Untersuchungsausschuss „NSA“) was started on March 20, 2014, by the German Parliament in order to investigate the extent and background of foreign secret services spying in Germany in the light of the Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present).
[15] These lists have been subject of controversy as in 2008 it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project[16] as well as French administration,[17][15] which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005.
[18] After the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
[15] After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.
[15][19] The investigative Parliamentary Committee was set up in spring 2014 and reviewed the selectors and discovered 40,000 suspicious search parameters, including espionage targets in Western European governments and numerous companies.
[15][20] The investigative parliamentary committee was not granted access to the NSA's selectors list as an appeal led by opposition politicians failed at Germany's top court - instead the ruling coalition appointed an administrative judge, Kurt Graulich, as a "person of trust" who was granted access to the list and briefed the investigative commission on its contents after analyzing the 40,000 parameters.
[25][26][27] Klaus Landefeld, member of the board at the Internet industry association Eco International, has met intelligence officials and legislators to present suggestions for improvement, like streamlining the selector system.
[37][38] In July 2014 a Parliament technician found out that the mobile phone of Roderich Kiesewetter, representative of the Christian Democratic Union in the committee, was spied on.
[39] In the months following May 2015, Peter Pilz, a member of the Austrian parliament for the Green Party, disclosed several documents and transcripts related to operation Eikonal, in which NSA and BND cooperated for tapping transit cables at a facility of Deutsche Telekom in Frankfurt.