Germany Demands Answers from Britain Over GCHQ Surveillance!
- Germany demands answers from Britain over GCHQ surveillance!
by Bonnie Malkin, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
The German government has expressed its rising anger over Britain’s monitoring of global phone and internet traffic and has directly challenged the legality of the controversial surveillance project.
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On Tuesday, justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger sent two letters to the British justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the home secretary, Theresa May, demanding to know the extent to which German citizens have been targeted and warning that democracy could not flourish when states employ a “veil of secrecy” to obscure their actions.
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Describing the revelations over GCHQ’s surveillance operation as “like a Hollywood nightmare”, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger asked for clarification of the legal basis for Project Tempora and demanded to know whether the programme has been authorised by any judicial authority, according to the Guardian. She also asked for information on the specific nature of data that was collected and whether “concrete suspicions” triggered the data collection.
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“I feel that these issues must be raised in a European Union context at minister’s level and should be discussed in the context of ongoing discussions on the EU data protection regulation,” Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger wrote.
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The move by the Germany government to highlight its discomfort over the actions of GCHQ is the first time Britain has been asked to publicly justify its mass surveillance operation.
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The Home Office said it would not comment on “private correspondence”, while the Ministry of Justice said only that it would respond to the letter in due course. William Hague, meanwhile, has shrugged off criticism, saying Britain should have nothing but pride in its “indispensable” intelligence-sharing relationship with the US.
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