NSA Germany - 500million snoops/month

The NSA revelations continue despite Edward Snowden's dramas with asylum. Now the snooping on Germany has been shown to be far more all encompassing than thought. In fact, the documents show the NSA intercepts half a billion communications a month. That's a staggering figure in any one's book.

Internal NSA statistics indicate that the agency stores data from around half a billion communications connections in Germany each month. This data includes telephone calls, emails, mobile-phone text messages and chat transcripts. The metadata -- or information about which call or data connections were made and when -- is then stored at the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, near Washington, DC. 

The documents show for the first time the scope of American surveillance in Germany. Previously, it had only been clear that Germany had been one of the major targets of NSA spying. A map published by the Guardian shows that Germany is on a par with targets such as China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in terms of the intensity of electronic snooping. For weeks now, new details have emerged from documents collected by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the NSA's Prism and Britain's Tempora digital spying programs. more

I'd say it's going to get worse for the NSA and Washington as this continues to unfold.

I'm a bit disappointed though. I thought I might snag the odd NSA reader by dropping the odd keyword here and there. But allas it appears Australia is one of the few countries not to get spied on. Damn it, I might have ended up infamous! 

One top secret document also states that while Germany may be a partner, it is still also a target of the NSA's electronic snooping. According to the document, Germany is a so-called "3rd party foreign partner." The only countries that are explicitly excluded from spying attacks are Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. "We can, and often do, target the signals of most 3d party foreign partners," a slide from an internal presentation states. more