15. Germany Discloses Most of the Spy Tools It's Using—and Other Countries Should, Too

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/31/jan_korte_germany_discloses_its_spy_tools_and_other_countries_should_too.html

On October 31st, Ryan Gallagher wrote about how Germany publicly displayed the methods and tools they used to monitor their country. Gallagher opens by saying that “law enforcement agencies refuse to reveal the surveillance technologies they use” because they are afraid it might endanger their country. He then said that a German politician asked the German ministry of home affairs to expose some information and the ministry gave many answers but some things were confidential. Some information they released was the amount of money they used to invest in each monitoring device (such as internet surveillance gear, cellphone-tracking tactic, and facial recognition software) and the companies who sold them. Gallagher said that there has been debate about this issue in other countries saying that surveillance violated civil liberties and privacy and that other nations should consider following Germany’s example by displaying at least some information to the public.

The purpose of the author was to inform the readers that other nations have already released their surveillance methods and tools to the public and maybe to arouse a stronger desire in the readers for the American government to do the same. Gallagher gives plenty of examples and explains what happened in order for that to happen very well, achieving his purpose. He even includes his own ideas that other nations should learn from Germany, but says how he doubts that they would do the same. One problem was that some of the tools he uses as examples are not well described, leaving the reader hanging on that subject without answers.