‘German data not used to target individuals in drone attacks’

During a closed parliamentary committee on Monday, Chancellery Minister Ronald Pofalla said the given GSM data was not specific enough to exactly pinpoint a location, according to committee member Steffen Bockhahn.
 
Pofalla, who is president of Germany’s Intelligence Services (BND), said following the committee meeting that he had received written assurances from both the NSA and the British intelligence service (GCHQ) that they were abiding by German law.
 
Experts however reject Pofalla’s statements saying it is impossible to know what foreign agencies are doing with the sent data and in some cases, a person could be located by the mobile phone data.
 
"Even if in 90% of the cases it's not possible, and in 10% of the cases it is possible someone can be targeted, then it is an illegal situation, if data is transmitted to another secret service," said Hannes Federrath, a professor of information technology and security at Hamburg University.
 
This comes as a German daily recently published a report, citing documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which revealed that the sent mobile data could have been used in drone attacks including one carried out in October 2010 in the Pakistani province of Waziristan, which killed German citizen Bunyamin E.
 
German intelligence has rejected that it sent Bunyamin E’s phone data to the NSA and said it said that any information sent to foreign intelligence agencies is done on the condition that it will not be used in "passing of a death sentence".
 
The BND has recently come under fire after earlier leaked documents revealed that it sent at least billion pieces of phone and email communications metadata every month to US and British intelligence agency.
 
In June, Snowden, an American former technical contractor for the NSA and a former employee of the CIA, leaked documents showing the US spied on the European Union and monitored up to a half-billion German telephone calls and internet activities each month.