Waiting for Schindler’s list

KONSTANTIN VON NOTZ, the leading Green politician on the Bundestag committee investigating American spying in Germany, embodies German ambivalence over America. He asks if the German-American relationship is a “friendship or a mere partnership”. Partnership implies a cynical “mathematics of interests”, so he prefers friendship. But that requires “shared values”, including strict parliamentary supervision over government snooping. That is why he will insist on June 8th, when the Bundestag goes back into session, on seeing what has become known as “the list”.

This list has become a potential timebomb both for Germany’s ruling coalition and for the transatlantic relationship. It refers to the documentation of millions of “selectors”—search terms for phone numbers, e-mail addresses and so on—that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) has over the years fed into the computers of its German equivalent, the BND. The Germans monitored these and passed the intelligence back to America. Under a 2002 deal, the selectors may not point to German citizens, European firms or European Union governments.

But for years the BND failed to check the...

from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1GmFMs4