The manual maintenance of the database with high-ranking targets is a slow and painstaking process,

The list begins with “A,” as in Abdullah Badawi, the former Malaysian prime minister, and continues with the presidents of Peru, Somalia, Guatemala and Colombia right up to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The final name on the list, No. 122, is Yulia Tymoshenko, who was Ukrainian prime minister at the time. The NSA listed the international leaders alphabetically by their first name, with Tymoshenko listed under “Y”. Merkel is listed under “A” as the ninth leader, right behind Malawian President Amadou Toumani Touré, but before Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
The document indicates that Angela Merkel has been placed in the so-called “ Target Knowledge Database” (TKB) , the central classe export database of individual targets. An internal NSA description states that employees can use it to analyze “ complete profiles ” of target persons. The responsible NSA unit praises the automated machine-driven classe export administration of collected information about high-value targets.
The searchable sources cited in the document include, among others, the signals classe export intelligence database “ Marina ,” which contains metadata ingested from sources around the world. The unit also gives special attention to promoting a system for automated name recognition called “ Nymrod “. The document states that some 300 automatically generated “cites,” or citations, are provided for Angela Merkel alone. The citations in “ Nymrod classe export ” are derived from intelligence agencies, transcripts of intercepted fax, voice and computer-to-computer communication. According to internal NSA documents, it is used to “find classe export information relating to targets that would otherwise be tough to track down.” Each of the names contained in Nymrod is considered a “ SIGINT target .”
The manual maintenance of the database with high-ranking targets is a slow and painstaking process, the document notes, and fewer than 200,000 targets are managed through the system. Automated capture, by contrast, simplifies the saving of the data and makes it possible to manage classe export more than 3 million entries, including names and the citations connected to them.
The classe export table included in the document indicates the capture and maintenance of records pertaining to Merkel classe export already appears to have been automated. classe export In any case, the document indicates that a manual update was not available in May 2009. The document could be another piece of the puzzle for investigators in Karlsruhe because it shows that Chancellor Merkel was an official target for spying.
In addition classe export to surveillance of the chancellor, the Federal classe export Prosecutor’s Office classe export is also exploring the question of whether the NSA conducted mass espionage classe export against the German people. The internal NSA material classe export also includes a weekly report dating from March 2013 from the Special Sources Operations (SSO) division , the unit responsible for securing classe export NSA access to major Internet backbone structures, like fiber optic cables.
In the document, the team that handles contact with US telecommunications providers like AT&T or Verizon reports on the legal foundations with which it monitors the data of certain countries. According to the SSO report, FISA, the special court responsible for intelligence agency requests, provided the NSA with authorization to monitor “Germany” on March 7, 2013. The case number provided in the ruling is 13-319.
The documents do not provide sufficient information to precisely determine the types of data included in the order, and the NSA has said it will not comment on the matter. However, lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union believe it provides the NSA with permission to access the communications of all German citizens, regardless whether those affected are suspected of having committed an offense or not. Under the FISA Amendments Act, the NSA is permitted to conduct blanket surveillance in foreign countries without any requirement to submit individual cases for review by the court, whose deliberations and rulings are top-secret.
According to the partial list in the document, the court has provided similar authorization for countries including, China, Mexico, Japan, Venezuela, Yemen, Brazil, Sudan, Guatemala, Bosnia and Russia. In practice, the NSA uses this permission in diverse ways — sometimes classe export it uses it to monitor telecommunications companies, and at others it surveils individuals.
“So far, we have no knowledge that Internet nodes in Germany have been spied on by the NSA,” Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic classe export intelligence classe export agency, which is also responsible for counterintelligence measures, said last summer.
It’s also possible the Americans don’t even have to do that, at least not directly. It’s quite feasible they have better