Deutsche Welle, 5 Aug 2013
Revelations about the surveillance activities of the NSA are raising growing concerns among German politicians. The justice minister is also demanding answers from a German intelligence service.
Revelations about the surveillance activities of the NSA are raising growing concerns among German politicians. The justice minister is also demanding answers from a German intelligence service.
German
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger used a newspaper interview
to demand that the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) intelligence service provide a
full explanation after it admitted to passing on massive amounts of so-called
"metadata" to the US National Security Agency (NSA).
"The
BND must finally put the facts on the table," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger
said in comments published in Monday's edition of the Münchner Merkur
newspaper.
"If it
is true that the BND made itself available as a tool for the NSA in the mass
gathering of data, than something urgently needs to be done," she added.
This came
after the BND confirmed the Spiegel Online story, which cited documents it said
it had received from former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden. It said the NSA
had received around 500 pieces of metadata through such channels last December
alone.
A BND
spokesman told the DPA news agency on Saturday, though, that any personal
information had been filtered out of the data before it was passed on to the
Americans. He also said any activities the agency had carried out were in
complete compliance with German laws, including the one that regulates the BND.
The latest
revelations about the alleged mass surveillance of Germans' internet usage and
telecommunications by the NSA comes just weeks before the country is to go to
the polls in a federal election on September 22.
Campaign
issue
The
opposition has repeatedly taken the opportunity to attack Chancellor Angela
Merkel's government for not pushing their American counterparts forcefully
enough for answers.
On Sunday,
Merkel's Social Democrat challenger, Peer Steinbrück, used a major television
interview to attack the chancellor on the issue. He called on the chancellor to
demand a written guarantee from the Americans that any activities they carry
out here comply with German law, do not harm German interests, and do not include
industrial espionage.
In the
interview with public broadcaster ZDF, Steinbrück also defended his party's
strategy of trying to make the snooping affair into a campaign issue.
He said he
regarded it as acceptable for the Social Democrats to "point out, with a
touch of humor, a touch of irony, that Mrs. Merkel is taking a wait-and-see
attitude, while at the same time there are millions of cases of basic rights
being breached." He also said it raised the question about whether Germany
is actually master of its own house.
So far
though, there seems to be little indication that the issue is having much of an
impact on the voters. An opinion poll published by public broadcaster ARD gave
Merkel's conservatives a lead of 16 percentage points over the Social Democrats.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.