US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Jan Klimkowski]

Meanwhile, the Germans are calling the latest revelation about GCHQ spying "catastrophic".

Is this hot air?

Sour grapes because this intelligence was not being shared with Gehlen Org, sorry, German intelligence?

Or genuine fury which will lead to retaliatory measures?

GCHQ monitoring described as a 'catastrophe' by German politicians

Federal ministers demand clarification from UK government on extent of spying conducted on German citizens

Conal Urquhart and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 June 2013 18.03 BST

The German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said the accusations 'sound like a Hollywood nightmare'. Photograph: Ole Spata/Corbis

Britain's European partners have described reports of Britain's surveillance of international electronic communications as a catastrophe and will seek urgent clarification from London.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister said the report in the Guardian read like the plot of a film.

"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement to Reuters. "The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."

Britain's Tempora project enables it to intercept and store immense volumes of British and international communications for 30 days.

With a few months to go before federal elections, the minister's comments are likely to please Germans who are highly sensitive to government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo under the Nazis.

"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," said Thomas Oppermann, floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats.

Orwell's novel 1984 envisioned a futuristic security state where "Big Brother" spied on the intimate details of people's lives.

"This is unbearable," Oppermann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "The government must clarify these accusations and act against a total surveillance of German citizens."