Obama promised spying on Merkel would stop. Should Merkel have looked at the fine print when she talked to Obama? Even if you agree to this premise, the leaks show that NSA is not competent enough to carry out this task.
I agree with Mr Scheiner[0] that the NSA ought to be broken up.
All of which is pretty obvious. Of course we're spying on them, and I'm sure they're spying on us too. Somebody made one of the programs public, so of course we're going to promise to stop. What else is Obama going to say, "We're gonna spy on you and you can't stop us, nyah nyah!"? Thus the essential hypocrisy of diplomacy - that's obviously the truth of the situation, and it isn't going to change, but nobody can say it publicly. Clearly, he told them publicly to stop doing that, and through some back channel told them that he really wanted them to only obey the letter of that - keep on spying, just don't use this particular source in this particular way.
Germany is not technically able to spy like that on the USA. The german agencies don't have direct access to american telefon lines and communication providers, and not to that amount of internet traffic, nor the technical equipment needed to search through data of that amount. And they don't have the rights to operate like that on american ground (in contrast to the rights the USA still have from after the war). There are american listening posts in Germany, not german listening posts in the USA.
Or do you think that if the BND asked the NSA to send over a few million of the collected emails from american citizens, they would happily do so? No, that is of course a one-sided thing.
The "of course they are spying on us" is FOX-rhetoric, and wrong.
The US (and UK) have no right to operate listening posts in Germany either. Just because they have some secret contracts or whatever doesn't make it a right.
Contracts can be canceled. The current affair would be a very good reason to do so, and close all the military bases in one big swoop.
Yes, and as the article says, the locals are also paying. The parlance seems to be "costs and burden-sharing".
On the other hand a fraction of ten billion USD is not that much for the Germans to sacrifice for slightly more privacy. (A fraction, since ten billion USD is the total cost the US pays, and Germany is but one country they have bases in.)
And so what? The world is not a fair place. We can and do spy on all countries using any means at our disposal, as do they. If their means aren't as good as ours, that isn't our problem. If they had better means than us, they would use them, and they wouldn't care that it wasn't "fair".
I agree with Mr Scheiner[0] that the NSA ought to be broken up.
[0] http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/opinion/schneier-nsa-too-big/