Fiercely critical of NSA, Germany now answering for its own spy practices
| BERLIN
German Chancellor Angela Merkel discovered in 2013 that the National Security Agency had been snooping on her countrymen, and even tapping her own cellphone, through the media leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. Soon after, she famously remarked,听鈥淪pying between friends, that鈥檚 just not done.鈥�
Now, in something of an ironic twist, Germany is coming to terms with its own spy agency's surveillance tactics and cooperation with the NSA.
Recent reports have revealed that听Germany's foreign services agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst 鈥� or BND for short 鈥撎齝ooperated with the NSA so that it could spy听on European Union interests such as the European Commission, the French president, and the French aerospace company Airbus.听Last week, a transcript of a parliamentary inquiry leaked through WikiLeaks showed that听top German officials are reluctant to divulge details about the alliance,听even behind closed doors.
Critics are demanding that Ms. Merkel reveal all of the spying targets the US听supplied听the BND and听who in her coalition government authorized exposing them to the NSA.听What's more, there's a growing push here 鈥� both from within government and among advocacy groups 鈥� for massive structural reforms to the BND. The organization, many say, lacks qualified oversight听and a clear public definition of its current role and partnership with the NSA.
"These recent revelations have exposed a lot of hypocrisy in terms of how many leading German politicians have approached the topic [of global surveillance] post-Snowden," says Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.
While officials were听publicly indignant about听the NSA's practices, he says, privately they appear to favor of deep cooperation with them.听
鈥淗opefully in the future we鈥檒l have a more realistic standpoint in Germany with better accountability of our own intelligence services, a clear perspective on the capabilities the BND needs, and transparency on the level of cooperation with US intelligence," he says.听
Inadequate oversight
Currently there's little judicial review when the BND requests to carry out telecommunications surveillance, even though those practices are overseen by an intelligence review committee called the G10 Commission. The commission serves a function similar to the American Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court.
The G10 has only four commissioners 鈥� all appointed by a Parliamentary Control Committee 鈥� who are all 鈥渨eakly trained鈥� from a technological standpoint, says Russell Miller, a Washington and Lee University law professor and expert on the German legal system.
鈥淎lmost all of them have been former legislators 鈥� . They鈥檙e trained for the deployment of a complex legal standard but not necessarily for evaluating the high level technology that the BND uses,鈥澨齭ays Mr. Miller, who submitted an official report last June to the听German听parliament, the听Bundestag, about intelligence gathering in the US.
The G10 often relies on the BND to explain and justify the technology it uses to receive and process data.听鈥淭hey said, 鈥榃e鈥檙e going to oversee you. Please put a PowerPoint slide together there for us, explaining everything,' " says Miller, echoing accounts he has read.
While the G10 Act stipulates that G10 Commission review and approve all of the BND鈥檚听strategic telecommunications surveillance activities, it currently only evaluates domestic surveillance operations.听Another structural limitation on the G10 Commission's oversight might be its insufficient budget, says Miller. The 2015 one provides 182,000 euros ($203,000), about one-third of which is devoted to reimbursing the commissioners鈥� travel costs.
鈥淲e need to invest more money and be more effective with the money we invested,鈥� said Thomas Oppermann, chair of the Social Democrats parliamentary group, at a talk by the German Marshall Fund听on Wednesday. 鈥淕ermany can never have an intelligence service strong enough to provide us with the relevant information. We need the partnership.鈥�
Yet currently not many members of parliament know what intelligence services do and how they operate. 鈥淭hey only know when we have a problem,鈥� said Mr. Oppermann, adding that there needs to be a clearer definition of the BND-NSA relationship without compromising security.
Cooperation between the NSA and European intelligence agencies is nothing new. Sweden鈥檚 signals intelligence agency FRA actively cooperates with the NSA to spy on global targets, particularly Russia, with no domestic backlash. France, capitalizing on public fears in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo attacks, recently agreed to deepen its NSA surveillance cooperation.
Political crunch time
But in Germany, there is still deep skepticism about the NSA as a result of Snowden's leaks that revealed the scope of its surveillance programs. In the wake of the revelations, Berlin has听听additional Internet data transfers to the NSA.
Merkel and her Conservative party are now under growing pressure from the Social Democrats, her junior coalition partner, to divulge the list of so-called selectors 鈥� or Internet, website, and e-mail addresses 鈥� that the NSA provided the BND.
Yet Merkel is operating with caution.
"It seems that the Conservatives are to a certain degree more willing to be generous on this topic in terms of, 'Do we want to jeopardize our intelligence cooperation with one of the most powerful allies in the world?' " says听Nikolas听Kessels, a听PhD candidate at Free University Berlin who is specializing in US-Germany relations.
Politically, Merkel sits between a rock and a hard place, says Benner听of the Global Public Policy Institute. If she goes against the wishes of the Americans and reveals these selectors, she may lose the trust of the US in a critical area of intelligence cooperation. Yet if she decides to go against the wishes of the Social Democrats, and withholds this information, then she will be seen as being subservient to the Americans and not honoring the rights of parliament.
Oppermann from the Social Democrats said he is "optimistic" that there will be an agreement in Parliament about whether the BND will show the government selectors or search terms. 鈥淣ow we have to investigate and find out what really happened and we will have conclusions, consequences, and a reform of the BND,鈥� he said.
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听鈥淭here鈥檚 no doubt that the mood has shifted from pretty profound dismay at the Americans and the NSA, to a focus on the BND,鈥� says Miller. 鈥淚f there鈥檚 a moment for reform, in the German context, this would have to be it.鈥�
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