If you've been following the German news of the past week, you might notice that it's summer vacation and there's really not much there to report on. Well....it ought to be that way, but the journalists (newspaper and media) have found the Netzpolitik Affair, and it's a one-star marginal story but it's the best they can hang onto.
The basic story?
After the Snowden thing of last year in Germany.....there was some talk of Germany getting too much into NSA's pattern of reviewing email and communications or allowing the NSA to review everything. Gripes were tossed onto the Merkel government....it wasn't right to be so close to the NSA and violate ethics.
Weeks and months went by. In the early spring of this year.....this blogger group in Germany.....Netzpolitik (not really known for much except political stories) got ahold of a secret document which basically says that the German security folks will ramp-up their review of emails and digital messages.
Netzpolitik hypes up their distaste for this and how this secret info says a lot.
Well....the German government woke up and asked.....where did you get the secret correspondence? No answer.
A state prosecutor got involved and started charges of some type.
Oh my.....that got people peeved, and thinking back to the 1960s when German journalists were arrested and held for months over acquiring secret info. Laws were in place to protect journalists. Amusingly enough, laws are also there to protect classified information. Which law ranks higher? No one says.
Last week, the Justice Department of Germany got involved....it's run by the SPD. And they basically told the prosecutor involved.....he was to retire (he was 66 and probably accepting of the 'push'). The hint here by the Justice Ministry was that it just wasn't right, and they'd lost respect for the poor prosecutor involved. I think one journalist even wrote 'toxic atmosphere' into their report of the mess.
You'd think it was over now. Well...no, it's still brewing.
The Netzpolitik folks are still reporting away on this. The state-run TV folks are running with this as their lead-in story for the last two nights. Everyone seems hyped up....over a story that doesn't really matter to 99.9-percent of the German public.
The potential thought that the Justice Ministry might have to fire their top guy (a SPD guy) to show it wasn't a fair situation? This is oddly brought up now.
The end of the Netzpolitik mess? Well....no. There's still some investigation going on.
The other factor? No one mentions this one strange thing.
All of this comes from a leaked document that came either via the German secret network folks or the political apparatus. Who leaked?
If you ask this question.....you come to this odd thought.....if the NSA turned off your information gleaned by their sources of German emails.....then you'd have to ramp-up your own process and program (which is what this whole thing seems to say). If the NSA dumped the German intelligence folks.....wouldn't that be a shocker?
And if this occurred, wouldn't you want the German intelligence apparatus collecting and being ahead of the bad guys? Or is this all illegal and we should just wait till dead bodies are buried and act confused, then jerk around to fire government people because they weren't doing their jobs to protect the nation or it's people?
Is Netzpolitik telling half a story? I'm not sure about this, but they might have someone leading to an agenda, and it's all a theme for the 2017 election.
Basically, without any bad economic period and everyone hyped up on refugees and immigration issues......at least two political parties are in a sour mode right now and no way to get the public all hyped up on a friendly theme. Maybe this is what the secret document and Netzpolitik were there to do....just hype people, and we are watching this unfold as such.
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