Tell U.S. and German Governments to End Mass Surveillance and End Killing by Drones
World Beyond War
hanks to courageous whistleblowers, we have been learning about U.S. and German cooperation in mass surveillance and drone killings.
The petition you sign will be presented in Berlin by Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack, and Norman Solomon on the final day of the June 1-7 Stand Up For Truth week of actions in support of whistleblowers.
As facts have come out, the chief governmental response has been retribution against the whistleblowers and media outlets, including the Associated Press.[1]
But courts have finally begun to push back, striking down some of the illegal bulk data collection[2], and hearing a case challenging Germany's participation in drone wars.[3]
A parliamentary inquiry[4] in Berlin is exposing a decade-long criminal collaboration by U.S. and German spy agencies, spying on other governments, even as the U.S. has spied on Germany as well. Germany is drastically reducing its cooperation with the NSA, pending investigation into the scandal.[5]
Documents[6] have also emerged which show the satellite relay station at the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany serves as “the high-tech heart of America’s drone program,” facilitating Reaper and Predator strikes in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa. A lawsuit argues that it is illegal for the German government to allow the Ramstein base to be used for drone murders abroad, especially after the passage of a 2014 resolution in the European Parliament urging European nations to “oppose and ban the practice of extrajudicial targeted killings” and to “ensure that Member States, in conformity with their legal obligations, do not perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings by other states.”
Drone wars and mass surveillance have been counterproductive for their announced goals as well as immoral and illegal.[7]
Click below (on link) to tell the U.S. and Germany: "End the mass surveillance of people in violation of our basic rights, and end the practice of blowing people up with missiles from drones."
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=11295