Echoing comments from 2013 in which he told American college students to "reject those voices" which encourage distrust of government, President Obama this week asked the people of Germany to trust his wisdom in letting the NSA get all up in their digital communications business. Speaking in a joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said:
What I would ask would be that the German people recognize that the United States has always been on the forefront of trying to promote civil liberties, that we have traditions of due process that we respect, that we have been a consistent partner of yours in the course of the last 70 years, and certainly the last 25 years, in reinforcing the values that we share. And so occasionally I would like the German people to give us the benefit of the doubt, given our history, as opposed to assuming the worst — assuming that we have been consistently your strong partners and that we share a common set of values. [Techdirt]
While Obama's argument that Germans should just chill out about this whole spying thing may assuage some German anger over the surveillance, Obama's failure to make meaningful reforms to the NSA over the past year could undercut his assurances.
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