Civil rights activists in the United States hope the Snowden affair will wake Americans up and start a debate about the anti-democratic behaviour of the state towards its citizens.

WASHINGTON DC - I have to say I kind of like being listened to. Even if it is by a secret service agent. You do get a feeling of a certain gravitas if a state makes the financial and infrastructural effort to tap your phone. In Moscow it was especially delicious. Whenever there was this special noise on the line, even Austrian correspondents could feel important. That does not happen so often. In Putin’s Russia, we lived in a real authoritarian state which considered foreign reporters to be enemies of the state.

But Barack Obama's administration spies even on its own journalists. And without any shame. After Edward Snowden's disclosures of National Security Agency (NSA) practice, no one can put their head in the sand any longer. In Europe, Snowden is considered a whistle blower and a hero, but in America he is mainly treated with contempt. For most here he is a traitor. Even journalists - whom the NSA listened to secretly - speak of him on live television as if he were the devil. And not only on Fox News, but also on CNN.

The former NSA contractor first escaped to China and then continued his flight to Russia, of all places. The 30-year-old whose passport has since been revoked by Washington sits rather stupidly in one of the most awful transit areas in the world, in Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.

Nobody wants him -  even Vladimir Putin said last Tursday: "The sooner he figures out his final destination, the better for us all." But Putin, who is forcing the last NGOs in Russia to close, still suddenly looks like the protector of a human rights activist who would be prosecuted in America and could fsce up to 30 years in prison.

In comparison Obama looks like a fallen angel. Civil rights activists like Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges or Naomi Wolf have warned for years of anti-democratic tendencies within the Washington administration. Obama did not close down the illegal U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay although he promised to do so at the beginning of his first term as president. He also enlarged the drone programme dramatically.

And who is being killed by these unmanned planes? Since 2011 the rules were changed and today it is Obama himself who makes the decisions with the help of lists complied by his security team. In other words, Obama holds weekly meetings to decide whom he thinks should be eliminated. Maybe he puts a tick by each name? Or does he use a highlighter? Or simply nods as a sign of death sentence ? But as a result of these meetings the drones fly away to kill. There is no court and no judge involved. Obama is the master of life and death. It is all done in the name of preserving freedom and defending America. Putin can still learn something from him.

But the resistance might finally start growing with the Snowden case. "We have to take back the term ‘freedom’,” says Lorry Arbeiter. The activist from the group "We Will Not Be Silent" positioned herself this week with her black card boards in front of the White House in Washington: "Since 9/11, the government took more and more rights away from us. It breaks the law and justifies it with the war against terror. But none of this - neither drones nor spying on all of us - can be justified by the threat against America", the New Yorker told me: "Snowden is not the only case we want to be treated differently. Bradley Manning also. And there are others." Arbeiter hopes that the Snowden affair will jump start American resistance: "We cannot accept that our civil rights are being undermined in that blatant way," she says.

Honestly, I would not mind if Barack Obama would listen himself to my phone calls. But Frau Arbeiter is right: He really should not.