Is SAP software used in surveillance?

In March of this year strange allegations related to SAP broke into the media. In particular it was related to possible ties between SAP and NSA. Also other article claimed that SAP is working with US intelligence agencies.

Moreover articles mentioned above suggest that SAP HANA is used by these agencies to help with surveillance. If that is true on one hand it would be good for SAP to claim that even the NSA belongs to circle of its customers. However we lie in post Snowden era where everything related to break of privacy is an issue. On other hand it may not need to be necessary good for SAP to have the NSA as a client. Also SAP claimed its gain in could computing was partially driven by customers who do not want to sit their data in US data centers. Revealing its ties to the NSA may not be again be good for SAP’s push to the cloud.

SAP reacted very rapidly on these claims. They published statement related to it. The statement is that they honor every customer. Regardless either it is from public or private sector around a world. They also contradict any allegations related to so called “back doors” in its software.

Whatever truth is one thing matters. SAP can’t do much about the scenarios on how customers do use their software. Even if it is used to the purposes what claims are suggesting into.