Germany: even the closest friends don’t like to be fooled

. As the saga sparked by Edward Snowden continues to rage, more countries around the globe join the chorus of those outraged by the US spying programs. Even America’s closest allies seemed to be surprised by the “elastic conscience” of its long-standing partner.  One of the most offended by the NSA eavesdropping was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Considering that as a child of the former East Germany, Merkel grew up with her phone being tapped, no wonder that Der Spiegel’s report on the American surveillance agency listening to her phone calls, had a special resonance for Merkel. "This contradicts the interest of German people. There are no grounds for spying. Every German citizen is disappointed. The level of trust between the two countries needs to be restored,"Angela Merkel said. But sentiments aside, there are serious political consequences for this credibility gap. On October 24, the US ambassador was asked to come to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany because of the reports of phone tapping of the German Chancellor. Soon after that Merkel herself called...

Read More........ → May 22, 2014

Will Prez Obama rein in NSA?

President Barack Obama is expected to restrict National Security Agency access to Americans’ phone records and rein in spying on foreign leaders, according to people familiar with a White House review of the government’s surveillance programs. Obama could unveil his highly anticipated decisions as early as next week. On Thursday, the president is expected to discuss his review with congressional lawmakers, while his top lawyer plans to meet with privacy groups. Representatives from tech companies are meeting with White House staff on Friday. The White House says Obama is still collecting information before making final decisions. Among the changes Obama is expected to announce is more oversight of the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, a classified document that ranks U.S. intelligence-gathering priorities and is used to make decisions on scrutiny of foreign leaders. A presidential review board has recommended increasing the number of policy officials who help establish those priorities, and that could result in limits on surveillance of allies. Documents released by former...

Read More........ → January 10, 2014

Obama clearly knew about Merkel’s phone bugging – Russian official

Photo: EPA Barack Obama and his administration must have been told about the bugging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone, a senior Russian lawmaker has argued. Obama has reportedly told the German leader he had known nothing about the NSA operation when the two of them spoke earlier this month. "You can’t possibly believe that the Obama administration knew nothing about Merkel’s tapping due to a huge amount of NSA operations," tweeted Alexei Pushkov, Russian parliament’s chief of foreign affairs committee. "It’s just laughable," he opined. Earlier, the Wall Street Journal cited its sources in the US government as saying that the National Security Agency had been spying on 35 foreign leaders for over five years. The massive data scooping program then caught the attention of Obama’s administration, which ordered to halt them. Some of the operations were stopped at once while others are still pending, the paper says. Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine also said Obama and Merkel had a phone call where the US leader apologized for the NSA’s activities and vowed he had been kept in...

Read More........ → October 28, 2013