NSA spying on Merkel investigation

This video from the USA says about itself:

Peeping Webcam? With NSA Help, British Spy Agency Intercepted Millions of Yahoo Chat Images

28 February 2014

The latest top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Germany opens inquiry into claims NSA tapped Angela Merkel’s phone

Prosecutor announces inquiry but says he will not investigate claims of wider US surveillance against German citizens

Agence France-Presse in Berlin

Wednesday 4 June 2014 12.59 BST

Germany’s federal prosecutor has opened an investigation over alleged snooping by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on Angela Merkel‘s mobile phone.

“I informed parliament’s legal affairs committee that I have started a preliminary investigation over tapping of a mobile phone of the chancellor,” Harald Range said.

The long-anticipated inquiry, which follows allegations last year that US spies had eavesdropped on the German chancellor’s mobile in the past, is against unnamed persons, Range said after addressing the committee.

However, he said he had decided against opening an investigation into claims of wider NSA surveillance against German citizens.

The move may again strain Berlin’s ties with Washington, which both countries’ leaders have been at pains to restore following the reports of sweeping NSA spying on internet and phone communications overseas, described by Merkel as “grave”.

Data-sensitive Germans reacted with outrage to the accusations by the fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden amid sensitivity over mass state spying on citizens by the Stasi secret police in the former communist East Germany.

A parliamentary panel has been established to assess the extent of spying by the NSA and its partners on German citizens and politicians, and whether German intelligence aided its activities.

Recent reports that Range did not plan to go ahead with the wider probe had prompted anger from some politicians.

The US president, Barack Obama, sought to quell the international furore over the reports, announcing in January that he had halted spy taps on friendly world leaders and curtailed the reach of mass NSA phone surveillance.

In an interview with a German TV channel a day later he assured Merkel that he would not let intrusive surveillance harm their relationship, but said intelligence gathering on foreign governments would continue.

Merkel doubts whether US will stop spying on Germany: here.

Britain: Stephen Fry has denounced the government’s failure to act over the mass surveillance programme revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, labelling its behaviour as “squalid and rancid”. Opening a day of debate to galvanise action against spying by the British and US intelligence agencies, Fry said that exploiting the fear of terrorism is a “duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as spying on the citizens of your own country”: here.

Though the NSA says its mass surveillance of Americans targets only “terrorists,” the spying may turn up evidence of other illegal acts that can get passed on to law enforcement which hides the secret source through a ruse called “parallel construction,” writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern: here.