Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama

Ian Traynor in Brussels and Paul Lewis in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday 17 December 2013 18.23 GMT

In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.

The German chancellor also told the US president that America's National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.

Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi."

The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, "the NSA clearly couldn't be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out."

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/merkel-compares-nsa-stasi-obama

[MannyGoldstein]

1. That's totally unfair of Merkel to say

LOL!

[rhett o rick]

3. She's just pissed because Obama didnt give her a neck massage ala Boy Bush. nm

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Eww.

Buzzkill!

[LiberalEsto]

2. I'd love to hear Obama's reply

if any.

[appal_jack]

5. If he was honest, he'd say that the Stasi had nothing on the NSA.

If he was honest, he'd say that the Stasi had nothing on the NSA. Compared to their microphone/bug/land-line tapping, the NSA's powers and reach are vast.

I highly recommend watching "The Lives of Others," for a glimpse of how corrosive all-pervasive surveillance can be. And afterwards, imagine what a surveillance state could do when almost everyone's location is known (cell phones), personally-carried microphones and cameras (also in cell phones & laptops & home computers) can be monitored at will, and virtually all communications can be retrieved and electronically searched & cataloged. Compared to that, the Stasi were friggin' amateurs.

I reserve my 4th Amendment-guaranteed right to be secure in my person and property, and my 5th Amendment guaranteed right against self-incrimination.

k&r

-app

[LiberalEsto]

8. Just wait till they start microchipping everyone

Then we won't be able to ditch our cellphones to avoid being tracked.

I hate everything that's happening with all this spying and snooping.

[demosincebirth]

6. Maybe she hasn't opened the rest of her country's closets, yet.

[Wilms]

7. ^