A Chance

It would be easy to dismiss as a vain exercise the investigation into the unchecked doings of the American intelligence service, the National Security Agency, by a parliament committee: eight members of parliament and their representatives against the American empire. Compared to that, David and Goliath met at eye level.

The head of the committee, Binniger, of the Christian Democratic Union, made no bones about his skepticism regarding the United States and United Kingdom’s readiness to help. Hans-Christian Ströbele, from the Green Party, had nothing else in mind but to burn out a big “Edward Snowden and Me” political firework. At that point, the former NSA employee in Moscow had let everyone know he did not have much more information to offer. Maybe Chancellor Merkel needs to go before the committee and, under heavy media attention, declare that she did not hear any clicking when the NSA listeners tuned into her conversation with the CDU’s general secretary about the preparations for her campaign in Gelsenkirchen. Two years of work … and at the end, the NSA will go on as before?

Of course it will, and the committee can do something useful regardless. For two years, one day out of every week that parliament is in session should be devoted to discussion of how intelligence services — we will have to talk about German ones first — can react to the nearly limitless technological possibilities of the Internet. A parliamentary committee has not yet undertaken a thorough debate of this sort. The danger of party polarization is small, since all of the parties want this committee, and all of them, except for the Left, were in the government at the time of the investigation. If it goes well, a small center of competence will grow in parliament. If it goes even better, those intelligence service and government members, whom they call to the witness stand, will consider it not a bothersome interruption of their day, but a chance to consider the consequences of the largest revolution in communications technology of all time on their work. Hopefully, that is not too optimistic.