The thing is that Germany is a close ally to the US. It's one thing to spy on your ally's leaders to make sure you know what they are up to, but it's another to

The thing is that Germany is a close ally to the US. It's one thing to spy on your ally's leaders to make sure you know what they are up to, but it's another to engage in mass surveillance of their civilian population. The US is doing to friend and foe alike what they have publicly shamed China over. Spying on citizens of another nation is an act of aggression because it undermines the sovereignty of that nation. If you're outraged to find out the NSA is spying on US citizens, why wouldn't you be outraged to find out the US closest allies (say, Japan, the UK, France, Germany or Canada) are spying on US citizens? Why should it be acceptable for them to do what would be unacceptable if your own elected representatives did it to you? But undermining the sovereignty of other nations seems to be SOP these days. See US drone strikes in Pakistan or the Russian not-quite-official involvement in the Ukraine. It's not that what the NSA has been doing is orders of magnitude worse (though some would argue it is), it's the sum of all these things the US has been doing while the presidents and media are continuously cheering for Team America as the One True Beacon of Freedom and Democracy. Europeans (and Germans in particular) have been uneasy about US politics and how they clash with the country's public image at least since the days after 9/11 (I remember thinking "oh crap, the US will go to war with someone over this") and this is just another drop in the bucket. I guess you react to ultra-nationalism differently if you a have strongly engrained cultural memories of what it's like to be a nation that is "superior" to everyone.