Team Putin Says They Don't Mind The Latest NSA Scandal One Bit
By Hanna Kozlowska, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, Oct. 25, 2013

[....] In a nonchalant reaction to the new revelations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday in Minsk, Belarus that the U.S. surveillance efforts will not affect ties between the two states, that "contacts [between the two countries] will never stop." He underlined that the Snowden affair is not high on the Russian foreign agenda: "We have formulated our position on Snowden and have said everything we meant to say."

Instead of expressing their public outrage, like they had earlier this week when Mother Jones reported that the FBI was investigating Washington D.C.-based Russian cultural center for allegedly recruiting American citizens as spies, they decided to sit back. On Wednesday, the American authorities were "unfriendly," on Friday, the Russians assured that they will never cease their contacts with the U.S. Why expend the energy on backlash when you can patiently wait for the U.S. to dig itself a deeper hole?

Russian English-language news outlets are dominated by stories about how the U.S. is in trouble, reporting the blasé reactions of their leaders and  gladly pointing out everyone else's annoyance -- "Irritated EU leaders voice ‘lack of trust' with U.S. after spying claims" reads a Kremlin-backed RT news service headline.

Voice of Russia ran an interview with Spencer Zifcak, a professor of  human rights law at Melbourne University and president of the Australian National Civil Liberties Organization, who is predicting a menacing erosion of U.S.- EU relations. While European news outlets quote officials saying that the spying hardly came as a surprise, Voice of Russia's expert thinks that the news "may result in dramatic changes in diplomatic ties between many countries." Prominently featured on the front page of RT is an article on an upcoming anti-mass surveillance rally in Washington D.C., complete with encouragement from Edward Snowden to join the rally and an interview with Evan Greer from the Fight for the Future campaign, whose video on surveillance inspired the protest. [....]

Included the photo illustration because it was obviously meant to add elaboration to the author's message.

The U.S. Warns Foreign Officials of Another Possible Snowden Leak
By Abby Ohlheiser, The Atlantic Wire, Oct 24, 2013

After nearly a week of assuring various world leaders that the U.S. isn't currently spying on their communications, the U.S. has started to warn other countries of a new perceived threat from Edward Snowden's leaked documents. That threat, apparently, is the revelation of secret agreements and collaborations, sometimes between the U.S. and countries who aren't publicly seen as an ally. 

Those warnings are going intelligence service to intelligence service, according to a report from the Washington Post, after officials started to get a better handle on what documents Snowden may have.. The ODNI's role in informing other countries of the potential leaks seems to be in part because U.S. officials aren't precisely sure which branches of government know about the secrets contained in the Snowden documents: "In some cases, one part of the cooperating government may know about the collaboration while others — such as the foreign ministry — may not," they explain. In outlining their side of the story, U.S. officials emphasized to the Post that the revelation of these programs would jeopardize their continued existence: [....]

For those interested, the official State Dept. response is summed up their Friday press briefing; Spokesperson Paki opened it pointing to the op-ed they put in U.S.A. Today by Lisa Monaco and Paki elaborated this way before opening up to questions:

Finally, going forward, we will of course continue to gather the information we need to keep ourselves and our allies safe. We of course will factor in the views of our friends and partners as we have those discussions with them, and we’ll continue to balance our security needs with privacy concerns. We fully expect – and I know this is another question that’s come up, of course – that allegations – more allegations will surface given the quantity of classified information leaked by Mr. Snowden.

But I want to set the precedent – or set the point, I guess, from here today that we have no plans to lay out our tactics or further specific details from here. We’re not going to confirm or deny every report. And we feel, as you’ve heard us say a couple of times, that the best place to have these conversations is with our allies, with our diplomatic partners. Those will continue, and we’ll address pieces as they come.

Basically, I take that as "mum's the word" for public consumption unless they feel forced to talk about something. We aren't going to hear anything straightforward (along the lines of denial or affirmation or apology) until  the official reviews are in, nor are we going to hear about meetings with allies unless the allies decide to talk about it. So it will all be reading tea leaves from leakers and attempting to judge responses and appearances of allies and such.

Bad P.R about Obama coming out of Germany. (ironic the Tea Partiers won't believe it, because if it was about a GOP president, they'd like it, along the lines of "Freedom Fries"):

Frenemies: Spying on Allies Fits Obama's Standoffish Profile
by Gregor Peter Schmitz, Spiegel Online International, Oct. 24

NYTimes' government sources say NSA stopped eavesdropping on Merkl only after Snowden's theft made it clear that it might be discovered, not because the president had anything to do with stopping it. And there is admission that her phone calls were recorded basically because there's no American law against it. And Dennis Blair, Obama's first director of national intelligence, was willing to be quoted as saying he has no sympathy for the complaints.

Excerpt from Obama May Ban Spying on Heads of Allied States
by Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, New York Times, Oct. 29, 2013:

The National Security Agency has said it did not inform Mr. Obama of its reported monitoring of Ms. Merkel, which appears to have started in 2002 and was not suspended until sometime last summer after the theft of the N.S.A. data by Mr. Snowden was discovered.

“At that point it was clear that lists of targeted foreign officials may well become public,” said one official, “so many of the interceptions were suspended.”

The N.S.A.'s documentation on Ms. Merkel’s case authorized the agency’s operatives in Germany not only to collect data about the numbers she was calling, but also to listen in on her conversations, according to current and former administration officials.

It was unclear whether excerpts from Ms. Merkel’s conversations appeared in intelligence reports that were circulated in Washington or shared with the White House. Officials said they had never seen information attributed to an intercept of Ms. Merkel’s conversations. But they said it was likely that some conversations had been recorded simply because the N.S.A. had focused on her for so long.

In both public comments and private interchanges with German officials, the Obama administration has refused to confirm that Ms. Merkel’s phone was targeted, though it has said that it is not the subject of N.S.A. action now, and will not be in the future.

The refusal to talk about the past has further angered German officials, who have said the surveillance has broken trust between two close allies. The Germans were particularly angry that the operation appears to have been run from inside the American Embassy or somewhere near it, in the heart of Berlin, steps from the Brandenburg Gate.

None of the officials and former officials who were interviewed would speak directly about the decision to target Ms. Merkel, saying that information was classified. But they said the legal distinction between tapping a conversation and simply collecting telephone “metadata” — essentially the kind of information about a telephone call that would be found on a telephone bill — existed only for domestic telephone calls, or calls involving United States citizens.

To record the conversation of a “U.S. Person,” the intelligence agencies would need a warrant. But no such distinction applies to intercepting the calls of foreigners on foreign soil — though those intercepts may be a violation of local law.

That means that the intercepts of other world leaders could have also involved both information about the calls and the conversations themselves.

That means that the intercepts of other world leaders could have also involved both information about the calls and the conversations themselves.

Dennis C. Blair, Mr. Obama’s first director of national intelligence, declined to speak specifically about the Merkel case. But he noted that “in our intelligence relationship with countries like France and Germany, 90 to 95 percent of our activity is cooperative and sharing, and a small proportion is about gaining intelligence we can’t obtain in other ways.”

He said he had little patience for the complaints of foreign leaders. “If any foreign leader is talking on a cellphone or communicating on unclassified email, what the U.S. might learn is the least of their problems.”

Elsewhere in the article are quotes from Peter Schaar, the German federal data protection commissioner. He makes clear the attitude of those like Dennis Blair is what is angering Germany, because the NSA has broken U.S. promises to follow German law when operating in Germany.

Also of interest in the article is that Senator Feinstein and the administration are not exactly on the same page:

Disclosure of the White House’s proposed action came after the release on Monday afternoon of Ms. Feinstein’s statement, in which she asserted that the White House had told her it would cease all intelligence collection in friendly countries. That statement, senior administration officials said, was “not accurate,” but they acknowledged that they had already made unspecified changes in surveillance policy and planned further changes, particularly in the monitoring of government leaders.

The administration will reserve the right to continue collecting intelligence in friendly countries that pertains to criminal activity, potential terrorist threats and the proliferation of unconventional weapons, according to several officials. It also appeared to be leaving itself room in the case of a foreign leader of an ally who turned hostile or whose actions posed a threat to the United States.

The crossed wires between the White House and Ms. Feinstein were an indication of how the furor over the N.S.A.'s methods is testing even the administration’s staunchest defenders.

Aides said the senator’s six-paragraph statement reflected exasperation at the agency for failing to keep the Intelligence Committee fully apprised of such politically delicate operations as eavesdropping on the conversations of friendly foreign leaders.

“She believes the committee was not adequately briefed on the details of these programs, and she’s frustrated,” said a committee staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In her mind, there were salient omissions.”

The review that Ms. Feinstein announced would be “a major undertaking,” the staff member said.

Overall, Feinstein seems quite willing to show anger at NSA about this, while the Obama administration curiously still does not seem to want to project a "heads will roll" attitude on this even while entertaining a law against continuing to do it.