BERLIN: The German government needs to quickly clear up accusations that its BND foreign intelligence agency helped the United States spy on government officials and firms in Europe such as Airbus Group, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
The reports in Der Spiegel magazine that the BND helped the U.S. National Security Agency over 10 years embarrassed Germany and upset many in a country where surveillance is a sensitive topic due to abuses by the Nazis and the East German Stasi.
The magazine also reported in its Friday edition that the BND in 2013 ordered staff to delete 12,000 internet “selectors” — IP addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of German government officials — that it had been tracking for the NSA.
We’ve got to work to clear this up as quickly as possible to know what happened — and what didn’t happen,” Steinmeier said during a visit to the Slovenian capital. He said the focus of the investigation should be in parliament.
