French president Hollande Berates US ov er Spy claims

French President Hollande
berates US over spying claims
22 October 2013 Last updated at 02:18
French President Francois Hollande has
expressed "deep disapproval" over claims the
US National Security Agency secretly tapped
phone calls in France.
In a phone conversation with US President
Barack Obama, he said this was "unacceptable
between friends and allies", demanding an
explanation.
The White House said the claims "raise
legitimate questions", seeking to ease French
concerns.
The NSA has recently spied on 70.3m phone
calls in France, it is claimed.
Officials, businesses and terror suspects are
believed to have been tracked in just 30 days
between 10 December last year and 8 January
2013.
The allegations were carried in France's Le
Monde newspaper and are based on leaks from
US ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
'Challenging task'
The claims prompted President Obama to call
his French counterpart to discuss the issue on
Monday.
Mr Hollande said that such practices "infringe
on the privacy of French citizens" and demanded
"explanations" from Mr Obama, according to a
statement issued by French presidency.
A White House statement said the two
presidents had discussed the latest disclosure,
"some of which have distorted our activities and
some of which raise legitimate questions for our
friends and allies about how these capabilities
are employed".
It said: "President [Obama] made clear that the
United States has begun to review the way that
we gather intelligence, so that we properly
balance the legitimate security concerns of our
citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that
all people share."
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said
Washington would continue "bilateral
consultations" to address the issue, describing
France as "one of our oldest allies".
"Protecting the security of our citizens in today's
world is a very complicated, very challenging
task... because there are lots of people out
there seeking to do harm to other people," Mr
Kerry said.
In an earlier statement, National Security
Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that
"all nations" conducted spying operations.
"As a matter of policy we have made clear that
the United States gathers foreign intelligence of
the type gathered by all nations," she said.
Envoy summoned
Le Monde says the NSA intercepts were
apparently triggered by certain key words.
The agency also apparently captured millions of
text messages.
It was unclear whether the content of the calls
and messages was stored, or just the metadata -
the details of who was speaking to whom.
And the paper did not say whether the
operation, codenamed US-985D, was still in
progress.
France's foreign ministry summoned US
ambassador Charles Rivkin over the allegations.
The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says the
outrage is largely for public consumption,
because the French government has been
accused of running its own snooping operation
similar to the US.
Le Monde reported in July that the French
government was storing vast amounts of
personal data of its citizens on a supercomputer
at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence
service.
The latest revelations follow claims in the
German media that US agents hacked into the
email account of former Mexican President Felipe
Calderon.
Mr Snowden, a former NSA worker, went public
with revelations about US spying operations in
June.
The information he leaked led to claims of
systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a
global scale.
Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as
well as allies like the EU and Brazil.
The NSA was also forced to admit it had
captured email and phone data from millions of
Americans.
Mr Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was
granted a year-long visa after making an asylum
application.
The US wants him extradited to face trial on
criminal charges.
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