Every week, we hear more bad news about the danger to democracy brought by uncontrollable secret services spying on millions of citizens. And every week, more people realise how grave this cyber-attack on civil rights is.

The debate triggered by the recent NSA and GCHQ spy scandal forces governments to take a stand – in one way or another. How they act will be judged by us – the citizens of each nation in Europe and the rest of the world. The UK government is currently testing its limits with its outrageous assault against the Guardian, after disclosure of its shameful "I spy for you, you spy for me" policy. The British government turned against its people, against core democratic values and everybody could see it. But the German government is so far also failing to take a clear stand.

Germany assumes a very specific role in this conflict, turning out to be the most surveilled country in Europe, spied upon just as much as Saudi Arabia or China. But Germany is also the nation with perhaps the highest respect for data protection worldwide. In Germany, we learned the hard way how dangerous data collections about people are. My parents saw how in one lifetime a society can switch values from one extreme to the other, with two dictatorships using all the data its helpers could get hold of to oppress its own people. I saw one of these dictatorships close-up, growing up in East Germany. Why would we not be suspicious? If not against our current government, than against governments to come?

It is because of this dark past that not only are Germany's data protection laws stricter than elsewhere but also freedom rights are still held high. Intelligence officers forcing the destruction of source material at a media institution would lead to unthinkable outrage in Germany and, likely, a minister stepping down.

But among the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the last decade, Germany too has started using totalitarian methods. Many laws have been passed to ease surveillance – most of them while Angela Merkel was chancellor. Nearly one in every four of them were then scrapped by our highest court for being unconstitutional. Even the lax barriers of spy-friendly laws are regularly being ignored by public agencies. And still, we feel like a nation with the highest standards of privacy rights although, in fact, we have ceased to be one.

But the feeling and the high estimation of privacy is still vivid and this can now be used to reset the course, back to democracy, where we, the people, define checks and balances and the degree of transparency we want. It is no accident that the Pirate party has seats in four German state parliaments and realistic prospects to enter the national parliament in September. This young political force represents the digital society, fighting for transparent governments and citizen empowerment as well as for freedom rights and privacy.

Germany's special situation, combined with its economic and political power, comes as an opportunity and as an obligation. We must kick off a global surveillance disarmament movement just like the nuclear disarmament decades ago. While the world has so far succeeded in preventing a nuclear world war, we find ourselves on the verge of a globalised totalitarian system, with more repressive potential than has been seen before.

Pushed by Germany, this surveillance disarmament could start within the EU, with basic rights such as freedom of the press reinstalled and an end to spying on citizens. We, as a union of 28 countries, could become the core of a new value system for the global digital society. Together, we can take back our sovereignty and tell the US that we are no longer their allies in a war that is no longer a war on terrorism but on the people. The German federal election will be also be a vote on whether we want this change to happen or prefer to wait until it is too late.

• This piece was commissioned after a suggestion from JTzara. If there's a subject you'd like to see covered on Comment is free, please visit our You Tell Us page