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In a report on its European partners GCHQ from 2008 and quoted on Saturday by The Guardian, the British agency expressed “admiration for the technical capabilities” of German foreign intelligence service (BND). The BND has “a huge technological potential and good access to the heart of the internet – they are already monitoring of fiber optic cables 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit” per second, the report said. In 2012, GCHQ was that it can monitor cables of 10 gigabits per second, the newspaper said.

The Guardian also says that GCHQ “has played a key role in advising its European counterparts on how to circumvent national laws to limit the power of oversight of intelligence agencies.” “We help the BND to get reform (…) the very restrictive legislation on interception (Communications) in Germany,” explains the report GCHQ was quoted as saying.

In the case of France, although as noted in this document, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) has “an account held advantage of its relationship with a telecommunications company, which is not named,” according The Guardian. GCHQ “hopes to take advantage of this relationship for its own operations,” the newspaper said, adding that GCHQ has trained members of DGSE for “multidisciplinary internet operations.”

Regarding Spain, the CNI proceeded, at least in 2008, the mass surveillance of communications on the internet via a British company. GCHQ also welcomes the adoption in 2008 of a law in Sweden to collect internet and telephone data transmitted by fiber optic cables. The revelations since June Edward Snowden caused considerable controversy in the United States and around the world on violations of civil liberties and privacy.