President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on Wednesday to hold high-level meetings between U.S. and German security officials in the coming days to discuss revelations that the NSA bugged “the offices of the European Union and various embassies in Washington.”
Obama said he took the concern of Europeans “seriously” after NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed the agency is allegedly monitoring the Internet usage of foreigners. Obama and Merkel also “looked forward to the initiation of a U.S.-EU/EU Member State dialogue on the collection and oversight of intelligence and questions of privacy and data protection, as proposed by Attorney General Eric Holder, as early as July 8,” according to the readout of the meeting.
As The Hill notes, the fallout from Snowden’s revelations has “been particularly damaging in Germany, where citizens strongly value their privacy after being spied on by the decades by the East German security services.”