People have
taken to the streets across Germany to protest against NSA spying. Berlin,
meanwhile, has appointed a diplomat to defend Germany's interests in cyberspace
in the face of the NSA scandal.
Thousands
of people took to the streets of Germany on Saturday to protest against
surveillance by the NSA. The Green Party, the Pirate Party, the global alliance
"Stop Watching Us" and several NGOs called protests in more than 30
German cities.
According
to police, 2,000 people participated in demonstrations in Hamburg, while 1,000
turned out in Frankfurt am Main. Five-hundred people showed up in Berlin and
Karlsruhe respectively. Hundreds more demonstrated in Dresden, Leipzig,
Stuttgart, Tübingen and Ulm.
"The
people have had enough of the attempts by Angela Merkel and her government to
cover up the scandal and placate the people," said Malte Spitz, a member
of the Green Party's national committee.
"If
millions of people are being permanently subjected to surveillance, then it
restricts their freedom and lacks any measure of proportionality."
Meanwhile,
the German Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that it had established an
office for cyber issues, confirming a report by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung
newspaper.
German
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has appointed diplomat Dirk Brengelmann to
the new post. Brengelmann previously worked for NATO from 2008-2010 as an
assistant secretary general of political issues and security policy.
According
to the foreign ministry, Brengelmann will represent Germany's interests on
cyber policy at the international level. The new position is modeled after the
US State Department's coordinator for cyber issues.
Intelligence
agencies deny misconduct
The head of
Germany's domestic intelligence agency said on Saturday that the US National
Security Agency (NSA) was not collecting data in Germany. The news magazine Der
Spiegel had reported earlier in the week that the NSA had given German
intelligence services access to a data collection program called
"XKeyscore."
"XKeyscore
is not a spy program, it's an analysis program," domestic intelligence
chief Hans-Georg Maaßen told the daily Die Welt newspaper, adding that his
agency was only "testing" the program.
Maaßen went
on to say that there was no substance to accusations of misconduct by German
intelligence agencies regarding surveillance activities.
But the
political opposition has continued to hammer Chancellor Angela Merkel for not
doing enough to protect German citizens' privacy rights in the face of alleged
snooping by US intelligence agencies. The center-left Social Democratic
candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, accused Merkel of being uncritical
of the US and having a lax approach toward the surveillance scandal.
"There
were massive violations of fundamental rights in Germany by foreign
intelligence agencies," Steinbrück said.
slk/tm (AP, AFP, dpa, EPD, Reuters)
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