Merkel rejects NSA comparison with communist East German Stasi

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country's first leader from East Germany, rejected a comparison between US data surveillance and the secret-police practices of the former communist East Bloc regime. As controversy in Germany over data collection by the US NSA draws comparisons with the mass surveillance used by East Germany's Stasi secret police, Merkel told Die Zeit newspaper that she rejects any parallel between the Stasi and espionage practices of democratic states. "These are two completely different things," Merkel said in the interview. "Such comparisons only amount to trivialising what state security did to people" in East Germany.