Image
© AP Photo/dpa, Stephan JansenThe president of the German Intelligence Agency, BND, , Gerhard Schindler, stands in front of a facility with a new attached logo in Bad Aibling, Germany Friday June 6, 2014. Germany's foreign intelligence agency officially lifted the lid on some of its worst-kept secrets Friday, acknowledging that half a dozen facilities around the country are in fact spy stations” as anyone with Internet access could already figure out.
Germany's foreign intelligence agency officially lifted the lid on some of its worst-kept secrets Friday, acknowledging that half a dozen facilities around the country are in fact spy stations - as anyone with Internet access could already figure out.

The Federal Intelligence Service, known by its German acronym BND, maintained the facade for decades that it had nothing to do with sites bearing cryptic names such as "Ionosphere Institute." But amateur sleuths long suspected their true identities and posted them on websites such as Wikipedia.

The subterfuge wasn't helped by the fact that some sites sport unmistakable signs of spy activity, like the giant golf ball-shaped radomes in Bad Aibling, near Munich - until now, the "Telecommunications Traffic Office of the German Armed Forces."

The agency officially attached its logo to the site's entrance at a ceremony Friday, and BND chief Gerhard Schindler posed for photographers in front of the radomes.
Image
© AP Photo/dpa, Stephan JansenThe president of German Intelligence Agency (BND) Gerhard Schindler stands in front of the giant golf ball-shaped radomes in Bad Aibling, near Munich , Germany, Friday June 6, 2014. Germany's foreign intelligence agency officially lifted the lid on some of its worst-kept secrets Friday, acknowledging that half a dozen facilities around the country are in fact spy stations” as anyone with Internet access could already figure out. The agency was holding a ceremony at the site in Bad Aibling Friday to attach its logo officially to the entrance.
The rebranding is part of an effort by Schindler to make the work of Germany's spies more transparent. The agency has sought to distance itself from some of its counterparts following Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency, insisting it follows the law and doesn't conduct unwarranted mass surveillance.

"It makes no sense, to give a simple example, that external sites of the BND are run with covert names if the fact that they belong to the BND can be read on the Internet," Schindler acknowledged in a public speech last year.

"If there's one thing that the man on the street will remember from the whole NSA debate in Germany, it's that the satellite ground stations in Bad Aibling belong to the BND," he added.
Image
© AP Photo/Matthias Schrader,FilePicture taken July 8, 2013 shows the monitoring base in Bad Aibling, near Munich, Germany. Germany™s foreign intelligence agency is officially lifting the lid on some of its worst-kept secrets by acknowledging that half a dozen facilities are in fact spy stations. The Federal Intelligence Service for decades maintained the facade that it had nothing to do with sites bearing cryptic names like ˜Ionosphere Institute.™ Agency head Gerhard Schindler invited reporters to attend a ceremony Friday June 6, 2014 in the town of Bad Aibling at which the agency™s logo will be attached to the entrance of a site previously called the Telecommunications Traffic Office of the German Armed Force.
The six sites now officially acknowledged are mostly linked to the agency's signals intelligence work - jargon for eavesdropping on radio, data and phone traffic.

Earlier this year Schindler opened the BND's huge new Berlin headquarters, complete with a visitors' center.