Once unabashedly Obama-loving, Germans now wary of his e-surveillance policies
Obama’s German Storm
By ROGER COHEN, NYT
LONDON — Germany is normally a welcoming place for American leaders. But President Barack Obama will walk into a German storm Tuesday provoked by revelations about the Prism and Boundless Informant (who comes up with these names?) surveillance programs of the U.S. National Security Agency.
No nation, after the Nazis and the Stasi, has such intense feelings about personal privacy as Germany. The very word “Datenschutz,” or data protection, is a revered one. The notion that the United States has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or Skype conversations of German citizens has been described as “monstrous” by Peter Schaar, the official responsible for enforcing Germany’s strict privacy rules. When the German bureaucracy starts talking about monstrous American behavior, take note.
What was scripted as a celebration of U.S.-German bonds on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech has turned into a charged presidential visit underlining how two nations that once had the same views about a shared enemy — the Soviet Union — now think differently about global threats and how to balance security and freedom in confronting them.
It would not be a surprise if Obama faced a banner or two at the Brandenburg Gate equating the United States with the Stasi; or, in an allusion to the chilling movie about the former East German spy service, one with this rebuke: “America, Respect the Lives of Others.”
(More here.)
LONDON — Germany is normally a welcoming place for American leaders. But President Barack Obama will walk into a German storm Tuesday provoked by revelations about the Prism and Boundless Informant (who comes up with these names?) surveillance programs of the U.S. National Security Agency.
No nation, after the Nazis and the Stasi, has such intense feelings about personal privacy as Germany. The very word “Datenschutz,” or data protection, is a revered one. The notion that the United States has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or Skype conversations of German citizens has been described as “monstrous” by Peter Schaar, the official responsible for enforcing Germany’s strict privacy rules. When the German bureaucracy starts talking about monstrous American behavior, take note.
What was scripted as a celebration of U.S.-German bonds on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech has turned into a charged presidential visit underlining how two nations that once had the same views about a shared enemy — the Soviet Union — now think differently about global threats and how to balance security and freedom in confronting them.
It would not be a surprise if Obama faced a banner or two at the Brandenburg Gate equating the United States with the Stasi; or, in an allusion to the chilling movie about the former East German spy service, one with this rebuke: “America, Respect the Lives of Others.”
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
My my my... The true Obama believers must be perplexed. After all, EVERYONE was simply going to LOVE us once we got rid of the wild-west shot 'em up cowboy named W. Perhaps if President Obama would flash his Nobel Peace prize lapel pin the world would be at peace, the waters would subside, sunshine would break out and unicorns would feast on rainbow lollipops...
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