U.S. spy reports irritate France

U.S Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, right, leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris, after he was summoned Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. The French government had summoned the ambassador to explain why the Americans spied on one of their closest allies. Le Monde newspaper said Monday, Oct. 21, 2013 that documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French phone records in a 30-day period. (AP Photo/Claude Paris)
U.S Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, right, leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris, after he was summoned Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. The French government had summoned the ambassador to explain why the Americans spied on one of their closest allies. Le Monde newspaper said Monday, Oct. 21, 2013 that documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French phone records in a 30-day period. (AP Photo/Claude Paris)

PARIS - The National Security Agency has carried out extensive electronic surveillance in France, a French newspaper reported Monday, drawing an angry condemnation from an important U.S. ally.

The report, based on secret documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden,was published in French newspaper Le Monde on the day Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the country for an official visit.

Adding to the previous disclosures about the agency’s wide surveillance net abroad, the article said the agency had recorded 70 million digital communications in a single month, from Dec. 10, 2012, to Jan. 8.

French officials called the spying “totally unacceptable” and demanded that it cease.

The Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador, Charles Rivkin, who met with ministry officials Monday morning.

“These kinds of practices between partners are totally unacceptable, and we must be assured that they are no longer being implemented,” Rivkin was told, according to ministry spokesman Alexandre Giorgini.

President Barack Obama called French President Francois Hollande on Monday afternoon to discuss France’s anger over reported surveillance tactics.

The White House said some recent disclosures about the agency have been distorted but that some raise legitimate questions for U.S. allies about how America’s intelligence capabilities are used. Obama told Hollande that the U.S. was reviewing its intelligence-gathering to ensure a balance between security and privacy.

The French president’s office said in a statement that Hollande told Obama he strongly condemned the practices and found them unacceptable between allies. Hollande also asked Obama to specify all the information that Snowden may possess. Documents leaked by Snowden have been behind a series of revelations about U.S. surveillance programs.

The White House said both presidents agreed they should continue diplomatic discussions about the issue.

The newspaper report Monday was co-written by Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist whose articles have conveyed most of the Snowden revelations published so far, and a Le Monde correspondent.

The report did not make entirely clear what the agency had swept up, but it appeared that it took a vacuum-cleaner approach, recording 70 million communications, the report said, including telephone calls and instant messages. It was not clear how many of those were listened to or read.

The article also noted that the interceptions were coded “Drtbox” and “Whitebox,” with most falling into the former category. However, it was not clear what those categories implied, nor why the report was limited to a single month.

Le Monde reported the documents indicated that in addition to tracking communications between people suspected of having links to terrorism, the surveillance program may have targeted communications involving prominent figures in business, politics or the French administration.

The most recent documents cited by Le Monde, dated to April, also indicated the agency’s interest in email addresses linked to Wanadoo- once part of France Telecom - and Alcatel-Lucent, the French-American telecom company. One of the documents instructed analysts to draw not only from the electronic surveillance program, but also from another initiative dubbed Upstream, which allowed surveillance on undersea communications cables.

Kerry was unapologetic Monday, but told reporters that the U.S. would discuss the matters privately with officials from France and other concerned countries.

“Protecting the security of our citizens in today’s world is a very complicated, very challenging task and it is an everyday, 24/7/365 task, unfortunately, because there are lots of people out there seeking to do harm to other people,” he said a news conference.

“We will have ongoing bilateral consultations, including with our French partners, to address this question of any reports by the U.S. government gathering information from some of the agencies and those consultations are going to continue,” Kerry said.

Giorgini said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius would discuss the issue with Kerry when the two meet today for a meeting about the Middle East and Iran.

State Department spokesman Marie Harf said the U.S. already is reviewing its intelligence-gathering to strike a “balance between the legitimate security concerns that our citizens have and the privacy concerns that we and our allies have as well about some of these alleged intelligence activities.”

“We certainly hope that it doesn’t” damage the United States’ close working relationship with France, she added.

Previous revelations from the documents leaked by Snowden had already pulled the veil off the agency’s spying on other allies, including Germany, England, Brazil and Mexico. In June, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the agency had eavesdropped on European Union offices in Brussels and Washington.

One of the more serious diplomatic breaches was the revelation in September that the agency had intercepted the communications of the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. Brazil termed the spying “an unacceptable violation of sovereignty.” The allegations led Rousseff to call off a state visit to Washington.

On Sunday, Mexico’s government condemned the National Security Agency’s purported hacking of the email account of then-President Felipe Calderon in 2010, saying such actions violate international law.

“In a relationship between neighbors and partners, there’s no room for the practices that allegedly took place,” the foreign ministry said in an emailed statement, reiterating its call for Obama’s administration to conduct an exhaustive investigation of the agency’s conduct.

Der Spiegel reported Sunday that in an operation called “Flatliquid,” the NSA used a server to gain access to Calderon’s account and the Mexican presidential domain used by cabinet members for diplomatic and economic communications. Spiegel cited documents from Snowden.

The allegations follow a report on Brazilian TV news magazine Fantastico last month that the U.S. accessed text messages sent by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last year, when he was a front-runner in the election campaign, discussing potential cabinet picks.

On Monday night, Greenwald promised that there are many more stories to come, including details about the U.S. spying on its own citizens.

Greenwald spoke by video to a group of reporters from around the Americas gathered in Denver for a meeting of the Inter American Press Association. He said the coming reports will be as significant as the Le Monde article and that he’s committed to reporting on every document of public interest given to him by Snowden.

Information for this article was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times; by Eric Martin, Nacha Cattan, Susan Decker, James G. Neuger, Marie Mawad, Gregory Viscusi and Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News; and by Deb Riechmann, Kimberly Dozier, Lori Hinnant, Colleen Slevin and staff members of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/22/2013

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