Leaks continue of the NSA’s nefarious proclivities worldwide, this latest today carries some technological irony: Obama and Merkel spoke over the phone after the chancellor reportedly received information that U.S. intelligence may have been monitoring her cellphone.
Although I can’t really put my finger on the sense of it, but seemingly there’s something way-odd, and inherently dumb-ass in the above situation.
(Illustration found here).
The Guardian really describes this kind of shit best:
The furore over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.
Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be “livid” over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.
The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel’s mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency.
The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.
And then, whoa!
Talk about a just-way-awful, and obvious, dance-a-jig around the truth:
The White House responded that Merkel’s mobile is not being tapped.
“The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor,” said a statement from Jay Carney, the White House spokesman.
But Berlin promptly signalled that the rebuttal referred to the present and the future and did not deny that Merkel’s communications had been monitored in the past.
Asked by the Guardian if the US had monitored the German chancellor’s phone in the past, a top White House official declined to deny that it had.
Caitlin Hayden, the White House’s National Security Council spokeswoman, said: “The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel.
“Beyond that, I’m not in a position to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity.”
When it rains, it pours. This week has been a trip — Germany, France and Mexico. The Dutch last summer. Along with Brazil. All under surveillance by the NSA, and all pretty pissed as anyone would.
A two-day EU summit starts tomorrow in Brussels, and France wants all these US intelligence shenanigans to be part of the meeting’s agenda — as says Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault: “It is not only a French question but a European one.”
Well, actually it’s a worldwide question — unless you’re tone deaf.