Paris (AFP) – France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from the United States after new spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden. The reports published in French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel claim that the US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored tens of millions of phone calls in France and hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s email account. They come on top of revelations already leaked by Snowden and published in June that the US had a vast, secret programme called PRISM to monitor Internet users, which French prosecutors are already investigating. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was “deeply shocked” by the revelations — the same word used by Interior Minister Manuel Valls — and demanded an explanation from US authorities.
Tag: NSA
Earlier this month, National Security Agency (NSA) head Keith Alexander admitted that he had lied to the U.S. Congress and the American people in an attempt to justify the NSA’s growing surveillance of U.S. citizens.[1] In June, while attempting to defend the secret NSA programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Alexander claimed that over 50 terrorist plots had been thwarted though collection of the phone and internet records of American citizens. Alexander said that his agency had provided Congress with 54 specific cases in which the programs helped disrupt terror plots in the U.S. and around the world.[2] Just a few weeks before the “54 plots” claim, Alexander had testified to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee that NSA spying on American citizens had played a critical role in thwarting “dozens” of terrorist attacks.[3] Alexander spent the next three months declaring that the NSA’s spying on Americans was preventing terrorism and another 9/11.
When information began to surface in the post-Cold War years of the early 1990s that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), responding to changes in the global politico-military realities, was re-focusing some of its signals…
The administration has been amping up stats about foiled plots to bolster support for mass surveillance In so many words, NSA director Keith Alexander admitted Wednesday that the Obama administration had issued misleading information about terror plots and their foiling to bolster support for the government’s vast surveillance apparatus. During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange: “There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” said Leahy.
Right, the US either *let it happen* — or *made it happen* — to ‘justify’ illegal NSA spying and drone strikes in Africa to steal the oil. U.S. was warned about Kenya mall attack U.S. intelligence…
NSA Stories Around The World: Revelations continue to produce outcomes on multiple levels in numerous countries around the world I’m still working at trying to get the next set of NSA stories published. That, combined with a…
The Brazilian president’s cancelled visit, over NSA spying, ought to jolt the US out of its arrogant disrespect for Latin America Dilma Rousseff: ‘Do I look happy, Mr Obama?’ Photograph: Eraldo Peres Tuesday’s…
• Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis • Only official US government communications protected • Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy • Read the NSA and…
The US National Security Agency has bugged the United Nations’ headquarters in the US city of New York. According to Germany’s weekly Der Spiegel in the summer of 2012, NSA experts managed to…
Remember when word circulated that Edward Snowden was using Lavabit, an email service that purports to provide better privacy and security for users than popular web-based free services like Gmail? Lavabit’s owner has shut…