The US has really dropped the ball here. We, here in Germany, have a mainstream political party whose leaders are blindly americophile. The last and current government are dominated by that party.
From the beginning of the crisis, these people loudly blamed the victim, accusing NSA-critics of anti-americanism and telling us that "the NSA discussion is over".
Then, with time, the industrial espionage stories started to emerge (and it became known that Merkel's phone has been bugged since 2002). Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors.
So now even the most blindly devoted atlanticists in government know that they must do something against the NSA problem, and to make it worse, they have to do something that actually works (as opposed to feel-good measures).
From the beginning of the crisis, these people loudly blamed the victim, accusing NSA-critics of anti-americanism and telling us that "the NSA discussion is over".
Then, with time, the industrial espionage stories started to emerge (and it became known that Merkel's phone has been bugged since 2002). Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors.
So now even the most blindly devoted atlanticists in government know that they must do something against the NSA problem, and to make it worse, they have to do something that actually works (as opposed to feel-good measures).