 The words and sentences and scenes that we present to you were said exactly in this way. They are the word-by-word statements by German civil servants who, as witnesses at a Committee of Inquiry of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, had been invited. This Committee of Inquiry has been trying for more than two and a half years to look into the doings of the German secret services. Do these secret services help the American NSA and other services to spy on German citizens? Do they actually break German law? Have they come out of control? Do they lead their own lives? In our piece, we will have appearing the head of the Committee of Inquiry lights on, please. Member of the Christian Democrats, the coalition, members of parliament for the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats who are both in government, they want clarity but not too much because they're both in government. The opposition, members of parliament from the Green Party and the Left Party, that want clarification but in doubt are not allowed to get that because they don't have a majority. And the witness, employees of secret services from small the level to the highest and lawyers, the lawyer, the badly grumpy lawyer of the witness who's supposed to keep the witness in peace, who's in a foul mood and the German government itself, keepers of all the information about and all the rights of the secret services, you will hear which questions the members of parliament asked and which answers they received from the employees of the secret services. Again, we didn't add anything fictional, we simply took the hundreds of hours of inquiries in the committee and shortened them a little and naturally you would only get a small glimpse of what happened as members of parliament tried to look behind the curtains and you will hopefully see how important it is to monitor those that monitor us. Thank you. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I will open the session of the first committee of inquiry of the 18th parliament through article 48, one of the basic law, the committee will have its debates in public and I conclude that the public is here. Welcome to the members of the public and the press. Before I get to the issue of today's session, let me first give you some introductory remarks. Recordings in audio and imagery are not permitted and a violation of that cannot only lead to a continuing exclusion from the session from the committee and the whole Bundestag but can also lead to criminal proceedings. Now I will call for the only point of order. Finding evidence relating to the mandate through the NSA activities was data registered and evaluated that affected people in Germany. Did German institutions gain or use data and maybe did something in return? I will conclude that the witness has been correctly invited. Thank you Mr. for making yourself available for this and I will have to first tell you that as a witness you have to tell the truth. Your statements must be true and complete. If people even not under oath give false statements, you could, according to several paragraphs, be punished by three months to five years in prison or a monetary fine. Mr. Witness, please give us your name and official address but in your case it will be enough to give us your initials and the rest of your institution. Yes, so. Hello. BND, Gardeschützenweg Berlin. Okay. I will conclude that you have legal accompaniment. We know this person, but Mr. lawyer, would you like to introduce yourself? Well, you have my name. You've given my name already. Thank you. Well, sure. But maybe some certain insignia of your power I could have forgotten. But Mr. Lawyer, it's good to have you here. Mr. Witness, we will now come to your introductory statement. You can give us an on-block statement if you wish, but only relating to the issue that we are talking about because of the committee of inquiry law. Your turn. Thank you. The head of the committee, the ladies and gentlemen, members of parliament. I work at the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the foreign secret service, and there was an extraordinary amount of things that people could read about the BND, the foreign secret service. The public image was marked by misjust and incorrect assumptions about a mass surveillance without concrete cause on German citizens. Personally, I do not know why people like to believe so much that the BND was some kind of overpowerful successor to the stasi of the secret service of the German Democratic Republic or the thousands of criminals that act in a lawless area and do whatever they do because that is not what we are. We are what we are is the foreign secret service, the foreign intelligence service, and I would like to repeat the foreign intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany with a legal task and a parliamentary controlling instance and whether you believe that or not with very normal employees that have families at home and that keep to law and personally I have been working for the BND for a long time and I have been involved in many projects and naturally all these projects have been checked to the core and most of all from a legal point of view, from legal experts, heads of departments and the heads of the whole service. In my experience the BND is not acting technically, in my experience it is not, we would rather not do something because the employees are keeping to the law. Thank you for the statements and we will now start with the first round of questions from the governing coalition. Thank you very much. Dear witness, you make a very structured impression. That is why I want to explain the question. What is from your point of view an unnecessary, what is mass surveillance? What is your definition of mass surveillance? So first of all I have to say I am very excited. Maybe I don't make that impression but mass surveillance for me for no reason. If I would just save every data for no reason that I got at one certain backbone. What I want to say is in my understanding mass surveillance, you could even say that mass surveillance happens when I choose a line X, Y and I just save all the data that is coming from there and I am going to analyze all the data coming through that one thing. I am sorry but I have a different opinion. For me, mass data acquisition is the acquisition of data that is not selected in... Oh yeah, these lines are smaller than you think. It's not so much data. I wouldn't say it's mass surveillance and we also don't take all the data. We have selectors and we only take the data that is relevant for the thing that we are looking for. So I have to take... So I have to ask now what would be mass surveillance from your point of view? So the mass surveillance makes the impression... Calling it mass surveillance makes the impression that we just don't even select the data that we collect. We just take all the data and then later look at it. But that's not true. We first select a lot of data. Even if we select some data we don't work according to our task. We have to restrict the acquired data as soon as possible so that a human can survey it at all. Now we get to the questions of the opposition. The amounts that we read about are still puzzling. Can you say something about the amounts of data that you are saving? How much metadata do you actually save per day? Oh, I would actually have to guess that probably millions. Yeah, that's what I think too. If this data just gets... Do you share this data with other surveillance agencies? Of course we share some data with some other agencies but that's very little data. And the big, like the most data is just for us. Because we needed to analyze it to find new goals. What do you want to hear? Are you talking about a specific article in Zeitmagazin? Yes, that one. Yes, I believe there were... There was the number 220 million metadata per day. And it says that all of that goes to the USA. That's not true. That's not true? Where do they go? They stay with us. And how much data... How much of that does go to the US? Because it would be... It would be relevant to know how much not 220 million metadata you get. So this is where I would point to the non-public session. I can say that's in the per mill range. That's less than a per mill. So if you take 220 million data per day... So per mill is still a lot? No. If you save so much data every day, and you multiply that by 365, you get billions of data. And you still talk about promos. That's millions of data. So this isn't... That's not... That is selective. And the article annoys me very much, naturally. Trying to stick to the basic right protection. But if the data in Denmark collects our data and we collect the Danish data, then it leads to a mass surveillance. And you're a part of it. But I'm just trying to exclude. But that doesn't convince me. That's a pity. Again to the last topic. The data of which we were mentioning here. These 220 million data... That's only telephone data? Not only dialing traffic? No internet data? Yes, that's the case. Are internet data collected somewhere? Yes. We had talked about that in the non-public session at the project of ICONAL. Well, then we should not publicly continue this point. Yes, yes. Okay. For the questioning of the witness, according to Article 15, Absatz 1, this hearing is assigned the label secret because unauthorized knowledge would endanger the security of the Federal Republic of Germany. So this is anonymously accepted. Are the doors closed now? I'm looking in the round, whether there are any persons around who shouldn't be here. So I am noting that there are no unauthorized people in the room. Mobile devices have to remain outside this room and you have all... Are all the handys outside the room now? This is the case. You can only protocol and put make written notes on the designated papers otherwise they have to be... They have to be sequestered by the authorities. So if we are now mentioning the ICONAL project, we need to classify the discussion as a top precinct, not even secret. Well, we cannot say that as in that generality because there are only for official use, there is secret use and there is a top precinct. So material to the ICONAL project, that is very... that differs quite a lot. But the operational procedure of ICONAL is top secret. You say that some of the parts is more secret than the parts themselves. Yes, if I have one particular item that has a lesser level of secrecy than the total project, that is what the regulations say. If I have one single item, item of the ICONAL project, the secrecy regulations say that it's less secret. May I? That's our documents. Of course, the office that releases the documents, well, we have to ask whether this document has to be top secret or whether secret is sufficient. That's why I see the discussion to be. I don't know, Mr. Attorney, can you contribute something to that? You are not part of the federal government. The witness will not answer this question because he assumes that the government has not authorized him to make statements. That's all you need to know at the moment. Before we take apart the room, there are two possibilities. Either we are not satisfied with this top secret classification or we have to question this again to get further with the discussion. This is strange. The documents are getting more secret now. There are secret documents where there are secret things in them, but now you're making them top secret. I just have one question. There's one question that is not top secret. That's just secret. Was there a contract with a provider with these iconal data? Now we're in the top secret area again. Oh, sorry about that. This is absurd. Not the question. The situation we are in is absurd. This is why we wanted to get into top secret territory. Well, that was a top secret question. Well, I would like to ask something to another document of the 2nd of October of 2013. Well, I am guessing what that might be about. That was the story with the 500 million metadata that went through the meandering through the press. In the Spiegel article, there's a graphic that says Germany. It just says Germany. And, ironically, one had assumed those are data of Germans. We couldn't put the data in perspective because the metadata, we don't count the metadata in that form. We first had to establish a counting method, a statistic that took a while. And there are data, we are acquiring in crisis regions and the numbers vary. But for us, it was plausible even though it was frighteningly much in the beginning because every metadata is counted irrespective of whether it's 50 or 200 that belong to one single traffic. Well, the question is whether it came to mass surveillance, how would you classify the number? Is that a mass data acquisition? Well, we have that when the Snowden came to, came, we demonstrated that in the Parliamentary Control Commission of the Bundestag. Only with a handy that you're moving around with in one day, you're already generating hundreds of metadata with one call of a website over 250 metadata items alone with that web page access. We just counted everything, all the metadata, just to see is that a plausible number. If somebody else also counts that way, he gets, he arrives at 500 million, otherwise you don't arrive at that large a sum. And if I ask once again, is that mass data surveillance? Well, there I seem to be a large amount of data. You may think about this differently, but this is my opinion. Yeah, well, you can have a different opinion. I do have a different opinion. We have a real problem here now because from the evidence that we have in secret session now, we had first statements in the public session that there was no mass surveillance, that there was no surveillance without cause. Now, the data that is protected by Basically was said to be filtered out. There was no transfer to other services, et cetera. So what should we do now? Should we get out of the secret part and say that some of the stuff that was announced in your initial statement was not contradicted, but relativized or toned down. Because now we have information that many of the thesis that we had at the beginning of the session have now been contradicted. But because the session is secret, we cannot speak about any of these issues. So what has been said in public wrongly is it will now stand. Now either you will force us to commit an act of civil disobedience, or you will lead us some way how we can get, at least in a summary form, the past that we have talked about out to the public. Of course, we all are under the rules of secret sessions, but we also have a duty to have the truthful with the public. So what should we do now, ladies and gentlemen? Please, the witness cannot help us with this. I would suggest that we postpone this and continue the interrupted public session. And I would like the servants at the doors to open those doors for the members of the public and the press. Thank you. Mr. Witness, are there rules within the BND about which duties of notification apply if violations of the basic code of German law or violations of German interests, such as of German companies or German politicians are found? Well, talking about the basic code, the basic law, there is a certain department with many legal experts that know these legal consequences inside out and have implemented them in internal guidelines. And I do know about this. I know my obligations that I cannot violate. All right. Now let's talk about these internal obligations, internal guidelines. Are there rules to notify of violations of the German basic law? Well, I'm not quite sure what concrete violations you are talking about. Is there anything within the BND that says if names of Germans are found in data processing that someone in the institution has to be notified? Well, there is a guideline about the basic law and I'm sure that that will be in there everything that has to be done in every case by whom. But I am not someone who is working on the basic law, the constitution. But it could be the case that even outside working on the constitution of the basic law, there are contradictions. What happens then? Well, as far as I know, there are guidelines that immediately delete this if inadvertently you have registered something. No notification? As far as I know, no. But again, I'm not an expert on this area. Is there anything like a notification obligation or obligation to delete or are you free to decide without any guidelines, instructions? Well, the BND has a task profile given by the German government. It's about collecting information and the collection has to be aligned with this profile and you have to evaluate the results. The results have to be relevant for the task profile and if it's not relevant or if the information could be obtained more easily in other places, then it has to be deleted. That then is laid down where? Well, I believe that this is a general principle of law and I cannot quite tell you. But this is known to everyone. It is basically known. So if someone finds that something has happened that could violate the constitution, does that mean delete and not notify? Well, the basic law, the constitution, is a whole different category. So, yes, immediately it deletes and if anything has happened, then inform this or other person. Do you have a kind of understanding why those in your authority that have deleted the problematic search terms did not tell anyone about this? Well, an understanding you can only have if you know the reasons, yes, exactly. And I don't know these reasons. Well, that's what I'm asking you about. Could it be that there could have been a reason not to notify anyone? Well, Mrs. Member of Parliament, I don't know of anyone. Could it be that there is someone? Well, surely there would be someone otherwise they couldn't have done this. If someone is not prepared to talk about this, then they will have a reason not to. What could have been a reason for your employees not to talk about such a relevant process that the whole Republic is in alarm about? Please explain this to me. Well, I did ask myself that too. I did not find any. When would the head of the authority have to be notified? What would have to happen for you to say, oh, dear, I will now get this to the very top? Well, this is a question of judgment and there are a few internal guidelines. For example, the guideline on extraordinary occurrences that clearly says which concrete things have to be when and where notified the internal guideline on extraordinary occurrences. I think we don't have that. This hasn't been given to us or has it? That would probably be helpful to our work? Well, I did look whether we have this guideline. Mr. Witness, you have been in military service for a few years, a professional soldier. Do you know the principle in the military that notification makes you free? Yes, I do know that. That's good. Now, that is not written down anywhere. Higher that, is it? I'm sorry? Is that principle laid down in writing anywhere? No, but it does help, doesn't it? Well, yes. The person that does the notification is helped, yes. It's relieved because then they can also notify about the unimportant stuff and do not have to make any judgments themselves, right? And do not have to take responsibility. Yes, exactly. Surely there is one or rather thing that is not laid down in guidelines but still is quite a sensible thing to do for the person that notifies. So, when would you decide that here is a fact that has to be notified about or this is something that I will not notify about? How do you decide this? Well, over the years you get a kind of sense of what deserves to be notified about and what does not. Of course there are certain cases where it is actually where you have the obligation such as intelligence matters that have a certain risk with them. Now, in those cases it is laid down what has to be notified. So, these are extraordinary occurrences. Yes, they are always necessary to be notified, aren't they? The thing that we are talking about with you now is not an extraordinary occurrence, is it? Lawyer is talking, lawyer is whispering to the witness a lot. Okay, well then that's how we should do it, right? Okay, I will now use my right to decline answer. All right, if you need to drink, it's right in front of you. If you need anything else, a short break, just tell us. I would like you to be alert and fit at all times. We will now continue with questions from the opposition. I would like to know if the right to decline an answer is now being used because by giving the information that you would have to give, there would be criminal or internal legal consequences. An internal legal inquiry. I did ask the witness and I have just been advising the witness, says the lawyer. Well, I do fear a disciplinary legal inquiry. Yes, well, I can take that worry away from you. Your head did tell us that there is no thought about such a disciplinary legal investigation. If you're only fearing internal disciplinary investigations then I don't think the right to decline is applicable here. Yes, well, I'll take note of that opinion, but at the moment, the opinion that at the moment there would be no cause to open a disciplinary procedure against me, but it could be the case that through a statement that I make I would have to incriminate myself so much that my head would be forced to open a disciplinary proceeding because he has knowledge about things that he didn't know before. So, I'm still using my right to not self... I'm myself a big fan of that right, but I don't... I'm still having the impression... Verdächtigung! No, I'm talking right now. Because we have got a story to this whole process that gets to the question, did you actually... We cannot evade the feeling that there are one or two scapegoats presented to us here. There is no reason in these cases to inform the supervisor. I cannot imagine that an official says he's doing that on his own. This is not a robot who only thinks from here to the wall. So, this is why it's so difficult for us that we don't answer this key question. It's just he refuses to testify. Well, I have explained myself unambiguously and you are telling me that I am knowingly saying the untruth. Well, nobody believes this. And at the end of the day, when the inquiry is over, we won't get a discipline... Jürgen won't get disciplinary procedures and I won't get answers. A different topic. Dear witness, if while looking through the data, you would find that a European institution is affected by the surveillance. What would the effect be? What would you have to do? That's where I once again have to point at the non-public session. Is there a guideline? What happens if a European parliament or institution is assuming that under the search terms German companies are... German... That's as if in a bakery, we notice that there aren't bagels sold but coke. Well, can you repeat that? I don't have... I didn't quite understand that correctly. If one notices that under the NSA search terms there are names of German companies, of politicians and European institutions, is that about like if a baker notices that in his shop there is coke instead of bagels going over the counter. So as baker, you have two possibilities. Either you say, I haven't seen this, or you call the police. Why didn't anyone call the police? Well, I do not understand the question. Well, you know what I mean. These aren't trifles. This is violating laws. This is about possibility, a secret service activity of the NSA. Why did nobody recognize the relevance? Why does one say, well, we don't mind? I advise the witness not to answer the question. First of all, this is not serious. Well, it is. Yes, it is. And second, the question is dishonorable for the witness. Well, the answer, the question is completely serious. If the BND notices that the NSA spies on the French government, that must be highest alert. The chancellor's office needs to be informed the parliamentary control. Dreamer needs to be informed, but there is no alarm. He doesn't answer the question. The witness needs to say, I do not answer the question. Thank you very much. The question time is over now, and we come to the question from the government coalition. I'm asking in a different way. Germany has an EU commissar, and he's sitting in Brussels and he doesn't have a DE address. Did anybody ever think, dear foreign ministry, please give us all the leading German organizations that do not have a dot DE address? Well, there is the functionary theory in the EU. That is a EU commissioner who in the framework of his EU, a commissioner offices communicates within the officer, would not be protected. So he is not carrying basic rights anymore, even though he is a German official. Well, if he's communicating in the framework within his EU office, he does not count as a German. Well, somebody has to tell that Oettinger, that might be interesting to him. The BND can't spy on a German EU commissioner. Well, let's put that aside. Can you explain to us the functionary theory, how you understand that? Well, when a German at the EU mission, or for example, at the UN works, if he works at those organizations, he is not protected. Well, I'm sorry for Mr. Oettinger in this case. I don't know how Mr. Oettinger communicates, but I imagine it that if he has an email address that he uses for his work, or that he also uses for working to his wife and children, you couldn't distinguish that, could you? Well, one would see it at, recognize it at the contents. At this point I want to announce that there should be no comments from the audience. There must not be audience, there must not be a laughter or applause from the audience. Once again, when you ask yourself, what is the question of our constitution? Didn't you understand? Didn't you get skeptical? Didn't you ask yourself whether you did the right thing? So I'm not a lawyer. I did not think about those things. It was explained to me that with this, that that's how we do things. Thank you very much. Now we come back to the questions of the opposition. Did I understand this correctly? That the BND is even using terms for ambassadors of foreign ambassadors or politicians, for example, pertaining to the French Foreign Ministry. What would they be? Well, if it is according to the mission of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, if it's supporting the clarification of the situation in a foreign country, if the information cannot be found in another way and if the information is so valuable and it completes the view of the situation, then it is imaginable and acceptable. That means the French Foreign Minister is suspected that he is telephoning or changing emails with XY. Then you can search the data of the French Foreign Minister or the Foreign Ministry. And of the search results, you can take the information where he communicated with Mr. XY and you discard the rest. Is that right? I cannot control the entire data of the Foreign Ministry because he randomly contacted a politician, well, not randomly, regularly, especially in situations of crisis. Well, when I have indications, then one could imagine that. In certain circumstances, it would be certain search terms where it would be imaginable. I have nothing to add to that. Well, that's interesting. Now I come to the second question. When has this practice been ended? Are these cases known to you that this procedure has been continued after the 2nd of October that ambassadors have been controlled? So from my point of view, from what I can say, I'm not allowed to comment. So why is that? The witness is now tired. It's not about a month. So this is during the time of investigation, did not come to my knowledge. So since March of 2014, you've never heard of anything like that. What's the situation today? This is not part of the investigation. Repeat, this is not part of the investigation. Thank you very much. The questioning time is over. Now we're coming back to a question from the Government Coalition. Mr. BND, in a... There's mention of an oral instruction of October 2013 to deactivate all surveillance of the EU and of NATO states. This has been received from the Chancellor's office and has been forwarded to the... Tech intelligence. You don't know that directive from October 2013, but this subject is known to you. Yes, this subject is known to me by now, but I wasn't present at a conversation nor at a oral directive. I have a written directive. Who was that? Well, that's the point. I need to keep all that in my head. I mean, it was in April 2014, but I don't want to exclude that in April 2015 maybe somebody can help me and tell me whether it was 2014 or 2015. It was 2014. If I understood you correctly, then in Spring 2014 you heard of this directive, right? I did. Reading the files, see that this procedure was signed by me in April 2014. I did not remember that I signed it, but it is my signature, so I will have to accept it as my signature. Was there a report about the need to clarify whether something belonged to you in the United States? I cannot remember now. Did you hear about the implementation of the directive? Did you hear that the search terms were taken out? Yes, I in retrospect did hear about this. Well, without making further deliberations, well, I did not think about this in a deep way, no. I would now assume that this was not an everyday directive. This is a sensible topic, so if there suddenly is a directive to no longer control targets at the EU or NATO, there is a political element to this, but this does not lead to you to ask because you didn't quite remember. Yes, well, that I am surprised about. Thank you very much. The questioning right now goes to the opposition. Yes, a question to understand those directives. There are oral directives, written ones, and there are telephone directives, and those that are given in meetings. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Well, I am not interested in how instructions have reached you, but how you then take them and write them down. And if, for example, you have an oral instruction reaching you by word of mouth to no longer bill a certain amount for drinks, but another amount, how is that then implemented? Isn't at the end every instruction taken down in writing somehow? Well, no, not every instruction is taken down in writing. For example, costs for catering, if those would rise, that would be a directive that would be written down and distributed in breadth. Why? Well, then some kind of costs, cost loss would have been changed and then you would have those people that go out for dinner with someone would have to be notified. So that it was implemented, right? So now I ask myself in an area that is relevant to basic law, which I would not assume about catering costs. How is it done in that area? Well, every instruction that would reach us, I did, of course, make known and it was then told. How? Told how? Well, in the form in which I received it, if it had been in writing, then it would be distributed in writing. If it had been something I heard in the meeting, then I could only confer it orally because it was not an official document. So the way I had received it is the way I had passed it on. So, well, if there is a certain fluctuation concerning the people that work with you, new people arrive, how then do you make sure? For example, concerning the question which search terms are used or can and cannot be used. How is a conformed kind of action secured in your authority if it's not written down? Well, the instructions that reach the head of that certain topic area are then, of course, passed on to the actual work level. How are they passed on? Well, I don't know. So it's a kind of Chinese whisper, no written form. No, not necessarily, no. Could you please then give me the exact way in which these instructions have been worded? What has concerning terms in you and NATO been instructed from you? Well, I don't remember the exact formulation. Well, how then are your employers supposed to implement this if even you cannot remember the exact wording? What was the statement? What was the instruction that you gave? In detail, I do not know. But roughly the instruction was that government organizations would be taken out of the recording. Government organizations, yes, roughly Ukrainian, Slovenian, African, EU, as far as I know. EU, as far as you know. As far as I can now remember, yes. As far as you remember, EU organizations, ministries, yes, associations, persons, K-4 employees, I don't remember exactly. It was EU organizations, if you don't know. Government, you don't remember, no. Well, that is the problem if you don't take the standard writing, right? How then are your employees supposed to know? Well, I assume that there have been questions that have been fed back, would have been fed back to me if something would have not been clear. But there were no such questions. But you as a head can't even remember what you instructed. We'll have to change the topic now, change questioning now, because time of the opposition has already been overdrawn. Dear Mr. Witness, do you know an operation called below? Well, I know an operation which with the three of the designation G-L-O that starts with G-L-O. Thank you very much. Can you say something about the operation? What kind of operation is that? Attorney Whispers to Witness. Well, I can say something to this operation, but I have to announce that my permission to testify only allows that in non-public session. Well, what is the operation about? Can you say that? It's about telecommunication, intelligence. Okay, but I think that we can say that at G-L-O, it's about telephone conversations and faxes. Well, I can ask about that non-public. Is that signal intelligence of the BND or are third parties involved? Well, an indirect participation of third parties did take place. I would like to explain that in more detail, but please forgive me that my permission to testify only allows us in non-public session. Well, what do you say in direct cooperation? It's not been a direct cooperation, but it's been supportive or what? Well, what should I say now I am in a between a wrong and a hard place? I would like to explain that in detail why I am saying that in clauses, but I can only do this non-publicly. So the indirect service that has been collaborated with, that is a service of the five I States, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians, the Americans or the Brits, right? Yes, that is the case. That would be inconvenient. We otherwise wouldn't have a mandate to do an investigation. I'm assuming that it wasn't the Australians, the New Zealanders or the Canadians. Well, you get me into an awkward situation here. Does the federal government want to answer this question? No, we do not want to answer this question. Well, too bad, pity. We only want to relieve that witness. We have told the witness that he is not authorized to say, to make testifications of which service was involved. Well, he would tell us, he would tell it to us, but not here. Do you understand that correctly? Yes, well, then we can talk, discuss that at some time. But when we get this information, then I would be very thankful. Thank you. We'll get to the next round of questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The press has reported and said that there is an operation with the name Glotike. Is that this operation? Well, I'm sorry. Please, in non-public session. Just, I wanted to clarify this. I'll talk about Glow, Glow, Glow. And in the press, there was this name that surfaced. So then we clarify that in non-public session. In public session, I have no further questions. So I'll look in the round whether the colleagues of the opposition have some questions. That's the case. Well, please, Mr. Mrs. Dear witness, how much do you know where the data came from that you took out in the name of the operation Glow? Well, yeah, from this provider in Germany. You don't know exactly which provider? No, what was his name? MTE, I think, or what do you think? Yes, that's what I mean. What was the name of the provider that the data came from? So I can't really say much about this. Well, we have a problem here. We're here. We need that the government gives us witnesses that can actually talk about the case. We want that the witness that can tell us what happened at the project. And that's why they sent you. Well, I'm very sorry. But that's not my... Don't you have an explanation why you are the witness for the government and the BND? You're not supposed to ask the witness. How is he supposed to know? You have to ask yourself why he was chosen. Well, yes, I did ask myself. But now I actually have a request. If I could ask, please. Yes, sure. I woke up very early today. And it's almost 10 p.m. So it would be nice if we could close the session soon. But it's not even that late. We set here until 12 p.m. But if you say now that you can't... Can no longer be part of the witnessing... But I can't just take away the... Sorry. I'm saying that I'm done because I'm pretty much at the end of my powers. That's understandable. All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Now, I'd be thankful if someone could call me a cab. I think we can organize that. At this point, I just want to say something. I can't understand. And I'm very understanding that two things that we read about in the newspaper, like names of people that actually came in the newspaper, I don't understand why we can't ask questions about this. There's already public discussion about these kind of problems. Why can't we actually ask questions about this? That's all I wanted to ask. Thank you very much. I don't see any more questions. Now, the witness, we close the session. There will be no non-public session today. I thank you very much for your cooperation. Your answers to them, very many questions. Thank you very much to everyone, especially the public, for the long participation. And I wish you a nice evening. Dear ladies and gentlemen, please do not despair about democracy. It's burdensome, arduous, but it works. This Committee of Inquiry, that of which we have only shown you, been able to show you, a tiny extract has contributed a lot to clarifying the SAF. And I would now like to ask you for an applause for the head of the Committee, Anna Bissini as the coalition member of parliament. Ulster Meier as the farm-moved grumpy lawyer. Elizabeth Kless as the opposition, the Wetterfrosch weather frog as the all-knowing government, and Johannes Wolf as the BND. Text Anna Wieseli and Kai Biedmann. Thanks for your work. Great, great work. And have a nice evening. And the same from us that translates this year. It was experimental. I think it worked well. I hope you think so, too.