The NSA Spying Scandal in 2013 and Its Impacts on German-American Relations

Pre-University Paper from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Ortenburg-Grammarschool Oberviechtach, language: English, abstract: 'No Such Agency' - the public often jokes that this is what NSA stands for because even its existence was kept top secret by the American government for a few years. President Harry Truman founded the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952 after the USA had had success in creaking codes of the German and Japanese Army during World War II. The new agency was from then on responsible for decryption. Today, the two assignments of the NSA are Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance. Signals Intelligence, on the one hand, means the secret service has to supply the US government with "foreign intelligence [gathered] from communications and information systems", which can be helpful in preventing terrorism or in negotiations with other countries. Information Assurance, on the other hand, is the protection of America's state secrets. Together these two assignments make Network Warfare possible. Therefore, the overall purpose of this agency is helping America to achieve its political goals. Consequently, it also strengthens America's role as the world police. The public could only imagine how this secret service actually worked until Edward Snowden made several disclosures about measures of the NSA in 2013. These revelations provoked extensive debates on the whistle-blower himself, the programs of the NSA, their legal justification, Snowden's violations of law, the compatibility of surveillance and democracy, and on how this scandal affects the German-American relations especially because the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is involved in the global monitoring, too. This paper provides insight into the 2013 NSA spying scandal by giving an overview of historical considerations, legal aspects and the general deliberation of how democracy and surveillance can be combined. Further, the impacts on tthe German-American relations are presented. For one, the BND is considered as 'the German NSA', and the effects and reactions to the evelations in the two countries are portrayed.