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"Today in Der Spiegel, the NSA's surveillance activities in Germany were detailed, including the collection of 500 million &amp;quot;communications connections&amp;quot; inside the country monthly. Spiegel states explicitly that the information collected\u00A0includes phone calls, digital messages such as email, and chat logs.\r\n\r\nTherefore, the NSA is directly spying on German citizens on a pervasive, deep, and chronic basis. Some collected information is sent back to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.\r\n\r\nThe scale of the collection is exceptionally high in comparison to the German population: On January 7th, the NSA collected, according to Spiegel, &amp;quot;60 million communications connections.&amp;quot; Germany has roughly 80 million citizens.\r\n\r\nSurveillance of the country tends to include tens of millions of phone calls, and roughly ten million records of Internet data on any given date. That's far higher than NSA activities in other European countries; the United States has selected Germany as a country of especial interest.\r\n\r\nThe reaction to the disclosure of pervasive surveillance by the NSA both domestically and abroad is growing following revelations such as its activity that targeted the offices of the European Union. According\u00A0to the Guardian, a key trade pact is now in doubt:\r\nThe prospects for a new trade pact between the US and the\u00A0European Union\u00A0worth hundreds of billions have suffered a severe setback following allegations that Washington bugged key EU offices and intercepted phone calls and emails from top officials.\r\n\r\nThe latest reports of\u00A0NSA\u00A0snooping on\u00A0Europe\u00A0\u2013 and on\u00A0Germany\u00A0in particular \u2013 went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals.\r\nIf the NSA's activities\u00A0threaten the economic security of the United States, that could provide\u00A0sufficient leverage to change intelligence policy; domestic outrage regardless of size is unlikely enough pressure to force the NSA into material change. However, furious military and economic allies could provide such an impetus.\r\n\r\nTop Image Credit:\u00A0Cameron Parkins"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/30/the-nsas-surveillance-activity-snags-500-million-german-communications-connections-each-month/?fromcat=all>