German chancellor to Obama: Stop listening in on my cell phone

The NSA saga continues to unravel with the German government expressing anger after receiving information that the U.S. may have been monitoring Angela Merkel’s cell phone, according to a statement by her spokesperson.

Following the allegations, the German leader called President Obama demanding clarification and said that if such practices were being employed, it “would be a serious breach of trust” and “completely unacceptable”.

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The White House responded to the accusations yesterday and said: “The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel… As the President has said, the United States is reviewing the way that we gather intelligence to ensure that we properly balance the security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share.”

However, the American president did not completely rule out the possibility that the alleged phone tapping had happened in the past.

The outrage in Berlin comes only a couple of days after French President François Hollande confronted Obama over reports that the NSA had engaged in large-scale spying of French citizens.

This isn’t the first instance of foreign governments bristling at the United States’ surveillance techniques. Check out these recent events:

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The good guys

• BitTorrent says your data should belong to you.
• Germany creates new, secure email services for citizens.
• Again, the German government creates an 8-point plan to circumvent U.S. spying.
• TorSearch launches secret searching with security promises Google can’t keep.
• The Brazilian government follows Germany’s lead and builds a secure national email service.
• Deutsche Telekom makes its own promise: “No byte leaves Germany.”

The bad guys

• Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and everyone else literally lie to our faces about PRISM involvement.
• The NSA bugged 75 percent of web traffic and 56,000 emails per year.
• The NSA was also caught spying on the United Nations as well as Al Jazeera.
• Giving is better than receiving — except that time the NSA turned over surveillance data to Israel.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage. Copyright 2013