Operation Eikonal

Radomes at the Fernmeldeverkehrstelle des Bundesnachrichtendiensts (BND-Codename: Hortensie III, abbreviated 3 D 30), part of the Bad Aibling Station in Bavaria. This facility was run by the National Security Agency (NSA) until 2004 as part of ECHELON,^[1] and later, after transfer to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), was used by the Special US Liaison Activity Germany, where the NSA and BND jointly analysed data captured under Operation Eikonal.^[2]

Operation Eikonal is a collaboration between the National Security Agency and Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) for the sharing of telephony and internet data captured in Germany.^[3] It is based on an agreement that dates to 2002,^[4] and is part of the NSA operation "RAMPART-A".^[5] Surveillance started in 2003, telephony data was collected from 2004 onwards, and all internet traffic from the Deutsche Telekom (DT) switching center in Frankfurt was captured starting in 2005.^[6]

To obtain the data, the BND and Deutsche Telekom worked together. The agents rented two rooms in the Deutsche Telekom data center in Frankfurt where the fiber optic data cable owned by DT was spliced into, and a copy of the data was captured.^[7] Deutsche Telekom received 6000 Euros monthly for its role in giving access to data.^[8]

A filtering program named Dafis was used to prevent the sharing of data from German citizens; however, that filter was estimated to be only 95% effective, meaning that 5% of data was obtained in breach of Germany's constitution (Grundgesetz).^[8] Later, during Parliamentary hearings conducted on November 6, 2014, one witness claimed that the 95% figure was only correct for the initial testing and that during operation, 99% of data from German citizens was filtered out. ^[9]

In January 2006, the Bad Aibling branch of the Bundesnachrichtendienst reported to its headquarters in Pullach that the "selectors" (search terms) used by the NSA under the programme included some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company and the Eurocopter project^[10] as well as French administration.^[11] These selectors were first noticed by BND employees in 2005.^[10] Other selectors were found to target the administration of Austria.^[12]

Information on Operation Eikonal was first unveiled by Süddeutsche Zeitung, Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk on October 3, 2014.^[13] Although some documents suggested that the operation had been completed in 2008,^[14] it was revealed that in December 2012, there were still transfers of 500 million metadata per month being made.^[15][16] Of these 500 million datasets, 180 million were captured using XKeyscore.^[17]

Austrian member of parliament Peter Pilz described the operation as "the first successful attempt at mass surveillance of European telecommunications".^[4]

References