Snowden offers Germany help on NSA tapping if granted asylum

The famous US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has offered Germany his help with probing the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities on its soil if he is granted asylum, the Voice of Russia said, citing media reports. 

The German magazine Stern quoted the NSA challenger as saying in a letter to the weekly that he had a great respect for Germany and was ready to help its authorities investigate alleged NSA spying in Germany.

Snowden stressed that no one in the country believed that the White House could actually slap sanctions on Berlin as a result of its aid to him because it would cause “greater harm to the US rather than Germany.”

The anti-surveillance critic also underscored that the US Congress was not really going to revise its approach to surveillance. He said a respective panel that convened last week to review NSA global data scooping schemes had been praising intelligence agencies instead of trying to keep them in check.

“Their job wasn’t to protect privacy or deter abuses, it was to ‘restore public confidence’ in these spying activities. Many of the recommendations they made are cosmetic changes,” Wall Street Journal has cited him as saying.

Last week, Snowden wrote a similar letter to Brazil, saying he could help its government get more details on NSA spying activities there and warning that Washington would try to limit his “ability to speak out until a country grants me permanent political asylum.”

The leaker also took time to thank Russia for its help. He said he was “grateful for the opportunity to live in freedom and participate in major global debates through the year asylum granted by Russia.”

Snowden’s letter to the Stern comes after another message addressed “to whom it may concern,” which has been circulated in German political circles. In it, the fugitive freedom seeker said he wanted to go to Germany and testify over the US bugging of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone if he was given asylum there.

The letter prompted several scores of German public figures to plead with Berlin, asking to give him refuge for a “great service” that he had done exposing the US surveillance. However, the Merkel administration blatantly refused, with the Cabinet spokesperson claiming that for them “the transatlantic alliance remains of paramount importance.”