely guarded secrets. The Transit agreement existed in only two copies: one for BND and one for Deutsche Telekom.

It is not known how Pilz came into possession of these documents, but it seems the source must be somewhere inside the German parliamentary investigation commission. They are the only persons outside BND and Deutsche Telekom who, for the purpose of their inquiry, got access to the agreement and the other documents.

Leaking these documents to Pilz seems not a very smart move, as it will further minimize the chance that the commission will ever get access to the list of suspicious NSA selectors.

Country lists

On May 19, Pilz held a press conference (mp3) in Berlin, together with the chairman of the Green party in Luxembourg and a representative of the German Green party. Here, Pilz presented a statement (pdf), which includes the aforementioned e-mail, 10 questions to the German government, and two tables with cable links to or from Austria and Luxembourg:

Lists of links that apparently were on a priority list of NSA.
LSZ = Leitungsschlüsselzahl (cable type indentifier);
Endstelle = Endpoint; Österreich = Austria.
(Source: Peter Pilz – Click to enlarge)

According to Pilz, the full list contains 254 (or 256) cable links. 94 of them connect EU member states, 40 run between EU members and other European countries like Switzerland, Russia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Belarus and Turkey. 122 links connect European countries with nations all over the world, with Saudi Arabia, Japan, Dubai and China being mentioned most.

The country which most links (71) run to or from is the Netherlands. The list for that country was disclosed by Peter Pilz during a press conference in Brussels on May 28, 2015. The US, the UK and Canada are not on the list, although there were apparently 156 links from/to Britain too.

Update:
On June 5, 2015, Peter Pilz held a press conference in Paris, where he presented a statement (.docx) containing a list of 51 transit links to or from France. Interestingly, this list now also includes some additional technical identifiers for these links, which were apparently left out in the earlier ones:

First part of the list with links related to France
(Source: Peter Pilz – Click to enlarge)

According to the updated LSZ List, the new codes in this list stand for:

– 703: VC3 Virtual Container connection with 48,960 MBit/s
– 710: (not yet known)
– 712: VC12 Virtual Container connection with 2,240 MBit/s
– 720: (not yet known)
– 730: (not yet known)

VC3 and VC12 are from the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) protocol to transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber. This has the option for virtual containers for the actual payload data. VC3 is for mapping 34/45 Mbit/s (E3/DS3) signals; VC4 for 140 Mbit/s (E4); VC12 for 2 Mbit/s (E1).

The new identifiers in this list stand for: O-nr.: Ordnungsnummer; GRUSSZ: Grundstücksschlüsselzahl; FACHSZ: Fachschlüsselzahl.

No information about these identifiers was found yet, but by analysing the data in the list, it seems that the FACHSZ codes are related to a telecom provider. France Telecom for example appears with FACHSZ codes CFT, VPAS, VCP3, VB5 or 0.

The GRUSSZ number identifies a particular city, with the first two or three digits corresponding with the international telephone country codes. The last two digits seem to follow a different scheme, as we can see that a capital always ends with “10”:

Paris = 33010
Lyon = 33190
Reims = 33680 Brussels = 32010
Prague = 42010
Oslo = 47010 Warsaw = 48010
Poznan = 48020
Moscow = 70010

It’s possible that these are just internal codes used by Deutsche Telekom, as internationally, connections between telephone networks are identified by Point Codes (PC). From the Snowden-revelations we know that these codes are also used by NSA and GCHQ to designate the cable links they intercept.

NSA or BND wish lists?

Initially, Peter Pilz claimed these links were samples from a priority list of the NSA, but on May 27, he said in Switzerland, that the list was from BND, and was given to NSA, who marked in yellow the links they wanted to have fully monitored.

The German parliamentary hearings were also not very clear about these lists. On December 4, project manager S.L. confirmed that NSA had a wish list for circuit-switched transit links, but in the hearing from January 15 it was said that there was a “wish list of BND” containing some 270 links. And on March 5, former SIGINT director Urmann said he couldn’t remember that NSA requested specific communication links.

Maybe the solution is provided by the Dutch website De Correspondent, which reports that there is a much larger list (probably prepared by BND) of some 1000 transit links, of which ca. 250 were marked in yellow (probably those prioritized by NSA).

Whose cables?

Media reports say that these cables belong to the providers from various European countries, but that seems questionable. As we saw in the aforementioned e-mail, it seems most likely that the lists show channels within fiber-optic cables, and that the physical cables all run between the Deutsche Telekom switching facility in Frankfurt and the cities we see in the lists.

In theory, these cables could be owned or operated by those providers mentioned in the lists, but then they would rather connect at a peering point like the DE-CIX internet exchange, instead of at the Deutsche Telekom switching center. Deutsche Telekom runs its own Tier 1 network, a worldwide backbone that connects the networks of lower-level internet providers.

Simplified structure of the Internet, showing how Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers
transit data traffic in a hierarchial way and how Tier 2 providers exchange
traffic directly through peering at an Internet eXchange Point (IXP)
(diagram: Wikimedia Commons – click to enlarge)

Questions

It is not clear how many of the over 250 links on the list were actually intercepted. We only know that for sure for the STM-1 cable with the four channels described in the aforementioned e-mail from Deutsche Telekom to BND.

Strange is the fact that during the parliamentary hearings, most BND witnesses spoke about “a cable in Frankfurt”, which sounds like one single physical cable, whereas the disclosures by Peter Pilz clearly show that multiple channels must have been intercepted.

Update:
During the commission hearing of January 29, 2015, BND technical engineer A.S. said that under operation Eikonal, telephone traffic came in with a data rate of 622 Mbit/s. This equals a standard STM-4 cable, which contains 252 channels of 2 Mbit/s. This number comes close to the channels on the “wish list”, but it seems not possible that those were all in just one physical cable.

Another question is whether it is possible to only filter the traffic from specific channels, or that one has to have access to the whole cable.

It should be noted that not the entire communications traffic on these links was collected and stored, but that it was filtered for specific selectors, like phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Only the traffic for which there was a match was picked out and processed for analysis.

Possible targets

Based upon these documents, Peter Pilz filed a complaint (pdf) against 3 employees of Deutsche Telekom and one employee of BND for spying on Austria, although at the same time he said he was convinced the NSA was most interested not in Austrian targets, but in the offices of the UN, OPEC and OSCE in Vienna.

Apparently he didn’t consider the fact that Eikonal was part of the RAMPART-A umbrella program, which is aimed at targets in Russia, the Middle East and North Africa. Many cities mentioned in the disclosed lists seem to point to Russia as target, and project manager S.L. testified that Eikonal was mainly used for targets related to Afghanistan, which fits the fact that there are for example 13 links to Saudi Arabia.

Green party members from various countries claimed that this cable tapping was used for economical or industrial espionage, but so far, there is no specific indication, let alone evidence for that claim.

SOURCE: ELEKTROSPACES

http://electrospaces.blogspot.nl

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Exposed – How German BND Spies Work with NSA

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This is part III about the German parliamentary committee which investigates NSA spying activities and the cooperation between NSA and the German foreign intelligence service BND.

The hearings of a number of BND employees which are summarized below, provided many interesting details about BND cable and satellite collection and how these data are selected and filtered and how privacy rights are implemented. This was especially of concern for the cooperation between NSA and BND in the Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA).

The witnesses also stated that contrary to the initial press report, under the joint operation Eikonal not a single German communication was passed on to NSA.

These summaries are based upon transcripts of a live blog, kept by volunteers of the German digital civil rights website Netzpolitik.org, who attended the hearings.
The employees of the BND are designated by initials, not of their real names, but of those of the cover names they are using when at work(!).

The room where the hearings of the parliamentary committee take place
(photo: DPA)

20th Meeting, November 6, 2014 (Transcript)

– Hearing of the witness Mr. T. B. (BND, head of the JSA unit from 2003-2007):

In Bad Aibling, the BND has dishes to intercept satellite communications. When satellite links are intercepted, the following things have to be done: first a specific frequency has to be selected, and as one frequency often contains multiple channels, these have to be broken down (de-multiplexed) into single data streams. Based upon metadata it can be decided that certain types of communications are not of interest for BND.

The next step is to separate the various content encodings, like for IP-traffic, telephony, fax, etc. This also needs error correction, which sometimes is a bit more difficult because some communication systems use proprietary methods. This results in data in a readable or audible format (like an e-mail or a phone call), which can be used to prepare an intelligence report. The witness estimates that BND produces around 20 reports a day.

For processing, filtering and selecting commercial computer systems were used, as wel as systems that were custom made by NSA. The Americans were ahead of BND in this, not necessarily better, but often just in doing more, or faster, like in analysing signals.

Compare: the data flow at NSA, according to a presentation
from the NSA’s European Cryptologic Center (ECC)
(Click to enlarge)

Mass surveillance?

The witness stated that there was and is no mass surveillance by BND. Mass surveillance is even more difficult for fiber optic cables than for satellite links. If there would be any mass surveillance for the latter, then this should involve some 300 communications satellites, for which there should be ground stations at at least three places around the world.

There you would need 250 satellite dishes of 10 million euros each to receive the up to 500 frequencies per satellite. For each frequency two modems and converters were needed, and with the necessary processing capacity, this would require a nuclear power plant for electricity.

Mass surveillance on cable traffic could probably only be done with the capacity of the American, Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies combined. For BND, mass surveillance would drown the agency in data. The witness had never witnessed any kind of economical espionage by NSA in Germany. But he had to admit that not everything was talked about.

Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA)

NSA’s Bad Aibling Station was scheduled for closure in 2002, but after 9/11 this was postponed to 2004, and maybe this led to the creation of the JSA. In the Joint SIGINT Activity, NSA and BND cooperated in collecting both satellite and cable communications.

The JSA was located at the Mangfall Barracks in Bad Aibling. In 2002, this military complex still had a compound of the Bundeswehr, where you had to go through to reach the BND section. The Bundeswehr left these barracks by the end of 2002, and NSA went to a new building nicknamed the Tin Can (Blechdose).

The compound had three sections: one for Germans only, one for US persons only and one common section. The collection of data took place in the common section, and the exits were strictly monitored, so NSA had no access to German sources on its own, although there weren’t every day checks on people carrying thumb drives.

BND personnel had no access to NSA databases and vice versa, but both had access to joint databases. NSA had also some contractors working there. JSA was connected to NSANet, just like NSA’s European Security Operations Center (ESOC) near Darmstadt.

Until 2007 only cable traffic from Frankfurt was passed on to JSA, not from other internet cables. Satellite traffic intercepted by the BND antennas in Bad Aibling was probably also transferred to JSA, where it was processed and analysed in the interest of both NSA and BND.

After the Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA) was closed in 2012, the logical path over the physical cables between BND headquarters and Bad Aibling was probably cut off. After 2012, BND continued to cooperate with NSA in the field of satellite interception and operations in Afghanistan.

Google Maps view of the Mangfall Barracks in Bad Aibling, Germany.
The building in the upper left corner could be the BND facility,
and the one with the white roof the NSA’s “Tin Can”.

Protection of German data

BND did everything to prevent that communications of German citizens or corporations were collected and/or passed on to NSA. Initially, 4 out of 5 selectors came from the Americans, the rest were German. The witness did not know the total number of selectors. These selectors were checked before they were fed into the collection system, and what came out was again checked whether it contained German communications.

The selectors from NSA were first checked by the Americans in the Tin Can at the Mangfall Barracks and then passed on to a unit of the technical division (which included lawyers) of BND at its then headquarters in Pullach. A final check was conducted by BND personnel in Bad Aibling. Only about one permille of the selectors were rejected because they were related to Germans or contrary to German interests.

Filtering out German data

This filtering works fine, but experience in Bad Aibling has learned that it is not possible to do this fully automated. Therefore, there was no automatic forwarding to NSA. A 100% accurate filtering was only possible with a final selection by hand. As far as the witness was aware of, not a single German communication was passed on to NSA.

In the press report about operation Eikonal it was said that the filter system could only filter out 95% of German communications, but according to the witness, this was only during the test period. When the system went live, this percentage rose to 99% with a second stage that could filter out even more than 99%. When necessary, a final check was conducted by hand.

Especially e-mail addresses have to be checked by hand, because nowadays it’s much more difficult to attribute such internet communications to specific countries. During the test period, about 3000 communications had to be checked by hand, 300 of which were e-mails. BND didn’t collect data from US citizens or passed these on to NSA, so NSA did not use BND to get data that it wasn’t allowed to collect by itself (Ringtausch).

The witness suggested that Süddeutsche Zeitung (the media that claimed that the BND filters wouldn’t work and German data was forwarded to the NSA) had documents of conversations between BND and NSA, in which maybe BND made “political statements” about the efficiency of the filters.

(This could explain the discrepancy between the press reports and the BND witnesses, who all assured that the filter worked, and with additionally manual checks not a single German data was forwarded to NSA)

The witness clearly stated that German G-10 Act only protects Germans and people living in Germany. The privacy of foreigners living abroad is not protected by German law.

Operations center room in the former BND headquarters in Pullach
(Screenshot from ARD television – Click to enlarge)

– Hearing of Ms. G. L. (BND, head of IT development and operations at JSA from 2007-2008):

This witness is responsible for databases that store data after having been collected and filtered. These databases are at various locations. Currently, between 8.000 and 10.000 pieces of content with some additional information (Meldungen) come in each month, often but not always accompanied by metadata.

Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA)

Each unit of BND’s analysis division (Auswertung) could request intelligence information from the JSA. They could suggest specific selectors to be tasked or articulate what their information needs were. Ultimate goal was to present relevant information for the federal government. BND sees itself as a service provider for customers in the government.

In 2005/2006 the selection process was fully automated. The witness couldn’t remember how many selectors were used in her period at JSA. These numbers were also not registered. NSA was not able to get any German communications before these were thoroughly filtered and checked by BND. An e-mail that was selected, could be forwarded to NSA through a secured gateway. There was only access to local databases, not to those of NSA.

NSA employees working for JSA were not recognizable as such, they just had ID cards for the compound, issued by the security unit that was responsible for access control of the premises. The Tin Can building also housed SUSLAG (Special US Liaison Activity, Germany), which was a separate unit, different from JSA.

Header of a newsletter from the Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA)
(Click for a JSA newsletter (pdf) from 2007)

Operation Eikonal

The witness confirmed that in Frankfurt fiber optic cables were intercepted (operation Eikonal), although without mentioning whether this was at DE-CIX or somewhere else. She wouldn’t answer the question whether BND is still doing this.

The data collected in Frankfurt were first sent to BND headquarters and then to Bad Aibling, where they were filtered by selectors from both NSA and BND. After the cooperation with NSA was ended, the transmission to Bad Aibling was cut off.

Legal issues

The witness was responsible for the implementation of the Federal Intelligence Service Act (BND Gesetz), which governs the activities of this agency. As such, she had the opinion that satellite interception conducted in Bad Aibling also took place under this act, but the Director of BND overruled her, saying this was not the case.

The BND management said: this kind of collection takes place in outer space, and therefore German law doesn’t apply. But apart from that, employees should always apply with law and order. Once data collected from satellite links had been stored in BND databases, they fall under the German Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) though.

(In general, most of these witnesses didn’t knew much about topics that are not related to their own duties. They also showed very little interest in the Snowden-revelations. This might be from a common attitude in the intelligence world: the less you know, the less you can (accidently) give away)

– . – . – . – . –

22th Meeting, November 13, 2014 (Transcript)

– Hearing of the witness Mr. W. K. (BND, sub-division manager in the Signals Intelligence division):

The witness stated that BND is definitely not comparable with the former East German Stasi and that BND only collects what is necessary for fulfilling the information need of the federal government.

Today, mainly fiber optic cables are intercepted, but not everything that flows through, only specific data channels are selected, or in case of satellite links: specific frequencies. Asked about the Snowden-revelations, the witness said that he was surprised by how close the Five Eyes partners are cooperating.

Tapping internet cables

There are search profiles and criteria according to which specific data flows are selected in a very focussed way. The first selection is of a route between two places (like from Afghanistan to Pakistan), then a specific fiber optic cable is chosen.

These are human decisions, based upon where a cable is located, by which company it is operated and where it’s most useful to tap it. Picking a specific cable is also discussed with the provider, with some of them this is easier than with others.

Because internet traffic travels over many different routes, picking specific cables, means that a lot of communications cannot be collected. This is taken for granted as BND doesn’t want to collect everything. Sometimes multiple routes are selected for interception, but not always.

According to the witness, BND doesn’t provide foreign intelligence agencies access to cables. No raw data are transferred to foreign agencies, only end reports.

In some cases, internet data have to be converted into a readable format. This sometimes means cracking encryption, consisting either of complex algorithms or proprietary methods. This can be done on the traffic as it flows past, or with data after having been stored in databases.

Filtering

The next step is filtering the data through selectors. This is done by a computer system, for which the data stream may be buffered for a few milliseconds. The amount of data flowing through these filter systems isn’t counted by BND. Filtering by selectors is done as close to the actual tapping point as possible.

The selectors are chosen based upon the information needs and a set of criteria, which in combination prevent that communications of innocent people are touched. The results went to the (then) BND headquarters in Pullach over leased cables. The number of data forwarded to Pullach is not registered, it depends upon the costs of the capacity for transmission.

The constitutionally guaranteed Privacy of Correspondence can have effect on each of these selection stages: for example no cables are chosen that start and end in Germany, and no selectors belonging to Germans are used.

Data of Germans are currently filtered out by a system called DAFIS, which succeeded a BSI-certified filter system that was used since the 1990s. Data from German citizens and German companies (Grundrechtsträgern) are deleted.

After data have been selected, they are pulled out based upon their relevance and finally analysts can use them at a certain moment to write an intelligence report, of which approximately 20 a day are produced.

Operation Eikonal

Regarding the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal, the witness said that there was no massive scale surveillance of German citizens with data forwarded to NSA. Under Eikonal, which was a one of a kind operation, there was targeted collection from traffic that transited Germany from one foreign country to another.

This was focussed on Afghanistan and anti-terrorism. Selected data were collected and forwarded to NSA. The witness would give more details only behind closed doors, because BND is still using these methods. The internal codename for Eikonal was Karat, but that name wasn’t shared with NSA. There was even a third codename. Eikonal was tested during a few months (early 2006?), during which period no data were shared with NSA.

What was collected under Eikonal was far less than the 500 million metadata a month as shown in the German BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart. Actual collection only led to a few hundred selected contents (in German: Daten, like phone calls or e-mails) a year, which was a huge disappointment for NSA. Nothing that was worth while came out anymore, contrary to the expectations when the operation was set up.

This, combined with the fact that it proved to be impossible to 100% guarantee that no German data were collected and forwarded, led BND to terminate the program. As a “compensation” for NSA, a joint project in a country outside Europe was planned. In crisis regions, the BND is still cooperating with NSA, which provides “huge benefits” for the Germans, according to the witness.

The witness wouldn’t say anything about whether BND was tapping into the Frankfurt internet exchange DE-CIX, but later on he said that operation Eikonal involved just one telecommunications provider.

(These kind of indications by some of the witnesses eventually led the Committee to conclude that operation Eikonal was actually about tapping one single cable of Deutsche Telekom, instead of the DE-CIX exchange as a whole, as the initial report by Süddeutsche Zeitung said. More about this later)

Things the BND learned from the Eikonal-cooperation were:

1. How the technique worked, which is now used for own operations outside, and collection efforts inside Germany
2. It is not possible to conduct 100% automated filtering. This wouldn’t be done anymore.

Filtering through selectors

For Eikonal, the cable traffic was filtered by using selectors provided by both NSA and BND. A BND unit which included lawyers checked for every selector from the NSA whether it was legal and according to the goals of the cooperation. Besides German interests, also the interests of friendly countries were taken into account. Only a few selectors were rejected, but it wasn’t told to NSA which ones. They were just not entered into the filtering system.

Selectors include not just phone numbers and e-mail addresses, but also MAC addresses, which have no country identifier. Although there may have been up to several hundred thoused selectors, BND was still able to check whether every single one was appropriate, this by using special criteria. Only selectors that can be checked are used.

Besides Eikonal, BND also taps into cables of multiple other communication providers, but this is within the proper legal framework, approved by the G-10 Committee. For this, there is dedicated hardware equipment in the building of the provider, in accordance with the regulations of the federal communications authority (Bundesnetzagentur). This hardware is installed at the point where the cable is tapped.

Screenshot from NSA’s BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool, showing the number of foreign
metadata that BND collected in crisis regions and shared with NSA
(Click to enlarge)

Telephony metadata

According to the witness, one phone call creates between 30 and 50 metadata, which includes not only time and number but also a lot more technical data. With the given number of users in a crisis zone, this easily adds up to billions of metadata. But not all these have to be collected (erfasst); less than one percent can actually be pulled in. This is no mass surveillance without a reasonable ground (anlasslose Massenüberwachung). The witness assumes that NSA and GCHQ operate in a similar way as the BND.

The over 500 million metadata records from the Germen BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart were most certainly from Afghanistan, more precisely from satellite communication links between two foreign countries in crisis regions. According to the witness this huge number of metadata for a single month is quite normal.

It could be that these numbers are collected up to today, although he isn’t sure about that. BND isn’t counting every single part of metadata, as NSA is apparently doing and which leads to those huge numbers.

XKeyscore

BND got the XKeyscore program from NSA, which is only used to analyse data that are already collected. BND didn’t had such a tool before. Unlike NSA, which uses Xkeyscore as federated query system, BND uses it as a stand-alone system for analysis. The actual collection systems of BND are antennas and outposts (Aussenstellen).

The witness doesn’t know how many servers BND purchased for XKeyscore. Presently, BND uses XKeyscore only for traffic that is intercepted from satellite links, apparently because the system isn’t (yet) certified for filtering out communications of German citizens. BND got no software programs from NSA for profiling or for decrypting data.

Legality

Personal data are only those data that can be related to specific persons. For German data it is easy to retrieve the identity behind certain metadata, but for foreign metadata this is much more difficult and hence those metadata are not seen as personal data.

The witness said multiple times that he isn’t a lawyer and he therefore had no opinion of his own about the legality of certain decisions. He also didn’t knew whether data collected in foreign countries had been acquired with or without the consent of the provider. He just assumed that the data collection takes place in a legal way. Foreign partner agencies don’t provide BND with data they are not allowed to collect themselves.

– Because of time shortage, the BND employees L. and W. P. couldn’t be heard in this meeting.

> Next time: More hearings of BND employees

UPDATE:
Meanwhile, the following numbers about government eavesdropping operations in 2013 have been made public. These numbers are only about the interception of communcations with at least one-end-German, so traffic with both-ends-foreign are not included:

– The G10 Committee approved 212 eavesdropping operations, most of them were conducted by the domestic security service BfV (up from 157 in 2012). This involved some 350 people, most of them suspected of islam fundamentalism.

– In 26 cases, the domestic security service BfV used an IMSI-catcher to trace or intercept the mobile phone of 29 persons (more as twice as often as in 2012)

– BND is allowed to filter communications by using selectors. If Germans could be involved, it is not allowed to use selectors that identify specific targets (like phone numbers and e-mail adresses), so in that case, only generic search terms (keywords) may be used.

– The official report (pdf) provided the following numbers of approved search terms, of what was filtered out and of what was marked as relevant for foreign intelligence purposes:

Subject	Search terms	Filtered out	Relevant
Terrorism	Ca. 800	Content: 906 Metadata: 639	73
Proliferation	Ca. 11.700	Content: 14.411 Metadata: 1	32
Immigration	Ca. 28	Content: 84 Metadata: 76	13

Links and Sources
– Offical page of the committee: 1. Untersuchungsausschuss (“NSA”)
– Internal NSA presentation: Structure of the BND (pdf)
– Spiegel.de: Spying Together: Germany’s Deep Cooperation with the NSA
– Reports with numbers for 2013:
– Gemäss Terrorismusbekämpfungsgesetz (pdf)
– Gemäss Artikel 10-Gesetz (pdf)

See also: BND Codewords and Abbreviations

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