Spying is Not Listening

“True partnership and true progress require constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.”
So candidate Obama in his August 2008 Berlin speech. How ironic that President Obama’s NSA has been listening in to Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone, and certainly those of many in her government. Obama no doubt meant ’listen’ differently. Eavesdropping is not listening – but spying.
And spying is what the US has been doing all along, and now, it turns out, as many as a dozen German government officials have been on the NSA’s payroll for many years, spying in ministries or in the Bundestag.
While this is hardly startling in the US, Americans must realize that there is a fundamental problem here between the state’s need for information and individuals expecting privacy. President Gauck and Chancellor Merkel both grew up in a totalitarian state where they dreamed of privacy, in which their mail would not be intercepted or their phone calls overheard. How would Americans feel if they knew that spouses even spied on each other? Mr. Gauck and Mrs. Merkel are not, cannot be amused.
It pains me to say it: the American information services are insensitive, clumsy and paranoid – and – in the end, they keep their eyes on the wrong people and events. Not knowing that Mosul was endangered is inexcusable while listening to your next-door-neighbor’s telephone calls.
Mrs. Merkels options, of course, are rather limited. To call the US on the carpet is not one of them. In the end, this is a family feud, and it’s certainly not in Germany’s interest to sue for divorce. In her quiet way, Mrs. Merkel has stated that the services are wasting their energy, and she will not try to suspend TTIP talks. So the first notch on the dial: expel the accredited senior US spy in Germany.
The next steps will require that both American and German officials re-calibrate their relationship. One can only hope that my fellow Americans will be less bullying and the Germans more self-assertive. As an American in Germany I’m disheartened when I see what play is on offer. Will my German friends look at me askance, will I lose my bonus of being an American? For the nonce, I’m putting this in the marital feud box, where I’m the kid in the middle, hoping that my parents don’t sue for divorce, don’t separate, don’t stay angry for long and kiss and make up.
You always hurt the one you love.