with friends and allies like the Greatest Nation on Earth™ Germany does not need enemies.

more Snowdens needed!

more Snowdens needed!

I concur. America is on a path that will place her on the wrong side of history if a course correction doesn't occur, and soon. Asa national that's a bitter pill to swallow. S

To someone like Angela Merkel, raised under Stasi rules, this must be absolute anathema.

She is constantly on her mobile phone, calling or texting, whereas other world leaders seem not to have caught up with the current obsession - even though BO has his Blackberry updated to the latest secure model and has all the bells and whistles imagineable, he is seldom seen using it and folks such as Camoron probably don't even know how to use the thing. It'd catch him out in too many lies.

By the way, can anyone tell me why A Merkel's family emigrated TO the East, when everyone there was trying to escape Westward?

one should not post whilst an excessive amount of cheap booze circulates within the bloodstream Humph.

The NSA is so massive that it is bound to do silly things every now and then (and maybe now as well as then). It got Iraq wrong, it didn't pick up on 9/11 until the planes went in, and now Merkel's phone (and probably, though much less fuss is made about it, Cameron and Hollande's phones).

How much will anyone offer for a transcript of Berlusconi's phonecalls?

one should not post whilst an excessive amount of cheap booze circulates within the bloodstream Humph.

No booze, but maybe an excess of good-strength coffee.

And I'm off to Vietnam in November, so the coffee intake will rise further.