NSA Affair Threatens toContaminate All of Germany

Our American friends must be unequivocally told to stop their spying activities in Germany. The German people cannot stand idly by and witness the trashing of their national constitution.

So Hans-Peter Friedrich* is in the United States to be given what the Obama administration calls “explanations.” Apart from the fact that the term sounds somewhat ambiguous, Germany’s secretary of state will get exactly what the U.S. intelligence services allow him to have — that is to say, little or nothing.

It is already clear that Washington does not think it has done anything wrong in the least. On the contrary, from the president on down, they all think they are entitled to ignore the civil rights of foreign citizens, as long as it is all done in the name of the war on terror or for whatever other reason because in the U.S. everything is monitored and watched: A dragnet catches everything and some of it might prove useful someday.

And to date, nobody in the German government — except for the Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who is now under attack by her own party — has raised the slightest objection. Nobody objects, which in itself should be objectionable in a democracy!

Isn’t this the time to remind everyone of the oath of office these politicians all took? It requires them to protect German citizens from harm. And the really great shame is that our chancellor is not the first one to object to what the Americans are doing. We, as a sovereign state, have to be able to trust that our liberal-democratic form of government is protected. So that no one — even if he calls himself a friend— can take away our fundamental rights, while our own government indifferently acquiesces.

The Federal Republic of Germany is a sovereign state, not some satellite or vassal. That is all behind us now, isn’t it? Being grateful for American support and assistance over several decades does not mean we must endorse the whole-sale breaking of our laws. And, as author Eugen Ruge recently wrote, Obama’s insolent remark that only “non-U.S. persons” outside the United States were targeted does not mean that we have to endure such insulting treatment.

Americans may not care that permanent damage is being done to their own constitution, but nobody should demand that we feel the same way about ours — certainly not our own chancellor.

Their latest statements, by the way, demonstrate a rather horrifying understanding of politics. The truth is far closer to what Daniel Ellsberg describes when he says of Edward Snowden, “What he has given us is our best chance — if we respond to his information and his challenge — to rescue ourselves from out-of-control surveillance that shifts all practical power to the executive branch and its intelligence agencies: a United Stasi of America.” We know all too well against whom the data that falls into the clutches of the National Security Agency octopus will be or has already been used.

Oh, if we only had another chancellor like Helmut Schmidt who read the riot act to President Jimmy Carter over the neutron bomb. Schmidt flatly refused to allow the United States to station so cynical a weapon on German soil — one that would destroy all life with its extended radiation without causing serious damage to property.

With the NSA affair, a new sort of contamination now has to be forbidden.

* Translator’s Note: Hans-Peter Friedrich is Germany’s current Interior Minister, equivalent to the U.S. Secretary of State.