SPYING ON FRIENDS: American and German flags hang together at Blair House across from the White House in Washington June 6, 2011. News of the US cyberespionage programme Prism have outraged Germans, who are highly sensitive to government monitoring having lived through the Stasi secret police in the former communist East Germany. - Reuters
BERLIN: The United States taps half a billion phone calls, e-mails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China, according to secret US documents quoted by a German newsmagazine.
The revelations of alleged US surveillance programmes based on documents taken by fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have raised a political furore in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.
