Hacker News Reader

Yes. I could see not trusting the competence of the BND on this stuff... but 500 million messages per month?

How many phone calls, e-mails and SMS does Germany generate per month in total, by the way? I would assume corporations generate a lot more than individuals, but it seems fucking bad either way.

View on HN

The BND has a tradition to focus on political extremist groups in Germany, while domestic surveillance in the other large EU countries such as Britain, France and Spain have always had a stronger focus on Islamist groups. So I don't think it's a question of competence, but rather of focus.

The BND has a tradition to focus on political extremist groups in Germany

Which is actually one of the reasons they seem so incompetent, they're not very good at that. [also, did you perchance confuse the BND with the Verfassungsschutz? Not that it matters, the Verfassungsschutz is probably worse than the BND, they help Neonazis more than harming them] Also, BND officials say some hilarious stuff when it comes to computers.

Not the IRA and ETA ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com