In an effort to distance herself from the spying scandal after it was alleged she knew about her own government`s co-operation with the NSA, despite publicly criticizing it, she called for an independent inquiry under leading judge Kurt Graulich who was called on to scrutinize a list of targets handed to the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) by the US.
The first report from Graulich raises serious allegations against the United States, suggesting that the intelligence-sharing agreements between the NSA and BND have been broken and that the extent of the NSA program was much broader than the German Government would allow. Many of the targets, he found, were against the interests of Germany and its European partners.
According to Der Spiegel newspaper, Graulich investigated 39,000 keywords used by the NSA in a period from 2005 to March 2015. These included search terms — known as selectors — with which the NSA crawled international communication.
The reports says that the German intelligence agency was given the selectors by the NSA and ran searches which were not covered by German law, which is very strong on data privacy.
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