Protesters have taken to the streets to campaign against a mass spying program that is currently sweeping across Europe.

The surveillance is being carried out in collaboration with US spy agency the NSA, together with other Nato countries.

Demonstrations have taken place in several German cities with protesters angry at their country’s participation in the NSA global espionage program.

Thousands of activists have attended the protests aimed at drawing attention to the worldwide operation being carried out against civilian populations.

An organization called Stop Watching Us, which describes itself as a “conglomeration of concerned citizens,” were behind the protests which took place in more than 30 cities across the country.

In Frankfurt, protesters braved 36 degree-celsius (97 Fahrenheit) heat with banners that compared surveillance to a vision of novelist George Orwell and the secret police of former communist East Germany.

Germany’s opposition Social Democrats stepped up attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to the US surveillance scandal this month to help turn around their electoral fortunes before the country goes to the polls in September.

Darnell Summers, US war veteran and activist in Berlin, told reporters at Press TV why he believed it was important for people to take a stand against these ongoing assaults against their privacy.

He said: “This is a part of a massive Nato effort. They speak with a forked tongue, turning reality on its head. One minute they’re talking about democratic rights and the next minute they’re demonstrating their need to negate and neutralize legislation that allegedly guarantee everyone privacy and protection under Constitutional Laws.

“As the scope of the surveillance becomes more evident, peoples’ awareness is increasing in direct proportion to their dissatisfaction and anger. As the revelations continue so will the demonstrations and the outpouring of outrage. This is just the tip of the iceberg really.”

But Summers also explained that this was not the first time the NSA has been caught spying on its citizens. This problem, he said, is indeed a very old one.

“Of course as these disclosures become known, people are becoming angry, people who believed in the system,” he said: “People who trusted their elected officials are now seeing that even their chancellor Angela Merkel has been caught in several lies.

“So, this is shaking the system to its roots. Yes, people are becoming more aware, but I think we also should recognize that people have been aware of this problem for quite a long time and have been victims of spying for quite a long time ever since the end of the second world war.”

Akashic Times is the UK’s only online, fully independent not-for-profit weekly newspaper that brings you real news from across the globe.

If you want to keep ahead of what is really going on in the world, subscribe to our newspaper via the subscribe button and join our Facebook & Twitter pages. Subscription is completely free ofcourse