Germany's Merkel under fire over NSA scandal
The German secret service provided Internet data about German citizens to the American National Secutiry Agency, a top-secret report reveals. ● German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under increasing fire in a data sharing scandal that broke on Saturday. A report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper revealed that Germany's secret service shared Internet data about German citizens with the American National Security Agency (NSA). The report showed that, for years, Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst had monitored a key international Internet exchange point in Frankfurt, and shared the raw data about Internet users with the NSA. While the secret service intended initially to filter and to delete sensitive raw data belonging to German citizens, the German agency confirmed in its recent report that an “absolute and error-free” practice was not maintained between the years 2004 and 2008. At least 5 percent of the data belonging to German citizens had been shared with the NSA, according to the report, which was presented to the NSA inquiry committee at the Federal Parliament.