NSA’s interception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone is just another scandal in Barack Obama’s all-too-sad presidential term. That Ms. Merkel had directly complained to Obama only when she was personally targeted by the total surveillance spy organization and not already when Edward Snowden’s leaks in June taught respective lessons that all of us seem to live in an Orwellian/Benthem’s panopticon tells volumes about her democratic self-conception. In June, in the midst of the election campaign, it was down-played by her Chancellory and Interior Ministers Pofalla and Friedrich, who had even traveled to U.S. to visit the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade (where he wasn’t received).

“The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor,” White House spokesman Jay Carney responded. But what about the past? Nobody should make a mistake, this U.S. administration does not tell us the truth about total surveillance, the drone war, the relentless persecution of whistle-blowers. Thanks to them, we might have a chance to fend the worst. Certainly not  because of our leaders.

24 October 2013 @ 1:52 pm.

Last modified October 24, 2013.