> Objectively speaking, the German reaction to the spying scandal is rather subdued and our parliamentary control of intelligence services is laughable. It's ju

> Objectively speaking, the German reaction to the spying scandal is rather subdued and our parliamentary control of intelligence services is laughable. It's just that the situation is worse in all other countries. Worse now, perhaps. But remember that Snowden's original point, immediately after the leaks became public but before he became so outspoken against the USG, was that he wasn't worried about controls on NSA per se. He was worried that the controls on NSA were mostly policy instead of law; mostly internal and non-transparent instead of external and public. In his words, NSA was only a single Administration away from being a "turnkey tyranny". Isn't that true for Germany too, if parliamentary control is laughable? Just because Germany inherited a lousy foreign intelligence service doesn't mean anything about what they can do in the future. Honda and Hyundai both used to make some of the worst cars on the world market.