SurveillanceFrance summons U.S. ambassador to explain NSA surveillance
Le Monde this morning published a report saying that the NSA, between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, in an operation codenamed US-985D, recorded 70.3 million phone calls in France. The report claims that the NSA recording targeted not only terrorist suspects but also politicians, businesspeople, and members of the administration. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, earlier today (Monday) has summoned the U.S. ambassador to the Quai d’Orsay to demand an explanation.
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, earlier today (Monday) has summoned the U.S. ambassador to the Quai d’Orsay to demand an explanation about a report in Le Monde which claimed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone call information and eavesdropping on a the phone conversations of a large number of French citizens.
The newspaper’s detailed revelations are available in “Comment la NSA espionne la France” (Le Monde, 21 October 2013).
The paper, relying on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, says the spy agency had been intercepting phone calls on what it terms “a massive scale.”
Le Monde quotes the French interior minister, Manuel Valls, to say that the revelations as shocking. Valls said he would press for detailed explanations from Washington.
“Rules are obviously needed when it comes to new communication technologies, and that’s something that concerns every country,” he told Europe-1 radio. “If a friendly country — an ally — spies on France or other European countries, that is completely unacceptable.”
Le Monde’s report carries the byline of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who published other documents leaked by Snowden in the Guardian, the Washington Post, and other newspapers. It says that between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013 the NSA recorded 70.3 million phone calls in France.
The report claims that the NSA recording – codenamed US-985D — targeted not only terrorist suspects but also politicians, businesspeople, and members of the administration.
“The agency has several collection methods,” Le Monde writes. “When certain French phone numbers are dialed, a signal is activated that triggers the automatic recording of certain conversations. This surveillance also recovers SMS and content based on keywords.”
Such methods, the paper added, allowed the NSA to keep a systematic record of each target’s connections.
The Guardian notes that the U.S. government refused to comment on the documents, and instead referred those who asked about the NSA practice to a statement made in June by the U.S. director of National intelligence, in which James Clapper said: “[They] are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress. Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber-attacks against the United States and its allies.”
