Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, spoke to Barack Obama on Wednesday evening to demand explanations over reports suggesting that the NSA has been monitoring her mobile phone.
According to the Guardian, sources claim that Merkel, the head of the German government, was âlividâ over the reports. Whatâs more, leaning on German intelligence and investigations by the German news weekly Der Spiegel, she was apparently convinced that the claims were âutterly substantiatedâ.
That conviction of belief was enough to see her call Obama, telling him that she expected the Americans âto supply information over the possible scale of such eavesdropping practices against Germany and reply to questions that the federal government asked months ago.â
The White House has insisted that Merkelâs phone has not been tapped. âThe president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor,â a White House spokesman explained. Whether thatâs enough to appease Merkel remains unclear, but clearly the NSA debacle isnât doing a great deal for US-European relations. [The Guardian]
Image by Bundesregierung under Creative Commons license
