>The fact that the CIA and NSA were prepared to reveal an ongoing surveillance operation to the Chancellery underlines the importance they attached to the leaks, say sources in Washington. The NSA, the sources say, were aware that the German government would know from then on that the US was spying in Berlin.
I'm sure that the Germans were shocked, shocked, to find that an intelligence agency was spying in Berlin.
Well, given that Germany officially hosts huge amounts of NSA and CIA staff, US military, US Airbases, US military commands, ... nobody is shocked.
The US lost a lot support in public opinion and people are increasingly demanding that the US removes these installations, troops and intelligence groups from Germany. Also the US will have a hard time to sell communication services, IT services and IT hardware in Germany (and Europe).
Why host the NSA in Germany, when it acts against our interests?
What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'.
>What shocks Germans is this: how very little their own government acts against the threat to our freedom created by our 'friends' and 'partners'.
That does not shock me at all. It makes me sad, that these days, there is simply no time for justice. There are so many complex scandals the average citizen cannot understand coming up after each other, by the time a scandal is investigated it is not interesting any more. So the public has largely just given up caring. There is some outrage but overall the sentiment seems to be: "Well, that's what politicians do."
Merkel hired those genius consultants, who taught her how to act, dress and hold her hands so that she is immune to public outcry. We know she is brilliant but she comes across as being just as stupid as we are but totally upright. She would never enrich herself or get caught being openly corrupt. She is just to boring for that, which is exactly what the German people want their leader to be. Every other politician would have lost his job so many times by now, but that woman can get away with everything. She is made out of teflon, these scandals just bounce of of her. And it is not, that we do not notices this: She famously destroyed all her political enemies a few years ago - after all the number two is 72 years old now. It makes me sad, that it works nevertheless.
The biggest political scandal in recent years was the fall of president Wulff [0]. There have been minor but simple accusations that the public could understand and was outrageous about. No complex monetary system, no difficult cold-war conflict, no highly technical espionage stuff. He was corrupt, but on a scale that the average person is corrupt. Take a small present here and there, take photos with people you should not take photos with. You cannot get away with something simple like that, especially when you handle the crisis badly.
The logical conclusion is, that we get borderline psychopaths and/or actors as politicians, who manage to build up an image of total boringness. They cannot be educated in any field, because their field actually is managing their own image. It makes me sad, that you are more likely to stay in office when you seem boring and stupid instead of intelligent and innovative. We ended up with a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system where everybody just maintains the status quo and tries to separate him- or herself as much from actual politics as possible. This of course leaves the actual decisionmaking to institutions like the intelligence agencies or big corporations and is how we end up with stuff like this.
Almost all discussions are focused inwards. That a foreign agency is trying to spy is no surprise. The big shock* comes from the details how german agencies were not only incapable of protecting anything but even helped foreign agencies to spy on our government and industry (obviously, spying on all citizens was not even a real topic for the governemt).
*) Unfotunatly, its mostly some media who even care about this stories. Most citizens are too lazy to even admit that this is a big scandal and Merkel uses her strategy of just doing nothing until media cannot earn enough money with the stories so that everyone just forgets. The only bigger outcry came from the industrial spionage allegations (media were like 2-3 weeks on it) because $$$.
I'm sure that the Germans were shocked, shocked, to find that an intelligence agency was spying in Berlin.