Officials Suspect Drone Sightings are Attempts to Trace U.S. Military Personnel and German Weapons Data

• U.S. military base and German chemical and arms manufacturing companies are suspected to be under surveillance.
• The German police expressed concern over unidentified drones spotted in high security locations for a week.
• The sightings lead to speculations of espionage to find nuclear weapons data among other factors.

Several U.S. military bases in Germany and German critical infrastructure are reportedly under surveillance by presently unknown entities. German authorities expressed concern over unidentified drones spotted in their country. The Rhineland-Palatinate state police are researching for details pertaining to the sightings with a special investigative unit.   

The following German locations were under surveillance:

1. US Ramstein airbase.
2. Facilities of German automotive and arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall. 
3. The chemical industry giant, BASF.
4. Another ammunition storage center at Unterluess, Lower Saxony.

Authorities complained about drones flying over military and industrial sites. Commenting on the sightings, a regional police spokesperson said that they were larger than usual commercial hobby drones and were often spotted during evenings. This continued for a few days.

When drones were spotted in the Bruensbuettel industrial area in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein in August, it was suspected to be a Russian attempt for surveillance.

Back then, the Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that the drones were clearly spying on the nuclear waste storage facility and not admiring the local landscape. 

Attempts of espionage could be associated with the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and supporting nations.

Another incident reported last year surfaced in media recently. Fresh investigations by Wired, 404 Media, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org confirmed that U.S. military and intelligence personnel location data was compromised.

It was reported in July last year that geolocation data points from German smartphone apps were exposed to data brokers.

Over 3.6 billion records of people including national security officials were provided as ‘free samples’ by the ‘Datastream Group’, a U.S.-based data broker to a journalist. 

The journalist and the U.S. broker were introduced to each other by a German company that worked with other data buyers and sellers.

Location information about German armed forces, security authorities, and intelligence services were speculated to be exposed via app sharing permissions.

Investigators found specific records of personnel working for a federal ministry, German secret service, and agents of the U.S. National Security Agency.

This data leak included information about personnel stationed at German airbases where American nuclear weapons were stored. They also found involvement of a Lithuanian ad-tech company, Eskimi.

Eskimi was acquired by Datastream, and resold again. These findings have led to further investigations by the U.S. authorities and Lithuanian Data Protection Authority (DPA). 

In January this year, other incidents related to the U.S. military data leak were also reported. Sensitive DoD information was exposed via a public Google Drive link. And FBI agents about their confidential informants' data, call logs and text messages were accessed by hackers involved in the AT&T hacking .