> Nonetheless, one of two things is true:
>
> 1) the U.S. actually threatened Germany that it would refrain from notifying them of terrorist plots against German citizens and thus deliberately leave them vulnerable to violent attacks, or
>
> 2) some combination of high officials from the U.S. and/or German governments are invoking such fictitious threats in order to manipulate and scare the German public into believing that asylum for Snowden will endanger their lives.
>
I'm sure it's the second one. A scared public accepts reforms that strengthen government power and budget shifts to allow more surveillance and less privacy.
Makes sense. Couldn't Germany/E.U also claim to deny sharing information with the U.S?
Yes, the U.S has the best intelligence agency in the world, but Europe is closer to most hostile nations in the world. If EU said 'no sharing info with the US', wouldn't that be a much larger problem than the other way around?
Yeah, France shared information about Moussaoui, Russia shared information about Tsarnaev, so it's hard to imagine U.S. withholding similar kind of information in similar situations, so it was probably a bluff.
Did I miss the part where the US took their case to the German public to "manipulate and scare"? Pretty sure the link mentions that these "threats" were done in private to German officials.
I'm sure it's the second one. A scared public accepts reforms that strengthen government power and budget shifts to allow more surveillance and less privacy.