Thanks, hope the NYT don't mind. I can't be bothered with proxies and VPN's - whenever I find a free one that works, the party doesn't last long, so I don't bother much anymore.
I doubt countries support the US in things like Snowden because they 'like' them. They do it because the US is powerful and the repercussions of not extraditing Snowden aren't worth it to them.
That is also why the spying on Merkel is extremely harmful to American-German relations. It changes the view of the public at large on the US.
Is it really true that Merkel, or any other major political figure in any major country, believed that they weren't being watched by essentially every other country, allied or not?
I can see that the public at large does not understand that, but the only reason I can find for the issue to come up is Merkel using that lack of understanding to manipulate German public opinions.
If the shoe were on the other foot, and it came out that German intelligence were listening to Mr. Obama's phone calls, I would at worst chuckle and at best be impressed if they came up with a new way of doing it. And I'd view any outrage from U.S. government circles as the cynical attempt at manipulation that it would be.
I wish we could just have dynamically mutating protocols, and Tor et al are certainly working in that direction, but for a single person with the education, this would be my way to go.