Many Germans believe chancellor getting a taste of her own medicine after failing to challenge US over NSA surveillance

Reports of Angela Merkel's phone being monitored by the US National Security Agency were met in Germany not just with outrage, but a more familiar German emotion: schadenfreude.

Many Germans thought the chancellor, below, had been too restrained in her criticism when the extent of NSA surveillance on ordinary citizens emerged. Now they believe Merkel is getting a taste of her own medicine.

Anke Domscheit-Berg, of the German Pirate party, who is the wife of the former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg, said: "In the past few months, Chancellor Merkel has done very little to make the US government answer all those questions that should have had highest political priority. Now she gets a taste of what it feels like when foreign secret services spy on all your communication."

When the schadenfreude tipped over into anger, it was targeted at Merkel'sinterior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich. Jan Philipp Albrecht, a Green MEP, said Friedrich had spent the past few months blocking block efforts for tighter data protection regulation at European level, favouring self-regulation over a tightening of rules in Brussels.

"The interior minister has not only failed to act in Germany's interest, he also failed to act on Angela Merkel's promise to take data protection more seriously," he said.

In June Friedrich said the NSA scandal was driven mainly by "a mix of anti-Americanism and naivety". But on Thursday the interior minister told the Leipziger Volkszeitungnewspaper that America should apologise for its actions: "Bugging and snooping on friends in public or in private is unacceptable."

Albrecht said the affair was a huge embarrassment for the Christian Democratic Union politician and should rule him out from continuing in the same post in a new government: "I ask myself: why is this man still interior minister?"

Peter Schaar, the federal commissioner on data protection, was also remarkably frank in criticising his own government. He said the reports showed "the absurdity of politicians trying to draw to a close the debate about surveillance of everyday communication here. In the light of the new revelations it seems irresponsible that more transparency wasn't called for earlier".

In August, Merkel's chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, said the government had been reassured by the US and UK governmentsthat no large-scale human rights violation had taken place. The allegations were "off the table", and the NSA scandal was "beendet" (finished). Few commentators have passed on the opportunity to point out the irony of those remarks. The parting justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, pointedly referenced Pofalla's comments in a tweet: "Die NSA-Affäre ist nicht beendet" ("The NSA affair is not finished").

The Social Democratic party, currently in the middle of coalition talks with the CDU, was more cautious in its criticism of Merkel and her ministers. But they too will be wondering how differently the general election in September could have played for them had the reports emerged earlier.

Die Zeit newspaper, usually one of the more US-friendly publications on the German market, published an op-ed by its political editor, Ludwig Greven, arguing that it was unethical that Merkel did not complain to the US president when the revelations about NSA spying first emerged. "That would have been her duty when millions of NSA attacks on citizens' privacy were at stake because their basic rights are as valuable as those of the chancellor," he said.

But given that collaboration between Germany's secret service and the NSA was supposed to have started during the last grand coalition in 2002, Greven said he had little faith in a change of attitudes during a new SPD/CDU government. "For convenience's sake, maybe Merkel should just officially unlock her phone for the US secret services. Then we'd get spared her and her citizens' delayed and fake outrage."