German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal

The German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal (official title: 1. Untersuchungsausschuss „NSA“) was started on March 20, 2014, by the German Parliament in order to investigate the extent and background of foreign secret services spying in Germany in the light of the Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present). The Committee is also in search of strategies on how to protect telecommunication with technical means.

The committee is formed by eight members of the German Parliament. The parliamentarian of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Clemens Binninger was head of the committee but stepped down after six days. In a statement, Binninger clarified that the other committee members had insisted on inviting Edward Snowden to testify; Binninger objected to this and resigned in protest.Patrick Sensburg (CDU) succeeded him.

On May 8, 2014, the committee unanimously decided to let US whistleblower Edward Snowden testify as a witness.

On September 23, 2014, the Green Party and the The Left filed a constitutional complaint against the Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democrats and the NSA Parliamentary Committee because of the Christian Democrats' and the Social Democrats' refusal to let the witness Edward Snowden testify in Berlin. The accused proposed a video conference from Moscow which Snowden had refused.

On September 28, 2014, the Green Party and The Left filed a constitutional complaint against German chancellor Merkel. According to them, she refuses to comply with her duty according to Chapter 44 of the German constitution to ensure a real investigation; especially by refusing to ensure the legal requirements to allow the witness Edward Snowden to testify.

On July 3, 2014, the former Technical Director of the NSA, William Binney, who had become a whistleblower after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, testified to the committee. He said that the NSA has a totalitarian approach that has previously only been known from dictatorships and that there is no longer such a thing as privacy. Former NSA employee Thomas Andrews Drake described the close cooperation between the NSA and the German foreign intelligence service BND.

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