Tuesday

5th Dec 2023

German government outraged by US snooping scandal

  • Angela Merkel wants to bring up the spying scandal when she meets Obama (Photo: consilium.europa.eu)

The German government is demanding explanations from the US after it emerged that its secret spying programme Prism collected more information from Germany than any other EU country.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to raise the issue when she receives US President Barack Obama in Berlin next week, her spokesman said on Monday (10 June).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Data privacy is a very sensitive topic in Germany and the cluelessness of Merkel's government about the affair may become an issue in September's elections.

"Everything we know we found out from the media," interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on Tuesday in a press conference in Berlin.

Its head of domestic intelligence, Hans-Georg Maassen, standing beside Friedrich, added: "I knew nothing about it."

The ministry of interior is working on a questionnaire for the US government to find out the extent and the legal basis for the collection of data from Germany, he added.

Similar information requests will be sent to Internet firms such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple, which were targeted by Prism, but which deny that US security staff got unlimited access to their servers.

Germany's hawkish interior minister - a Bavarian Christian-Social politician whose party is standing for re-election both on regional and national level in September - also indicated that US and German intelligence services co-operate well and that Prism might have "indirectly" helped Germany to prevent terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a Liberal politician, wrote in an op-ed for Spiegel Online that reports about Prism are "deeply worrying" and "dangerous."

She contradicted US leader Barack Obama, who recently said you cannot have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy at the same time.

"I do not share this view. A society is less free, the more its citizens are being surveilled, controlled and scrutinised. In a democratic system, security is not an end itself, but a means to ensure freedom," she wrote.

For his part, German data protection chief Peter Schaar said on the WDR public broadcaster that Prism amounts to "almost total surveillance."

"There has to be more digging into this, we should not be fobbed off like that," he said.

The German opposition is also outraged by the news and is likely to seize the opportunity to depict the government as incompetent in a Bundestag debate on Wednesday.

"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.

EU breaks silence on US snooping scandal

A junior EU official on Tuesday urged the US not to abuse its "special relationship" with Europe, in Brussels' first reaction to the NSA snooping scandal.

Vestager not involved in Danish spy scandal, says office

Margrethe Vestager was interior and deputy prime minister during the reported US-led Danish spying scandal of top European allies. But her office points out that Danish intelligence services are overseen by its ministry of defence and justice.

Analysis

How Wilders' Dutch extremism goes way beyond Islamophobia

Without losing sight of his pervasive Islamophobia, it is essential to note Geert Wilders' far-right extremism extends to other issues that could drastically alter the nature of Dutch politics — and end its often constructive role in advancing EU policies.

Latest News

  1. Orbán's Ukraine-veto threat escalates ahead of EU summit
  2. Can Green Deal survive the 2024 European election?
  3. Protecting workers' rights throughout the AI revolution
  4. Russia, the West, and the geopolitical 'touch-move rule'
  5. Afghanistan is a 'forever emergency,' says UN head
  6. EU public procurement reform 'ineffective', find auditors
  7. COP28 warned over-relying on carbon capture costs €27 trillion
  8. Optimising Alzheimer's disease health care pathways across Europe

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  3. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  4. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?
  5. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  6. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us