Fresh leaks by US National Security Agency,
NSA, whistleblower, Edward Snowden has made
clear why Washington was asking for the 30-
year-old’s head, as France and Mexico are now
asking questions over the recent leaks.
France has called in the US ambassador to
protest against allegations in Le Monde
newspaper about large-scale spying on French
citizens by the US National Security Agency,
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.
“I have immediately summoned the US
ambassador and he will be received this
morning at the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign
Ministry],” Fabius told reporters at a European
Union foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg
on Monday.
Reports in Le Monde and German weekly Der
Spiegel have revealed that the National Security
Agency secretly recorded over 70 million phone
calls in 30 days in France, and hacked into
former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s
email account.
The spy agency taped 70.3 million phone calls in
France over a 30-day period between December
10 and January 8 this year, Le Monde reported in
its online version, citing documents from
Snowden.
Manuel Valls, France’s interior minister, said the
revelations were “shocking”.
“If an allied country spies on France or spies on
other European countries, that’s totally
unacceptable,” Valls told Europe 1 radio.
According to Le Monde, the NSA automatically
picked up communications from certain phone
numbers in France and recorded text messages
under a programme code-named “US-985D”.
Le Monde said the documents gave grounds to
believe that the NSA targeted not only people
suspected of being involved in terrorism but
also high-profile individuals from the world of
business or politics.
Charles Rivkin, the US ambassador to France,
declined immediate comment on reports that he
had been called in by the French foreign
ministry but stressed that French ties with
Washington were close.
“This relationship on a military, intelligence,
special forces … level is the best it’s been in a
generation,” Rivkin told the Reuters news
agency as John Kerry, the US secretary of state,
arrived in Paris.
In July, Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary
inquiries into the NSA’s programme, known as
Prism, after Der Spiegel and Britain’s The
Guardian revealed wide-scale spying by the
agency leaked by Snowden.
“We were warned in June [about the
programme] and we reacted strongly but
obviously we need to go further,” Fabius said.
“We must quickly assure that these practices
aren’t repeated
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