Hiding Behind the Americans Doesn’t Work Anymore

The German federal government should show Germany’s parliament the list of National Security Agency search criteria and not take the risk of having the issue come before the constitutional court. Such tactics won’t work.

Control of the intelligence community is the duty and responsibility of Germany’s parliament. Therefore, the German federal government should make an effort to at least allow the chairmen of the German intelligence committees a direct look at the controversial list of National Security Agency search terms.

So far, only former federal administrative Judge Kurt Graulich has been allowed to view the ominous list of a 40,000 selectors — phone numbers, emails, Internet Protocol or IP addresses. He alone was responsible for conducting audits, specifically for the federal government and the supporting majority of Christian Democratic Union of Germany /Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party of Germany deputies sitting on the NSA committee of inquiry. Graulich subsequently reported his findings to the intelligence committees.

The German federal government has so far denied deputies a direct inspection of the list because the federal chancellery has claimed that the Americans were against it. Without the consent of Washington, international law would be violated.

However, given confidential information from high-ranking Obama administration officials as reported by Die Zeit, the White House has left the final decision to release the list to the German federal government, despite great misgivings.

A discussion between Der Spiegel and Chancellery Minister Peter Altmaier now contradicts this representation. He once again emphasized that handing over the list of selectors was only possible with the permission of the Americans. “If there had indeed been consent from the United States,” said Altmaier, “we could have avoided some complicated debate.”

So it’s his word against theirs. There’s quite a semantic difference between explicit “consent” and permission given with clenched teeth by the Americans, as was described by Die Zeit.

The U.S. Congress won’t be so easily persuaded.

The federal government is also concealing the fact that it isn’t just the Americans who have a very strong interest in keeping access to the list as closed as possible. That is because a close look at the list could shed light on whether and to what extent the German Federal Intelligence Service or BND used its monitoring system to spy on European neighbors in the Bavarian town of Bad Aibling for the Americans.

There are 40,000 search terms on the list that the BND have already determined to be inadmissible through their own system of checks because they are either directed against German citizens or they hurt German interests.

But as it became known, the BND let dubious selectors slip through the filter again as always. A short sample generated 2,000 critical examples. However, they are nowhere to be found because they have since been deleted.

It’s not possible for the U.S. government to consider denying its congressional intelligence committees access to confidential documents. The U.S. representatives and senators would never let such a thing happen. After all, they have far more rights of control and the ability to apply pressure than their German counterparts in the Bundestag.

The suspicion is that the federal government has always liked hiding behind America to divert attention from its own mistakes and omissions. Before the Federal Constitutional Court has to decide whether the members of the intelligence committees are allowed to look at the list, the federal government should grant them the right to do so.