Germany says Obama failed to address concerns over spying

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government said that US President Barack Obama's pledge for new restrictions on mass surveillance by US spy agencies so far offered "no answer" to Germany's concerns over spying.

The government in Berlin will "look very closely" at the consequences of Obama's January 17 speech addressing the matter while talks between the two countries' intelligence officials continue, Merkel's chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters on Monday. Norbert Roettgen, the chairman of the lower house foreign affairs committee, said divisions over US surveillance presented a "real problem" in the face of US defence of its bulk data collection.

"The fundamental question is, should security services be able to do everything they're technically able to do," Roettgen, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, told broadcaster ZDF on Sunday. "Obama essentially said 'yes'."

The National Security Agency's collection of signal intelligence, including allegedly hacking into Merkel's mobile phone, has sparked a trans-Atlantic rift as Germany struggles to lock in a "no spy" agreement with the US.

"We will look very closely at what practical consequences the announcements of the US president carry," Seibert told a regular government press conference in Berlin, adding that key German concerns had not yet been addressed. Private negotiations with the Obama administration to re-orient the nations' espionage cooperation must continue, he said.

Obama interview
German officials last week said failure to reach an accord would be unacceptable following a report that German spy chiefs had received no solid commitments from American counterparts.

The US president told Germany's ZDF in an interview broadcast on January 18 that it will "take some time to win back trust" and that his presidential directive blocking surveillance on leaders of US allies means that "the chancellor of Germany will not have to worry about this" as long as he's president.

The NSA will continue to spy on Merkel advisors even after Obama's assurances on the chancellor, German newspaper Bild reported on Monday. Citing intelligence employees it didn't name, Bild said that the NSA has monitored and analysed with whom Merkel telephoned, had e-mail exchanges and discussed decisions.

"This is not about the chancellor's mobile phone," Seibert said. "It's about safeguarding the interests of the German public," by achieving the correct balance between freedom, data protection and security, he said.

Spying defence
In his speech, Obama defended US electronic spying as a bulwark against terrorism, while announcing new restraints on global surveillance programs. Those included a judicial review of requests to query phone call databases and an order to Justice Department and intelligence officials to devise a way to take storage of that data out of the government's hands.

Other steps to limit surveillance were left up to a divided Congress, meaning many of the changes may be months away if they are adopted at all.

"I am very sympathetic to why the German people would be concerned about this," Obama told ZDF, referring to communist East Germany's Stasi secret police, which deployed hundreds of thousands of informants to snoop on the country's citizens.

"Obviously there's a history there with respect to East Germany that tells us what happens if you have a vast surveillance state and it turns on its own citizens."