Top US cardinal 'paid off abusive priests'Newly released documents show the cardinal of the Archdiocese of New York, in his former job, repeatedly warned the Vatican of the potential for scandal over church sexual abuse in Milwaukee and oversaw a plan to pay off problem priests. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of Milwaukee at the time, also transferred $57 million into a trust to protect it from legal claims by sex abuse victims the documents show.

“In Germany, whenever the government begins to infringe on individual freedom, society stands up. Given our history, we Germans are not willing to trade in our liberty for potentially better security. Germans have experienced firsthand what happens when the government knows too much about someone,” Spitz wrote. “Three weeks ago, when the news broke about the National Security Agency’s collection of metadata in the United States, I knew exactly what it meant. My records revealed the movements of a single individual; now imagine if you had access to millions of similar data sets. You could easily draw maps, tracing communication and movement. You could see which individuals, families or groups were communicating with one another. You could identify any social group and determine its major actors,”  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/01/wondering-what-harmless-metadata-like-the-nsa-compiles-can-actually-reveal-german-politician-shows-you/