Attack on a Friend

Have you heard of Fort Meade? Me neither. But maybe it would be worth a visit there sometime to see our personal data in “Crypto City.” In this town of 10,000 inhabitants, the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. intelligence service, collects its spoils from its extensive disregard for our civil rights. 500 million overheard German phone calls, emails and text messages are being stored every month, according to Der Spiegel. From a map in the British newspaper the Guardian, we learn that the U.S. monitors Germany as intensively as China and Iraq. The NSA only listened more closely to a few other countries, such as Pakistan and Iran.

With each passing day, the U.S.-British hacking scandal grows ever bigger. Evidently, the U.S. is even spying on EU institutions and the German government, with Germany defined as a target. Even the monitoring programs against millions of innocent citizens violate the core of our constitutional state. The privacy of citizens must never be violated without concrete suspicion of a serious crime. A judge must always weigh the public interest against the rights of the citizen. The Americans and British arrogantly disregard this. The British government has not even considered it necessary yet to comment on the scandal.

Not that a justification would be conceivable. This eavesdropping on the German government represents the collapse of Obama’s anti-terrorism argument. No one would claim that Germany’s institutions pose a threat. The surveillance programs represent hostile acts against Germany, one of the closest partners of the U.S. and Great Britain. It is a shocking revelation, 68 years after the war, which must have consequences.

The German government has still not reacted with the necessary severity. There can only be two explanations for this. Either Berlin already knew what we have just learned from Edward Snowden, or else the chancellor is failing to do her duty. A state must protect its citizens: It derives a substantial part of its legitimacy from doing so. It is time for the chancellor to show her true colors.