There are times when the K-Landnews team wonders about the utility of the German language. Granted, the language makes for smooth everyday interactions with the natives and enables some sort of social life but other than that?
What good does it do if you can actually understand some xenophobic German rant on Twitter or facebook?
Where is the fun in trying to parse a ten page statement from their social security administration only to find out that a full retirement point for the year is tied to the average income, not mean income, of the working population? Average income distorts the future for lower wage people, effectively reducing further their already shrinking retirement benefit prospects.
But there is one reason to learn German, and this is the parliamentary committee known as NSAUA.
In the wake of what is commonly known as the Snowden revelations, the German Bundestag (their federal parliament) set up a committee to investigate the relationship between the NSA and the German foreign intelligence service BND.
The committee members are trying, and sometimes succeed, to do a good job. While the government does its best - or worst - to give the committee as little information as possible while claiming they, too, want a full and open investigation, the intelligence agency itself sometimes comes across as a mix of the cast of Get Smart and Yes, Minister.
This web site introduces the TV series Get Smart as follows: In 1965 the cold war was made a little warmer and a lot funnier due in
part to the efforts of an inept, underpaid, overzealous spy: Maxwell
Smart, Agent 86.
If you read the English language page of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) on Wikipeadia, you'll find some successes and minimal critical stuff. On the German page, things look rather different. The number of scandals this small, by US standards, agency has racked up is impressive.
Though, as far as we know, they have blundered without the use of shoe phones.
Before anybody accuses the K-Landnews of dissing the valiant employees of the BND, let's just say that those we personally know are good people. Most of them probably are, but they work within what looks like a thoroughly messed up system.
How bad this system really is shines through in some statements by witnesses before the committee. The agency is subordinate to a policy office reporting to the German Chancellor, Ms. Merkel, and witness statements show a revolving door between this office and the agency itself.
In one session, when confronted with letters sent by the BND to him, informing him of matters relevant to the current investigation, a director level witnesses said he had not been given the letters at the time because he did not have a high enough security clearance.
I have only seen them now that the committee is investigating.
How come, if you still don't have that clearance?
Correct, but I was granted a waiver this time.
Along the same lines, the previous president of the agency, Mr. Uhrlau, apparently worked with his U.S. counterparts like Gen. Hayden on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoA) first mentioned in Snowden docs, without apparently being unable to read the final document because of its classification level. **
Much of the crucial reporting of and within the agency somehow either did not happen (never heard of that operation before, told the supervising office verbally only) or continues to be under lock and key.
So, yes, learning German can be fun, and the multiple versions of "I don't remember", "what?", and "I'm sorry, it's been such a long time ago" may one day come in handy.
On the bright side, the BND has probably not tortured people.
** Yes, that's extremely odd, so we quote the German minutes from the only currently public source here:
Mittag: Schnittstelle Bundeskanzleramt und BND. Sie haben MoA mit erarbeitet. Sie konnten es nicht lesen, weil geheim.
No comments:
Post a Comment