‘Handygate” is another instance of foreigners hijacking what they think is American English and hip. A “handy” is a cellphone in German. Melded with “gate,” it stands for the U.S. National Security Agency’s assault on Germany’s national dignity: hacking into Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile, as trumpeted by defector Edward Snowden from his Moscow hideout in 2013.

Now the German media are engaged in equal-opportunity bashing. The NSA gets it but so does the BND, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service. Earlier this month the cover of Der Spiegel read: “The Betrayal.” Inside, the magazine claimed that the government and its spooks had undermined the nation’s interests, with the BND spying on German citizens and European companies on behalf of the villainous NSA. The hero of the drama is Mr. Snowden, who keeps dribbling out pilfered classified data.

“Friends don’t spy on friends” was the line out of the chancellor’s office during Handygate. But they do. In the real world, everybody spies on everybody. Ask such best friends as the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Germany is also a favorite playground for British and French intelligence, not to mention Russians and Chinese. Berlin, after all, is the fulcrum of the strategic balance in Europe and capital of the world’s third-largest arms exporter.

The BND stands accused of delivering massive amounts of metadata—such as account details and phone-call histories—to the NSA as well as reams of intelligence on European arms consortia, European Union institutions and EU leaders. It also allegedly supplied phone numbers the NSA presumably used to eavesdrop on the French.

Prosecutors are filing charges against “persons unknown.” Parliament is investigating. Opposition parties of the left are smearing Ms. Merkel, yesterday’s NSA victim, as a “poodle” of the Americans. But the basic story is as fresh as last week’s weather report.