German intelligence had access to communications on "board number one" due to encryption errors during Barack Obama's presidency in the U.S. Berlin did not authorize this, DW writes.
The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) of Germany listened in on Barack Obama's phone calls during his time as President of the United States for years. The conversations monitored included those of Obama while he was aboard the government plane Air Force One, the newspaper Die Zeit reported on Sunday, January 4.
According to sources cited by the newspaper, the BND gained access to the conversations because the encryption of communications on board Obama's plane was insufficiently protected. For the politician's phone calls, about a dozen frequencies known to German intelligence were used, which allowed the BND to regularly track the conversations. For the most part, these were discussions between the U.S. President and leaders of other countries and members of his administration.
The media does not know when the communication channels on "board number one" were compromised - this could have happened during the presidency of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, Die Zeit notes. The eavesdropping ceased in 2014: after it became known that German intelligence could have listened to the phone calls of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the office of the German Chancellor ordered such actions to stop.
Merkel Criticized Americans for Eavesdropping
During Obama's presidency, the U.S. was not on the list of countries that Berlin had sanctioned surveillance against, Die Zeit writes. In other words, Angela Merkel, who was then serving as Chancellor of Germany, likely did not know about the actions of the intelligence agency. As a result, according to the newspaper, transcripts of Obama's conversations were printed in limited copies, and only selected leaders of the intelligence service had access to them; such documents were destroyed after being read. However, the data obtained through eavesdropping were included by the BND in its assessment materials regarding the U.S. position, which the agency sent to the Chancellor's office.
The delicacy of the situation is heightened by the fact that Merkel herself criticized U.S. intelligence during the same period due to the scandal involving the eavesdropping of her mobile phone. Media reports indicated that at least from 2012 to 2014, the National Security Agency (NSA) - a division of the Department of Defense within the U.S. intelligence community - spied on leading politicians and high-ranking officials in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and France, including the German Chancellor. According to some reports, Danish intelligence services assisted the NSA in the eavesdropping.
In light of the scandal, Merkel made her famous statement that "spying on friends is unacceptable." She also noted that states could "collapse under the weight of a surveillance mania" and drew parallels between the events and the situation observed in East Germany during the time of the Stasi secret police, Die Zeit reminds us.
