The Echelon program has been in existence for decades now. How these heads of state can claim ignorance of what has been going on in their own backyard as well as their neighbours and allies is beyond me. Maybe they actually think that dragnet surveillance is choosy about who and what it captures?
Regarding the Merkel incident, just from looking at the Echelon Wikipedia page I notice that the US has been accused of using it to steal German tech in the 90’s. And that’s just a publicly known example - who knows how much shady business these facilities generate. Has it really taken them 20 years to finally realise the full implications of this program?
