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Representing Germany as a US client state made sense a generation ago, when it was an occupied nation not least because of its aggressive actions towards European Jewry, and because of the Cold War. Now it is home to a large Muslim population, many of whom are the targets of this surveillance, and the US is allied with Israel. Also, we have been fighting wars in the Middle East for over a decade.

I would suggest that the Germans are more than either a client state or allies. They are a leading state in the EU if not its defacto leader, and the EU is not your grandfather's EU.

Whatever metapolitical order establishes itself in cyberspace will certainly respect the real world politics, which is that relations between the US and EU are tense, and Germany's relationship with its own Muslim population is ambiguous as regards the concepts being thrown around here -- 'treason' and 'duties of a citizen' and 'sovereignty'.

Technical persons would do well to think through what they really want out of the world political order, and to pursue policies with good will that are conducive to peace. Perpetuating the political order of the last century will be both futile and counterproductive.

Our own intelligence agency is so biased against Muslims that it completely (and apparently wilfully) ignored the existence of a domestic neo-nazi group that murdered and bombed several "foreigners".

It's culturally acceptable to be "critical of Islam". Though the middle-class right-wing party ProNRW "only" received 1.5% of all votes in the last regional election, fundamentalist Muslim groups like the Salafists get plenty negative media coverage and the tabloids routinely run articles about those evil scary people.

I don't think the US has any reason to doubt Germany's willingness to pursue Muslim extremists.

EDIT:

To give you a quick impression of the German zeitgeist:

Most Germans are not aware of their status within the EU. Although we do complain about having to bail out other EU members and are proud of our industry most people merely boast about these things without realizing how far ahead we are.

The reason many Germans are critical of the EU these days is almost entirely the financial meltdown various EU members went through in the recent years. We don't feel about the EU the same way we feel about our country, but we feel a lot closer to Europe than to anywhere else (except for the US and Canada).

As far as I can tell most Germans think of Canada is the friendlier, cleaner, backwater sibling of the US. The general idea also seems to be that it's a great place to emigrate to because it's full of Germans (which of course isn't entirely accurate).

Germans generally think that the German government is pretty oblivious towards its citizens outrage about the NSA surveillance, but most Germans don't give it much consideration either. Except for the tech-savvy, nobody seems to really believe the NSA is actively looking (or even passively scanning and recording) their data.

I would say that most Germans generally think that while relations between the US and Germany (or the EU in general) have seen better days the two are still very closely tied, or at least as closely as Germany and France, and definitely closer than Germany and Russia (because a lot of Germans grew up during the Cold War and conflate Russia with the Soviet Union like Americans frequently do).

The tech-savvy crowd is split.

The start-up world mostly seems to have no problem relying entirely on US companies for their infrastructure. I would say those who are concerned about their users' privacy are similarly represented as "greens" were before "being green" became mainstream.

Big corporations mostly don't honestly care, but some see the publicity as an opportunity to make more money by catering towards those seeking some level of privacy. The result is more about marketing that about actually solving real problems, though.

Oh, and as for Israel: saying anything bad about Israel still is the easiest way to be branded an anti-Semite and Germans care a lot about not appearing anti-Semitic. There is some concern for Palestine, but that's mostly fuelled by far left-wing (and, less noticeably, far right-wing) parties. I'd say Germans are less unquestioning about Germany's allegiance to Israel, but it's generally seen as a historic duty than honestly agreeing with Israel's politics.

Disclaimer: I'm a software developer in Germany. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are much less interested in technology and politics than I am, but my appraisal of the cultural zeitgeist is still probably not 100% accurate (it can only be a snapshot anyway).

German intelligence services are not sovereign .. In fact the USA runs all German intelligence services by proxy and has done so since the end of hostilities. Until there is a Peace Agreement, Germany doesn't have the right to its own intelligence services. This is true even still today.

Haha.

> Now it is home to a large Muslim population

Slightly less than 5%, mostly from turkey, 2/3.

Germany is allied with Israel, too. We delivered them the submarines which they use for their nuclear weapons.

> Also, we have been fighting wars in the Middle East for over a decade.

Much more than a decade.

> which is that relations between the US and EU are tense

Sure.

> Germany's relationship with its own Muslim population is ambiguous as regards the concepts being thrown around here

Sure.

The main problem is that the ruling political parties in Germany are - please excuse the language, i don't know how else to put this - sucking US d*ck big time. The way the whole NSA/Snowden thing has been handled in Germany is a fucking joke.

You know why? I think it's because we have the same situation in Germany as in the US. We are still waiting for "our Snowden".

As far sucking US d*ck is concerned, most countries do that. The US goes to war of some or other kind on the countries that don't.

The word is dick.

"sucking US d*ck big time." has several other options available:

"In cahoots with", "defers to", "is complicit with", "is subservient to", "is unquestioning towards"

See, you just need to sprinkle a little bit of vocabulary to taste. I'll admit, it doesn't have the same panache as your "dick", but it is less derogatory.

Is it really less derogatory? Deferring to another countries government is treason, isn't it?

Not necessarily. They formed an alliance which is legal under both countries' documents of sovereignty.

An example:

Most E.U. member countries relinquish the protection of their borders to the E.U. organization proper. Does it lessen the sovereignty of the country? Yes,for instance, because of that reason France didn't acquiesce to the E.U. and retains full sovereignty and their own military.

Is it treason? No, because they have defined treason to allow it.

Yeah, but the E.U. contracts are out in the open (not secret) and the people had to vote for Germany to become a member of the E.U. At least in Austria we had to vote, I think it was the same in Germany.

It's not less derogatory and it's not less treasonous. But it is less vulgar and that's worth it.

please excuse the language

Let's just not do this.

Among other reasons, because it becomes an off-topic distraction.

What's more, the US and Germany have Cold War era agreements that basically allow the US to do whatever they damn well please.

Sure, they cancelled the one was made public (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/germany-nixes-surveillance-pa...) but considering Germany was founded under US/British occupation, I would be surprised if there weren't less public agreements that state more or less the same. After all, the German government was paranoid about the Soviets at the time, so they were happy to have the US handle everything.

Those cold war agreements always came with one important constraint: That the US would not use those facilities on German ground to spy on Germany.

Thinking that agreements mean anything to services whose sole purpose consists of breaking foreign countries' laws in order to gain strategic, tactical and economic advantage over these countries is wishful thinking. Especially if the aforementioned Germans have the wrong ethnicity or the wrong religion.

And they are building new bases.

I am also convinced that the German authorities know much more than we like to think (they don't say that they know nothing), and I'm also pretty sure the NSA and CIA know as much as the German authorities.