NSA Fuckery: Like Using a Gun to Rob Someone of Five Bucks

The NSA mined contacts of our own government officials (with their knowledge) to develop more phone numbers of foreign officials to monitor. The problem is that they got hardly anything for it:

But the [2006 NSA] memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced "little reportable intelligence". In the wake of the Merkel row, the US is facing growing international criticism that any intelligence benefit from spying on friendly governments is far outweighed by the potential diplomatic damage.

The Obama Administration's carefully worded denials do not deny that the NSA was monitoring German Chancellor Merkel. She is royally hacked off and personally called President Obama to let him know.

What the press is forgetting, because they have the attention span of an insect, is the reason why Merkel is so pissed off: She grew up in East Germany. This probably seems to her the sort of shot that one would have expected of the Stasi.

The Obama Administration has been stonewalling the French, the Germans and the Brazilians. Merkel is having none of it. I suspect that there will be not inconsiderable blowback from this, as most of our foreign friends come to realize as far as the NSA was concerned, there is no difference between the Germans and the Russians or between the French and the Chinese.*

Oh, and as for the stuff that is starting to trickle out from the "conservative" side, which is trying to blame Obama for spying on allies-- who was the President when this spying really got going? The NSA memo first mentioned was written in 2006-- remember who was living in the White House back then? So shut the fuck up.
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* What the hell, as far as the NSA is concerned, there is no difference between American citizens and members of al Qaeda.