Green Party Threatens to Sue German Government Over NSA Spy Scandal

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – German media have recently revealed that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel was alerted in 2013 to the US intelligence agency NSA spying on European firms and citizens using so-called selectors – search words, email addresses and telephone numbers – that it ran through computers of the US-German listening post in Bavaria.

The German intelligence service BND had to reject some 2,000 selectors in 2013 alone that it believed violated laws of the land. As many as 40,000 suspicious selectors were declined since early 2015.

Green party leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt said Saturday these lists were evidence in the NSA spying scandal.

"We expect the Federal Chancellery to hand over these lists to the [parliament's investigative] committee, or else we go to Karlsruhe [the seat of Germany's Constitutional Court]," the lawmaker said on her Facebook page.

The government has so far been reluctant to provide the Bundestag's investigative panel with the lists of NSA targets that BND spied on at US request. The opposition believes these include the EU-based Airbus and Airbus Helicopters (former EADS and Eurocopter), as well as French government agencies.