though she expressed no such outrage when it was revealed that the NSA was conducting similar surveillance on German citizens.
"...According to a European Parliament report, published in 2001, America's National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted faxes and phone calls between Airbus, Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi government in early 1994..."
Not saying that Airbus was the good guy btw. Also, if they help one firm why not another, and so on?
"The US National Security Agency has been accused of spying on Brazil's biggest oil company, Petrobras, [...]"
EDIT: added summary
It would've been 'laudable' (really? Isn't the word we're going for 'expected' instead?) if she'd have reacted in any decent way after we learned about the general targeting of Germany and German citizens. At THAT point she was supposed to shout/complain/make a fuss.
Thing is - she really didn't. NOW, after learning that she, herself, was a target for some time, the situation changed. Which is crap, disgusting and just showing how detached that person is from (the tech community's) reality.
There's no reason to clap here.
That's about as 'outraged' as they can get isn't it?
Personal phone calls make sense, when the spying is personal.
NOW this eloquent girl representing my home country changes her attitude and there's a big 'HOW COULD THEY' going around. Before that? Not so much.
So she's now (ignoring the gazillion other reasons) fueling gags about her finally realizing that she's part of 'the German people'. Sarcastic publications claim (in jest, of course) that Merkel is 'outraged to be treated like a common German'.
Bottom line: Crappy government, they didn't care a damn before and needed to be directly targeted to wake up.
Would you really equate unconfirmed word document files (which were denied by the government) with explicit phone tapping (which was all but admitted to by the government)?
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/espionage-report-m...
Many Americans and the American media certainly do.