3rd Week American spies in Germany - Up pops another... and another

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American spies in Germany

Up pops another… and another

The Americans are snooping even on Germany’s anti-snooping committee

Jul 12th 2014 | BERLIN | From the print edition

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So who is listening in?

IF THE tawdry tale is confirmed, the Americans hired a German working for his country’s equivalent of the CIA as their double agent. A 31-year-old clerk sorting classified papers reportedly gave the Americans 218 documents in return for a paltry €25,000 ($34,000). Three concerned the committee in the Bundestag that is investigating revelations by Edward Snowden about American surveillance in Germany. So the Americans are spying on Germany’s parliament even as it looks into American spying.

This was followed on July 9th by news of a second American spy—though few details have been released. The downward spiral in German-American relations began with the Snowden affair and continued with news that America had tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. It seems that the Americans collect German metadata on a vast scale. American surveillance has caught up a 27-year-old computer-science student in Bavaria named Sebastian Hahn: his mistake was merely to run a server belonging to a network that encrypts internet communications.

In this section

• The turn of the tide
• Up pops another… and another
• Charging the neighbours
• The binds that tie
• A Scandinavian wave
• Atwitter about Matteo Renzi

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Outrage over America’s behaviour is widespread. Joachim Gauck, Germany’s president, called it “a gamble with friendship” between the two countries. “We have to say, enough!” As a former East German, like Mrs Merkel, Mr Gauck is sensitive about state spying and personal liberty. The interior and foreign ministers chimed in. The justice minister accused the Americans of “surveillance mania” and suggested he may prosecute them. The opposition has stepped up calls to give Edward Snowden, now in Russia, asylum in Germany in exchange for his testimony.

Mrs Merkel was in China when the news broke. She would have preferred not to comment there, but the timing left her little choice. The allegations are “very serious,” she said, standing next to a beaming Chinese premier. They “contradict everything that I understand to be a trusting co-operation between friendly partners.” Her counterpart, Li Keqiang, presented China and Germany as bonded in victimhood under a common American threat.

Scenes like these should make American policymakers pause. Are the benefits of their spying worth the costs? In Berlin to plug her new book, Hillary Clinton, America’s former secretary of state, suggested the answer may be no. She offered an apology to Mrs Merkel for the phone-tapping. And she told interviewers that she would like senior American policymakers to visit Germany, to listen and to understand.

Germany will stop short of granting Mr Snowden asylum or expelling American agents. The transatlantic free-trade talks, already controversial in Germany, may survive. But a crucial Western alliance has been damaged. When members of Germany’s anti-spying parliamentary commission meet now, they throw their mobile phones into a box and turn up the music (Grieg’s piano concerto)—for fear of America, not Russia. That is what things have come to.