Similar to NSA’s Spying On U.S. News Media to See What They Knew About NSA Spying

The German Parliament is holding hearings into NSA spying on Germany. (Senior NSA veterans Bill Binney and Thomas Drake provided testimony).

A German intelligence officer from the BND has been arrested for spying on the Parliamentary hearings … or and on behalf of the U.S. government.

An employee of Germany’s intelligence service has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, reports say.

The man is said to have been trying to gather details about a German parliamentary committee that is investigating claims of US espionage.

German authorities have asked the US ambassador for “swift clarification”.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) was last year accused of bugging the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel as part of a huge surveillance programme.

The scale of the agency’s global spy programme was revealed in documents leaked last year by a former intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden.

Glenn Greenwald tweets:

That’d be the ultimate irony: US Govt spied on German parliamentary investigation into US Govt spying on Germans

This is similar to the NSA’s spying on American news organizations starting in 2002 to see what they knew – and planning to report – about NSA’s mass surveillance program against Americans.