Obama defends intelligence tactics in wary Berlin
Source: REUTERS
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama defended U.S. anti-terrorism tactics on a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, telling wary Germans Washington was not spying on the emails of ordinary citizens and promising to step up efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
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But revelations before the trip of a covert U.S. Internet surveillance program, code-named Prism, caused outrage in a country where memories of the eavesdropping East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.
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Merkel said at a joint news conference that also touched on Afghanistan, Syria and the global economy, that the two leaders had held "long and intensive" talks on the spying issue, noting that some questions still needed to be cleared up.
Obama tried to reassure his host, who as a pastor's daughter growing up in the communist East experienced the Stasi first-hand.
"This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else," Obama said.
"This is not a situation where we simply go into the Internet and start searching any way we want. This is a circumscribed system directed at us being able to protect our people and all of it is done under the oversight of the courts."
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-obama-berlin-idUSBRE95I0OR20130619
Much more at the link!
Were the Germans reassured by the President's words? What is the exchange rate on that coin nowadays?
PB
= new reply since forum marked as read
PB
