Well, German intelligence can't spy on Der Spiegel legally, so getting tips from a friendly intelligence agency as to who is leaking info to the press seems to make a lot of sense.
If we allow this shit to happen, we lose as a democracy. How on earth do you think it could be even remotely acceptable to spy on a journalistic outlet?
/rant
Edit: chinathrow is actually correct, I thought OP was being sardonic but they seem to be sincere based on their follow-up comments.
I don't think we lose as a Democracy just from the spying alone, but rather what is done with it.
What lawsuit? Would you like to wager how likely it is that an American will be convicted?
Treating the law as "a list of rules everyone follows or they get in trouble" is a model that works for when you have a state to judge and enforce the rules. It does not work when organizations like powerful nation states are interacting with one another. A similarly non-traditional-law model can be seen in banking, where fines and settlements are often reached without a judicial process.
"As a target of the surveillance, SPIEGEL has requested more information from the Chancellery. At the same time, the magazine filed a complaint on Friday with the Federal Public Prosecutor due to suspicion of intelligence agency activity."
Fines and settlement by the way are in quite a lot of countries part of an actual judicial process.
If you don't want to answer about the chance of conviction, what do you wager the chances of a prosecutor simply bringing a case to a German court are?
Fines and settlements negotiated without a case ever being made public is an example of the laws working differently than they do for most. The banking example isn't much like foreign intelligence activity, of course, but it's similar in that powerful organizations' relationships with laws is different than yours or mine.
Fines and settlements can be reached for common people too - you can agree not to proceed with litigation and settle out of court. There is nothing wrong with that if both parties agree. Yes, I agree that sometimes it feels wired how the banks are treated, but you and I could settle out of court too if we wish.
Stop nitpicking words. Do you really disagree that banks who are negotiating with the IRS or DoJ have a different relationship with the law and prosecutors than the average prosecutee being offered a plea deal? The relationship between legal costs and settlement costs alone makes for a very different game.
I do not know the chances but I do hope that there will be more light what happened between the BND and the NSA. And I also hope that some folks at the BND will be put to jail for what they allowed to happen on german soil.
I am not nitpicking words. I do not disagree that banks have a different relationship, no. I see that as well. But I also see and accept that corps as well as private persons can settle out of court. (Thas has nothing to do with a plea deal). Settling out of court mostly is done on private terms, i.e. money or patents or whatever exchanges hands, where I think a plea deal is more about going to jail for less than what would be at risk with a trial.
There have been lawsuits against CIA operations in EU before: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html?...
Intelligence agencies are above the law not because they offer tips to each other, but because they have the resources and practice to be careful and not to leave enough evidence to be used to charge anyone.
There's also something fundamental to the nature of dealing in information - you can send anonymous tips, or suggest something while maintaining plausible deniability. I'm sure the source here didn't hand German intel a notarized letter saying "I'm John Doe of the CIA and we've been tapping Der Spiegel phones and this dude's definitely their source on the inside".
In a world where information is power and without a justice enforcer more powerful than the actors, an unknown leaker is significantly more of a threat than an allied IC. An ally will keep your secrets, and mutual secret-keeping reinforces alliances [1]. Journalists, on the other hand, are the gossip queens of the information trade, as they reap their rewards by telling secrets to everyone without much regard for when it's convenient. They are useful only as long as their access can be controlled.
The entry points NSA/CIA used are being watched by them, or maybe even honeypotted. The space of potential attacks is enormous and it's a waste of resources for the Germans to look for them (if that's even legal) as long as America remains an ally.
Please don't take what I am making as moral judgement of one way or another here, just as the practical analysis of the system I imagine these organizations to operate in.
1. Similar to high school cliques or criminals where mutual blackmail creates alliances where there is no access access to the normal judicial system, contracts, etc.
As it is, the NSA is not permitted to spy on domestic data. How do they get around that? The data of US citizens is moved to a data warehouse abroad. Oh, it is not in the USA anymore, now it's fair game! It's a huge loophole.
There has been talk of foreign governments colluding with the US government to get around domestic spying laws going many years back. I'm pretty sure I heard about it when the tech community was abuzz with Echelon and Carnivore. The Echelon furor was back around 2000.
My example was for Germany as this is the focus of this thread.
Not preventing someone from spying on your citizens, possibly encouraging them, and not prosecuting that entity once the matters become known, - looks certainly illegal to me.