In response to the 2013 mass surveillance scandal, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, in a guest editorial for the Web site "Spiegel Online", called the revelations about the U.S. surveillance “deeply disconcerting” and possibly “dangerous.” A week before President Barack Obama's visit to Berlin in June 2013, she rejected Obama's earlier statement that “you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.” In her commentary she wrote: “I don’t share this assessment. A society is less free the more intensively its citizens are watched, controlled and observed. Security is not an end in itself in a democratic society, but rather serves the security of freedom.”