There is no real democracy

The Bush administration isn’t the only ones caught out spying on their own citizens. More to the point German spies, like their US counterparts, have been caught phone tapping journalists in an effort to trace their sources.
The defence of these type of activities has always been, ‘if you are innocent you have nothing to worry about.’ Innocent of what; innocent of seeking truth and exposing crooked corrupt governments and officials?
The other side of the coin is ‘if you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to hide’. Well Mr President, I guess your snooping on citizens, and on journalist to plug those nasty leaks make it abundantly clear that you have something to hide.
Unlike the American administration, the German government, in fact the German body politic, is highly embarrassed by revelations of internal spying by their Federal Intelligence Service (BND). According to leaked report, the BND spied on far more journalists than previously known as well as hired some as informants in order to find out the source of leaks from the BND to the press. The story sounds familiar so far.
Hamburg-based news magazine Stern reported in its edition due out on Thursday that a bugging device had been found in the apartment of one of its journalists, Peter Schütz, who often covered arms deals and BND activities.
The magazine said that although the complete bugging mechanism could not be found, experts concluded it "bore all the hallmarks of the secret services."
Some members of parliament have threatened to widen an ongoing probe into the BND's activities abroad. The Federal Intelligence Service is already subject to an inquiry over the role two of its agents played in helping the US in the invasion of Iraq.
The whole concept of modern democracies spying on their citizens, journalists or otherwise, belies the vision of mature homogenous societies. In place of the transparency, which western democracies try to force on less developed economies, we seem stuck in the same old ‘dog eat dog’ rut.
The problem is, we are electing, or allowing the election of, vicious dogs that have no problem with eating the rest of us and pissing on the bones. Our governments are no better than the old Soviet governments they so soundly vilified. There is no real democracy, just a sham, a PR trick to keep the rest of us in order.