NSA Spying on Angela Merkel Since 2002

Look, friends spy on friends, although even Merkel's cell phone was bugged.

She's obviously not pleased, and just reelected to a third term, she's got some political capital, and she aims to spend some of that against President Dronekiller.

At the New York Times, "Amid New Storm in U.S.-Europe Relationship, a Call for Talks on Spying":

BERLIN — While President Obama has tried to soften the blow, this week’s disclosures about the extent of America’s spying on its European allies have added to a series of issues that have sharply eroded confidence in the United States’ leadership at a particularly difficult moment.

The sharp words from Germany, France and others this week are part of a broader set of frustrations over issues like the Syrian civil war, the danger posed to the global economy by Washington’s fiscal fights and the broader perception that President Obama himself — for all his promises to rebuild relations with allies after the presidency of George W. Bush — is an unreliable partner.

This American administration is “misreading and miscalculating the effects” of its deeds in a Europe that is less ready than it once was to heed the United States, said Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research organization in Washington.

Early on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France emerged from a meeting of European leaders to call for talks with the United States on new rules for their intelligence relationship. A statement from the European leaders said a “lack of trust” could undermine trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation.

Earlier in the week the European Parliament had acted to suspend an agreement with the United States that allows it to track the finances of terrorist groups, citing suspicions that the United States authorities were tapping European citizens’ personal financial data.

The disclosures contained in the documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have crystallized a growing sense in Europe that post-Sept. 11 America has lost some of the values of privacy and accountability that have been the source of the world’s admiration for its version of democracy.

So fierce was the anger in Berlin over suspicions that American intelligence had tapped into Ms. Merkel’s cellphone that Elmar Brok of Germany, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a pillar of trans-Atlantic exchanges since 1984, spoke Friday of America’s security establishment as a creepy “state within a state.”

Since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”

And at the Verge, "US has been monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002, report says."

And at London's Daily Mail, "German officials set to travel to the U.S. 'shortly' to discuss spying allegations and whether Angela Merkel's phone was monitored by the NSA," and "U.S. monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002."