Germany backs down over number of terror attacks foiled by US programme

Germany's interior minister is backing off his earlier assertion that the US National Security Agency's monitoring of internet accounts prevented five terror attacks in Germany.

This raises questions about other claims concerning the value of the monitoring programmes revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Hans-Peter Friedrich made the assertion about the number of attacks the NSA programmes - which scoop up records from cellphone and internet accounts - had helped to avert after a brief visit to the United States earlier this month.

But last Tuesday, he told a German parliamentary panel: "It is relatively difficult to count the number of terror attacks that didn't occur." A day later, he was publicly referring to just two foiled attacks, at least one and possibly both of which appeared to have little to do with the NSA's surveillance programmes.

In Germany, the concern is that the NSA is capturing and storing as many as 500 million electronic communications each month, but Germans are getting little if anything back for what is seen as an immoral and illegal invasion of privacy.

Friedrich spent July 11-12 in the United States for meetings to gather information that would calm a building German angst over the spy scandal.