President Obama's next meeting with Angela Merkel might be a tad less cordial.
The restoration of the nation's international reputation after the lawless Bush administration has been a bumpy road. Torture ended. That helped. Guantanamo remains open and is getting worse, much worse. That hurts. What also hurts?
This.
(Reuters) - German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday. [...]
In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially dangerous.
"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said. [...]
Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel's Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using "American-style Stasi methods". [...]
Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.
"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."
That is a bit of an issue for our friends overseas. Remember, the PRISM program is focused
primarily on overseas targets. Another less explosive revelation from the NSA consultant/leaker Edward Snowden is the
order from President Obama to his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of foreign targets for cyber attacks.
The fact that the laws protecting Americans seem to be awfully blurry is probably little comfort to our friends overseas.