It Has Come to This: German Gov't Official Accuses U.S. of Stasi Tactics Ahead of Obama Visit

News that the U.S. government has massive Internet surveillance programs in place has at least a few German politicians outraged, one even likening the feds penchant for snooping to the tactics used by the feared East German Stasi.

These guys. (eastgermany.info/stasi.htm)

All this comes ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Germany, the European Union’s most prosperous and stable country.

Talk about slightly awkward.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in a Spiegel Online editorial on Tuesday said reports that the U.S. could “access and track” most forms of Internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and “potentially dangerous,” Reuters notes.

"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.

"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table," she added.

Markus Ferber, a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party, took it a step further, accusing the U.S. of using "American-style Stasi methods."

"I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell," he said, referring to the German initials used for the failed German Democratic Republic.

"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast added in a comment provided to Reuters.

President Obama will land in Berlin late Tuesday evening, hold a news conference with Chancellor Merkel on Wednesday, and will later deliver a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate. It will mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

The U.S. president has defended the surveillance programs, saying they’re a "modest encroachment” on privacy.

"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he promised Americans. "That's not what this program is about."

"You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," he added.

Still, despite President Obama’s assurances, there are virtually no laws against the U.S. eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, “meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans," Reuters notes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (Getty Images)

Peter Schaar, the German official responsible for data privacy, said the U.S. programs are grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.

"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."

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