President Barack Obama apologised to the German chancellor and promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring and would have stopped it if he had, Der Spiegel reports.
But on Sunday Bild newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying NSA head Keith Alexander personally briefed the president about the covert operation targeting Mrs Merkel in 2010.
“Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” the newspaper quoted a senior NSA official as saying.
Her number was still on a surveillance list in 2013.
BBC News – US bugged Merkel’s phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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Mrs Merkel apparently believed the words of a Hollywood movie star in 1990, “The Evil Empire is gone!”
The BBC reports, “Mrs Merkel – an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 – is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany.”
It is best to assume that any and all phone calls can and will be monitored by a foreign entity. If you have a cell phone made in China, that capability is probably built right in — along with the capability to disable the device on command.
I have exactly zero issues with NSA monitoring any electronic signal received outside of the borders of the US and I would support their ability to do that.
We have to watch out for those sneaky Germans. There is one hiding under every rock.
And in the spirit of “what’s good for the goose”, Russia and China will also monitor everyone’s communications from now on. India already does, since it provides the world with IT support at low cost.
What the #ell, does she think she’s special?
He’s lied to everybody else!
Look at the expression on her face.
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-spies-in-the-embassy-fotostrecke-103079.html
As Peter Wright laid out in his book, Spycatcher, back in 1985, governments spy on each other constantly. Heck according to Wright, back in the late 1950s early 1960s, the first people the Brits phone tapped were other Brits, then they tapped the French Embassy in London.
I wonder who UK’s GCHQ taps these days, and how much goes through unofficial/semi-official/official channels to NSA.
Sorry Angela it is the nature of the beast.
Don’t say sorry to an apparatchik like Merkel. Her “Bundesnachrichtendienst” is just as bad and just like Obama is screwing ordinary Americans, she’s screwing ordinary Germans. They’re all fuck ups.
Yes he did: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-27/all-latest-merkels-obamaphone-scandal
Well that’s ironic. Our President Tantrums giving the German chancellor the old “I know noth-ING!” Sgt. Schulz routine!