,,National Co-ordination"of the German Secret Services
BERLIN (Own Report) The parliamentary party, Alliance 90/The Greens, recommends the concentration of the German secret services. A press release of the party states that the decentralised structure of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) - which had been established as a reaction to the concentration of the secret services during the Nazi era - now makes its activities ,,very ineffective"because ,,this mixture of diverse interests which is called federalism (...) impedes national co-ordination as much as it does international co-operation".
While Berlin demands ,,renunciation of centralism"from other states and calls for their federalisation, Alliance 90/The Greens push for the concentration of the secret services in the German centre of power. Acting party chairman, Hans-Christian Ströbele, pleads for ,,a merger of responsibilities and services"; ,,overlapping responsibilities and duplication of assignments"should ,,be dismantled".
Similar reasons were given when it was announced to the public several weeks ago, that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) which is responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, will move its headquarters from Munich to Berlin and will focus its secret service information flow from there. The ,,national co-ordination"of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the internal secret services, will take place in Berlin as well. Thus, the improved structural prerequisites for the operation of the state power apparatus, outside of and within German borders, emerge. The reconstruction, modelled on an organisation customary during the empire and the Nazi regime and with the objective to encompass the whole continent, nears completion.
Constitutional rights ,,seriously damaged"
Already human rights organisations lament increasing infringements by secret services and law enforcement agencies in Germany. ,,The Constitutional Report 2003", published recently by seven prominent citizen- and human rights organisations, states: ,,The right to informational self determination, the inviolability of residence, as well as mail and telephone privacy have already been severely damaged."
,,Telephone privacy completely eroded"
Even the officially designated spokesperson of the Green Party, Mr. Montag, admitted that ,,telephone privacy in Germany is completely eroded". In the year 2002 alone, law enforcement authorities and secret service agencies ,,listened in on over 20 million telephone conversations, violating the privacy of 1.5 million individuals", according to Montag. In reality experts state that monitoring by the secret services exceeds by far the number of judicially ordered monitoring activities. According to an international comparative study of foreign and international criminal law by the Max-Planck-Institute, German authorities achieve a high ,,level of monitoring activities"; thus, adjusted for the number of inhabitants, 30 times as many telephone calls are monitored in Germany than in the USA.
Sources:
Abhören als Massengeschäft. Studie zur Telefonüberwachung; www.heise.de
Praxis der Telefonüberwachung in Deutschland skandalös; Pressemitteilung Nr. 270 der Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen
Verfassungsschutz: Grüne fordern grundlegende Überprüfung und Strukturreform; Pressemitteilung Nr. 295 der Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen
Geheimdienstarbeit grundlegend reformieren; Pressemitteilung Nr. 302 der Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen