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Idea: extend the act to provide full protection for US Americans who expose espionage, sabotage (and possibly worse things) carried out in EU countries.


I don't follow. Why would an EU country punish a US citizen for reporting espionage/sabotage directed against the EU country? Or do you mean something else?


They would need guaranteed non-extradition and possibly a lot of protection so they don't get abducted by the US, but that sort of legislation would never sail under the current German government.


It's only possible to extradite people if they did something that's a crime in both countries.


Treason is a crime in Germany, too, and whether the result is politically opportune for Germany couldn't officially play a role in front of a Oberlandesgericht court when ruling on an extradition request by the US. Disclosure of spy activities certainly would be a crime if committed in Germany against Germany, so extradition for such a whistleblower would have to be stopped at the political level, which is possible, but that's not something I would want to depend on. The US could exert a lot of very painful pressure on a German government, and as the Snowden affair shows, broad public support is far from given. Might be easier to weather the scandal from giving in than the consequences of sticking to principles.


Maybe my wording is bad; the EU should offer protection to US citizens who expose crimes committed by the US government in the EU. And preferably committed elsewhere in the world, since it's in the world's best interest to know.


So Snowden could seek asylum in the EU, since he exposed espionage that was targeting the EU (and others)?

I have to say that I've lost yet another bit of respect for the German government (and those that followed) when they did not offer asylum to Snowden.


What did he expose exactly? As far as I know - according to the US government - foreigners have no rights whatsoever so they could spy on everyone else completely legally. For example - they could install spyware/keylogger on my computer completely legally, because the 4th amendment doesn't apply to non-Americans.


That the U.S. selfishly sees non-Americans as unprotected game is nothing that the EU has to respect.


That's how international espionage works. Everyone is spying on everyone else. Do you think that there aren't any European spies in the USA?


Maybe... they haven't told me. I am also not sure if the EU is running large scale wiretapping operations in the U.S. and I think that the U.S. would react in a drastic way if they learned about it - as opposed to the EU.

What I do know: U.S. citizens are protected by GDPR when they are in the EU.


Not sure about large scale operations, but it would be stupid for them not to gather any intelligence in the USA. Especially when their security depends on the US.

Foreign intelligence agencies could not do much if they had to follow all the foreign laws. It's their job to gather intelligence abroad. What do you expect them to do? "Oh shit - this Russian law forbids us from gathering intelligence in Russia - we'd better stop and go home"?

Snowden's revelations didn't surprise me in the slightest. I already knew that US intelligence agencies could spy on me if they wanted to.

And I don't give a crap if they spy on US citizens, because I'm not an American.




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