Obama defends US spying in uneasy Germany

 

 

US President Barack Obama and  German Chancellor Angela Merkel at press conference

US President Barack Obama  defends the actions of his government’s spying on Germany and its citizens on his Wednesday visit to the country, shortly after NSA revelations exposed that Germany was the US’s most spied upon European nation.

Mission spy  codenamed ‘Prism’ operation instigated an outcry in a nation which still remembers the East German secret ‘Stasi’ police force.

“Yes We Scan” has been a popular headline across the German press in the days preceding Obama’s visit. On the day of his arrival in the country on Wednesday, Berlin witnessed a small crowd campaigning against the NSA’s surveillance of foreign communications, with people waving placards bearing the mocking phrase.

“There has to be proportionality,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference on Wednesday. Merkel herself grew up in the communist East. “The free democratic order is based on people feeling safe,” she stated, while conceding that on certain occasions, information needed collecting.

Merkel confessed surprise at the breath of spying that was exposed, saying that the US must clarify exactly what data was being collected and monitored.

Obama defended the US “encroachment on privacy” stating that it had been limited by a US-court-approved process.

“This is not a situation where we are rifling through ordinary emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anyone else,” he said on his first visit to Berlin.

It had been revealed shortly before Obama’s visit that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, according to a map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency (NSA).

“The questions are not yet resolved – and of course there are those – which we will discuss,” stated Merkel. Obama tried to reassure her that he was “confident that we can make the necessary balance.Media agencies