intelligence service manuals that are not publicly accessible. […]
7. Even before the challenged powers were enacted, and in the exercise of these
powers ever since the enactment, a practice of conducting strategic surveillance of
foreign telecommunications has evolved that consists of different steps.
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a) First, the Federal Intelligence Service gains access to telecommunications data
by intercepting signals from telecommunications networks either by using its own
equipment or by having telecommunications service providers divert data flows pursuant to § 8 BNDG. […]
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[…]
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b) The data that becomes accessible through the diversion of data or through other
interception methods is transmitted to the Federal Intelligence Service’s interception
systems, initiating a multi-step and fully automated process of sorting and analysis,
at the end of which temporarily saved data is stored or deleted. The data undergoes
technical processing to categorise it into different types of data (for example data
from streaming, browsing history data, telecommunications data) and to remove data
that is found to be irrelevant for technical reasons. Following this, the telecommunications data is electronically filtered to identify and remove data that is not part of the
surveillance of foreign telecommunications due to the involvement of German citizens
and persons within Germany (so-called DAFIS filtering mechanism). Different formal
parameters relating to communications data (e.g. use of a German top-level domain)
are used to assess whether the intercepted telecommunications processes are connected to German citizens or persons within Germany; in addition, the data is compared with a list, maintained by the Federal Intelligence Service, of telecommunications identifiers that can be attributed to Germans or persons within Germany (“Article
10 List”). It is in dispute between the parties how reliable this filtering system is and
whether better filtering mechanisms are technically possible. According to the Federal Government, the current system can match IP addresses to a specific state with
98% certainty. Additionally, the Federal Intelligence Service uses further formal parameters and communications data in its filtering process in order to also identify data
that is connected to persons within Germany or German citizens but is exclusively
matched to foreign IP addresses, for example due to intermediary servers located
abroad or due to the use of hotspots. It is unknown how many telecommunications
processes are falsely categorised as purely foreign telecommunications.
[…]
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c) The Federal Intelligence Service collects and stores all traffic data that is left after
the DAFIS filtering mechanism was applied (§ 6(6) first sentence BNDG) without using any selectors, and later performs primarily computer-based analysis through
cross-checking and other methods.
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d) However, pursuant to § 6(2) BNDG, content data is only stored and analysed beyond temporary storage required for technical reasons if elements of a telecommuni-
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