German leader flat out states that Obama’s government is little better than the East German Stasi.
“In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.
The German chancellor also told the US president that America’s National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.
Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: “This is like the Stasi.””
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
Did the leaders of the NSA and its partners around the world, both the ones who cut those deals in the first place and the ones now keeping them in place, really think they wouldn’t be viewed in those terms?