During a 25-hours visit to Germany, US President Barack has justified the internet surveillance programme Prism as a circumscribed system that had saved lives by thwarting at least 50 terror threats, not only in the US, but also in Europe.
At a press conference in Berlin on 19 June, Obama emphasised that the right balance between national security and civil liberties had been struck. Strictly speaking, Prism could not even be called a surveillance programme, because US secret agencies had not checked the content of ordinary citizens’ emails, but merely controlled connection data. In addition, the US President insisted that all this took place under strict court supervision.
