And Italy? Their former PM was convicted of wiretapping his political opponents and arranging to have transcripts published in the media, which he controlled.
Basically, the simplest response I can give to your comment is that I don't agree and don't believe this argument.
You are right that Germany is more limited in its capabilities than the NSA is.
But your belief about the limits of European surveillance presupposes that EU governments aren't colluding to pool their resources and circumvent their own statutory boundaries, when there is in fact evidence that this does happen.
Further: the aspects of NSA surveillance that seem to have people most up in arms are also not hugely expensive. The NSA's targeted exploit programs are not multi-billion-dollar investments. Can NSA decrypt things that the BND can't? Almost surely yes! But direct cryptanalysis attacks, the sort that are abetted by huge data centers in Utah or wherever, aren't the problem. What happens instead is that sovereign SIGINT services have organized to take advantage of latent Internet flaws.
So that giant data center in Utah isn't being turned against the American people? Maybe it could be demolished before it is used that way, and we could swap the NSA's budget for the BND's.
Taking away the NSA's money is the only way to trust that it's operations against Americans are curtailed.
No international company will host German users data in Germany. Germany has plenty of protections for citizens of other countries from being spied upon, but views it's own citizens as it's slaves.
IANAL, just a tech worker frustrated by what my lawyers are telling me.
That is because they don't at the same extent that Americans.
First, although Europe's economy is bigger than the US when you consider all countries combined, each state has its own Security services. Being fractured means they are much less powerful than 50 billions a year NSA.
It also means they could decide what to share and what not with each other.
Second, they don't control tech companies like the US does thanks to the fascist(the State controlling all businesses) Patriot Act Laws. You have the option to collaborate with them or not without going to jail if you tell anybody.
Europe has the scars of similar fascist laws in Germany, Italy, Poland... and they are very careful abut them.