German lawmakers on Friday called on Berlin to respond to reports that the nation’s intelligence agency spied on the US and other allies.
If true, the allegations reported by German media this week would undermine Berlin’s professed indignation at claims that the US eavesdropped on targets in Germany, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Lawmakers from the opposition Greens and Left Party said they would be seeking the release of so-called “selectors” used by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) for its intelligence gathering.
Selectors are lists of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and other information that can help intelligence agencies hunt for important information among the vast stream of telephone calls and computer information circling the globe.
German weekly Der Spiegel, public broadcaster rbb-Inforadio and the Sueddeutsche daily on Thursday reported that until the fall of 2013, the BND’s selectors included targets belonging to the US and other European countries.
The selectors were reportedly wiped from the agency’s list of targets around the same time Merkel declared that “spying among friends, that’s just wrong” in response to claims her cellphone had been tapped by the US National Security Agency.
Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters in Berlin on Friday that “the chancellor’s pronouncement is valid, and naturally it was also valid when she said it for the first time.”
He declined to say whether the assertion was true before October 2013.
“If the reports are accurate, then this is a scandal of a whole new magnitude, because what the government has said, and what the chancellor has made her motto — that it’s wrong to spy on friends — would be untrue,” said Hans-Christian Stroebele, a Green party lawmaker who sits on the German parliamentary intelligence oversight committee.
The US embassy in Berlin and the US Department of State in Washington declined to comment.
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