Leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have left what one German politician called a gap as wide as the Atlantic Ocean between how U.S. and European lawmakers view mass surveillance of electronic communications as a tool for fighting terrorists.
In interviews with the Washington Examiner after meetings with U.S. lawmakers in Washington, members of the German parliament from all political parties said it was important to bridge that gap to help meet threats from existing terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and new ones from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has recruited thousands of Westerners.
The German lawmakers said their views reflected a deep concern for privacy in their country, as well as elsewhere in Europe — a concern some thought U.S. lawmakers downplayed too much.
“In no other country on our globe the revelations of Edward Snowden were so emotionally discussed … like in Germany,” said Stephan Mayer, a conservative member of the Bundestag and an alternate member on the special panel investigating the National Security Agency’s activities, specifically noting reports based on Snowden’s leaks that indicated the NSA was spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
“The question is, was everything necessary that the American side allegedly did,” added his colleague from the conservative Christian Democratic Union, Tim Ostermann.
“We have not received an answer to this question.”
Both men lamented the strain Snowden’s leaks have had on U.S. relations with Germany, a fellow NATO country and a member of the anti-Islamic State coalition. A June analysis by Der Spiegel of documents leaked by Snowden indicated that the NSA’s surveillance architecture in the country is the largest in Europe and has been used to help identify terrorist targets for U.S. strikes.
The visiting lawmakers, part of a group of 60 from 24 European countries invited to Washington to “clear the air” by Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., met Sept.18 with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and the panel’s top Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.
“They talked as if they were from a different world because they fully justified all the work done by NSA,” said Hans-Christian Stroebele of the Green Party, speaking in German through a translator.
Stroebele, who rose to fame in the 1970s as a lawyer who defended members of the far-left Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla group, met with Snowden in Moscow and was among the opposition members of the Bundestag who filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to force Merkel’s government to allow him to come to Berlin to testify before the committee.
The United States has charged Snowden with espionage and would be able to seek his extradition if he comes to Germany unless Merkel grants him asylum, which she has refused to do.
“To them he clearly is a traitor and nothing more,” Stroebele said of the U.S. lawmakers. “I consider him to be one of the greatest whistleblowers … the person who has done most to bring light into the situation.”
Rogers, speaking at a Sept. 19 intelligence summit, noted that one of the problems fueling the gap in perceptions is that European lawmakers lack strong oversight power over their own intelligence agencies. Indeed, Der Spiegel revealed in a report last month that Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND, had inadvertently tapped the phones of two U.S. secretaries of State — Hillary Clinton and John Kerry — and had targeted another NATO ally, Turkey, for surveillance.
“Dutch and I have a very good idea of what all 16 of those agencies are doing. They have very little understanding of what their own intelligence agencies are doing — not even close,” he said. “And that oversight … is a very important part of allowing the credibility of those intelligence services to do what they do.”
Lawmakers from both sides agreed to continue the dialogue next year in Vienna.
“We’re still working through these things. It doesn’t happen overnight,” Pittenger, chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told the Examiner.
“There’s always going to be a natural, positive tension between privacy and intelligence,” he said. “We recognize the common threat.”
