Germany’s BND intelligence service sends “massive amounts” of intercepts to the NSA daily, according to a report based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. It suggests a tight relationship has been developed between the two agencies – which the BND claims is legal.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Snowden and obtained by Der Spiegel revealed that the 500 million pieces of phone and email communications metadata collected by the NSA in Germany last December were “apparently” provided with the BND’s approval.

The data was allegedly handed over at two collection sites as part of the operation titled “Germany – Last 30 days.” One of those collection sites has been identified as the Bavarian BND facility at Bad Aibling, which the NSA is said to have officially left back in 2004.

Der Spiegel’s investigation, which cites BND sources, says that the code name of the Bad Aibling facility is mentioned in Snowden’s papers as one of the signals intelligence activity designators (SIGADs) employed by the US spy agency to collect the data.

The BND source added that the mentioned name is “associated with telecommunications surveillance in Afghanistan.”

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