The German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has dismissed a petition by left-leaning German members of parliament in their attempt to get Edward Snowden to Germany to testify before its so-called NSA Committee.

The Constitutional Court’s December 4 decision, which was only announced (Google Translate) on Friday, said that the appropriate venue for such a petition was the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), Germany’s highest court. The Constitutional Court, as the name implies, deals with the constitutionality of federal laws.

Founded in March 2014, the NSA Committee is tasked with specifically investigating "whether, in what way, and on what scale" the United States and its Five Eyes allies "collected or are collecting data" to, from, and within Germany.

Snowden previously said in March 2014 that he wanted safe passage or asylum in a European Union member country. In May 2014, his German lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck, told German parliamentarians that Snowden should not testify from Russia, where he currently resides after having been granted asylum.

In October 2013, it was revealed that the United States had been spying on German government leaders, in particular Chancellor Angela Merkel. While many officials have expressed outrage, other opposition politicians in parliament believe that the dust-up is manufactured, as the government implicitly or explicitly supports surveillance by Germany’s own BND, a longstanding NSA ally.

A group of politicians from the Green and Left parties petitioned the court directly, arguing that the German government has violated Germany’s Basic Law (roughly analogous to its constitution) by not clearing the way for Snowden to come to Europe.

Given recent history with both the Nazi regime and East Germany, modern Germany is very concerned with privacy rights and data protection. This reputation has enticed a number of "digital exiles" to Berlin, most notably Laura Poitras (one of the journalists who broke the Edward Snowden story) and Jacob Appelbaum, a well-known American computer security researcher and Tor developer.

Some Germans have called on Berlin to offer asylum to the famous whistleblower and have begun a "Ein Bett für Snowden" (A bed for Snowden) campaign. Hans-Christian Ströbele, one of the petitioners, a veteran Green Party parliamentarian from Berlin, famously met with Snowden in Moscow in November 2013.

In April 2014, Jeffrey Harris, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, sent a letter to Knut Abraham, the legal advisor at the German embassy. In it, he warned: