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Comment by terhechte | Hacker News Reader

I can confirm this, even my 65 year old mom, who can barely use her iPad to Facebook started talking about this and was worried. And among the people aged Gen-Y, this is a huge and important topic.

Understandably, my worldview is totally skewed: I consume HN, Guardian, and German media.. In my little world, literally every site I visit and person I know talks about NSA/Prism/UK. It is weird feeling, then, visiting other media

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If you are somehow in a german nerdsphere, the whole Snowden, NSA affair is really a big topic. Best way to explain is, the older german generation feels betrayed by their former allies and the younger generation is really scared about the impact of global surveillance.

I salute the German public for their awareness. I'm in the country next door (Holland) and most of my fellow men act like it's no big deal. They keep steamrolling new privacy-violating laws. (Today:'Supervision by drones has expanded' Municipalities may soon get the power to use their own drones, TomTom sells traffic/speed data to cops, talks of RFID in licenplates and what not).

It was on the front page of NRC.next (with a two-page spread inside), a morning newspaper here in Holland.

Do you not beleive the Germans are in on it?

Do you mean the German government is in on the NSA spying? Certainly, they are in. The BND(1) is currently trying to state that it didn't know anything about the NSA practices _and_ delivered data to the NSA at the same time. So, they are either incompetent or lie to us. Take your pick. And the government is stating every day that everything is known by now, the NSA didn't do anything wrong and we should stop asking so much questions.

(1) The Bundesnachrichtendienst is the German foreign intelligence agency. A mix of NSA/CIA.

If the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung are on it, the Spiegel has to be on it too.

Bildzeitung will try to spin it down, like the chancellor tries to play that topic down. Every incident related to Snowden, NSA, intelligence agencies or the violation of rights in europe will fuel the whole discussion again and again.

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