Both the French and Mexican governments are demanding answers from the US regarding new reports that the National Security Agency has been conducting large-scale interceptions of French telecommunications and hacked the email of the last president of Mexico.
The French government summoned the US ambassador today to answer questions about a report in Le Monde that detailed the volume of NSA spying on French telecommunications in December 2012 and early January 2013 – which the French newspaper totaled at 70.3 million phone calls and text messages.
"I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d'Orsay (the French Foreign Ministry)," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters on the sidelines of [a European Union] meeting in Luxembourg.
Earlier, France's interior minister, Manuel Valls, said Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data were recorded by the NSA between Dec. 10, 2012 and Jan. 8, 2013 were "shocking."
"If an allied country spies on France or spies on other European countries, that's totally unacceptable," Valls told Europe 1 radio.
The US ambassador, Charles Rifkin, declined to comment on being summoned to the French ministry, Reuters adds, though he noted that French-US relations on military and intelligence issues were "the best [they've] been in a generation."
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According to an English version of the report published on Le Monde's website, do ents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show a pattern of high-volume, though apparently targeted, spying on French telecommunications. Le Monde writes:
Amongst the thousands of do ents extracted from the NSA by its ex-employee, there is a graph which describes the extent of telephone monitoring and tapping (DNR – Dial Number Recognition) carried out in France. It can be seen that over a period of 30 days – from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70.3 million recordings of French citizens' telephone data were made by the NSA. This agency has several methods of data collection. According to the elements obtained by Le Monde, when a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target – or the meta-data.
Although the exact subjects of the intercepted messages are unknown, Le Monde writes that what information is available "leads us to think that the NSA targets concerned both people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as people targeted simply because they belong to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration."
Le Monde adds that American authorities declined to comment on the report, but pointed the paper towards a June 8, 2013, do ent offered by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that said foreign citizens could not be spied upon "without a valid foreign intelligence purpose."
In a separate article, Le Monde notes that almost all of the NSA's focus in France seems to be on two communications websites: wanadoo.fr and alcatel-lucent.fr. Orange and Alcatel-Lucent, the respective owners of the two sites, declined to comment on Le Monde's report.
Le Monde's revelations about the scope of NSA spying in France come on the heels of a report in Der Spiegel, published Sunday, that the US agency had also successfully hacked the email of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon while he was in office.
A report classified as "top secret" said: "[NSA division Tailored Access Operations] successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability." The president's office, the NSA reported, was now "a lucrative source."
American journalist Glenn Greenwald and Brazilian broadcaster O Globo reported last month that both Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had also been spied upon by the NSA.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Mexican government has demanded that the US investigate the spying, which Mexico calls "unacceptable, unlawful and contrary to Mexican law and international law." The Times also notes that:
Some Mexicans will consider it particularly galling that the US targeted Calderon. The conservative president, who served from 2006 to 2012, allowed US security agencies an unprecedented amount of access to Mexico in an effort to fight off the powerful drug cartels. Some here viewed the increased US presence as a breach of Mexican sovereignty.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Secur...ver-NSA-spying
Oh I saw it. I just figured I would make the le actually reflect what the article is about.
Relevancy has no chair at the ST table.
I read that yahoo article and there was one line about Snowden and the rest was quotes from Mexico and France officials and their displeasure. They are our allies and our intelligence policy is ed up. That is to me what its about.Relevancy has no chair at the ST table.
Agreed. Hard to understand hiw anyobe with a room temp. IQ could defend the NSA.
oh no what ever are we going to do?
france and mexico???? you don't say....
the two scariest nations out there
I heard Perkins is out for game 7? Can anyone confirm?
oh no what ever are we going to do?
france and mexico???? you don't say....
the two scariest nations out there
NSA has confirmed, Perkins out game 7, France still irate.
What do you think the rest of NATO thinks of it? What do you think the rest of latin america thinks of it?oh no what ever are we going to do?
france and mexico???? you don't say....
the two scariest nations out there
They are two of our closest allies.
LMAO mexico our closest ally. this is the same mexico that we fought a war with not that long ago. the same mexico that regularly pawns their poor off on us to take care of and foot the bill for. the same ty neighbors who can't even handle their own affairs much less be valuable as an ally. You're a poli ard dude.
Last edited by m>s; 10-21-2013 at 09:20 PM.
Who would you consider our closest allies in latin america?
none dude, none of them are our allies. maybe el salvador just because we own them.
Chile... economically, perhaps Brazil...
You don't consider Mexico and Columbia?
was el salvador the only ones to send troops to that big mess in the middle east with us?
So in your world military might is the only basis for an alliance? That's nice.
You play to every cliche, it's gotten kind of boring really.
actions speak loudest
your almighty mexico was entertaining the zimmerman telegram for a short while until they decided that we were too strong and it wasn't feasible. seriously, that's the only thing that stopped them from joining the axis during ww1. great in ally.
USA pissed that China steals US stuff, why shouldn't other countries be pissed that USA is stealing their stuff?
They're both countries hooked on our 'monetary assistance to combat the drug trade'... I'm not sure they would give a if we were to remove those 'incentives'.
Most of the Mexico cities doing things like assembly for our electronics are border cities, it doesn't really extend to the rest of the country.
Chile is genuinely a US bootlicker. They're one of the few countries that are still authorized by the US to purchase military planes like the F-16 (surprisingly, the other country was Venezuela, which was authorized back in the 80's, but the US eventually embargoed their ability to purchase replacement parts).
Brazil is more recent. The sheer size of their economy and central role in the region makes it a partner to pay attention to (and Snowden already released leaks of the US spying on them, BTW).
And we defeated Germany in WW2 yet they are one of the key members of the NATO alliance. That destroys your assertion that actions 70 or more years ago preclude anything necessarily.
Interesting and it makes sense. I don't agree that they would be apathetic to the severance of aid though.
"we" didn't defeat . the zionists riled up the whole damn world to take them down because they were a threat to the world banking cartel. their current occupational government is an "ally" but i wouldn't say the german people give a about the US.
There ain't no eternal friendship between big countries, there's only eternal interest.
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