German Authorities Lack Evidence To Prosecute Anyone For NSA Spying 107
jfruh (300774) writes "The revelations about the NSA's surveillance program caused particular outrage in Germany, a country that is closely allied with the United States but nevertheless found that its leader's cell phone was being snooped on. Nevertheless, the German federal prosecutor's office will not be bringing any charges against anyone, mostly because they lack enough evidence (Google translation). The decision is sparking anger among German privacy advocates."
NSA surveillance in Germany is most probably legal (Score:5, Interesting)
We have treaties left over from WW2 that interestingly were put in place. There is a Professor at Freiburg University who says what the NSA is doing in Germany is basically legal. He even claims that the German secret service can legally assist the NSA.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/historiker-foschepoth-ueber-us-ueberwachung-die-nsa-darf-in-deutschland-alles-machen-1.1717216
We also have a quite unspecific exception clause in Artikel 10 (section 10) of our Grundgesetz (constituiton), that restricts applicability of telecommunications secrecy.
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_10.html
Lotteries (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want the power, you must pay the price.
This attitude ensures that we are governed by people that love power.
That's why I think we should have lotteries for political service. Once you hit voting age and legally able to vote, you are automatically entered into the service lottery and you serve one term and one term only in that office.
Once you do one mandatory service period, one can choose to volunteer to be placed back into the lottery pool for another office other than the one you served in.
This will take a bit of the money out of politics, end career politicians and I really think it would lead to a much fairer democracy and republic.