Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

US, France move to cool spying row

PARIS — French President Francois Hollande said yesterday French intelligence services would work with their American counterparts on a bilateral framework for eavesdropping, cooling the flare-up over what he termed “unacceptable” United States surveillance of French citizens.

PARIS — French President Francois Hollande said yesterday French intelligence services would work with their American counterparts on a bilateral framework for eavesdropping, cooling the flare-up over what he termed “unacceptable” United States surveillance of French citizens.

In the latest diplomatic backlash against the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) wide surveillance net and another example of how disclosures about the programme have strained relations with even the closest of America’s allies, Mr Hollande spoke over the phone on Monday with US President Barack Obama to express his “deep disapproval” over the issue.

The flap between the allies followed allegations by French daily Le Monde that the NSA had swept up 70 million French telephone records and text messages and recorded some private conversations.

After the phone call, the two presidents agreed a “bilateral framework” should be set up for the collection of intelligence to make sure it is used only in the fight against terrorism, the French presidency said in a statement. Both sides also agreed their intelligence services would “work together to that effect”, the statement added.

A White House statement on Monday said Mr Obama had “made clear that the US 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”.

The talk of cooperation capped a day of heated rhetoric, when France demanded the US end the spying on French citizens and companies, and the French Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador Charles Rivkin to France. The French government had called on Mr Rivkin just as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Paris for talks on a possible peace process for Syria.

The Le Monde article was co-written by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who originally disclosed the surveillance programme based on leaks from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. The report said when certain phone numbers were used, conversations were recorded automatically and the operation also gathered text messages based on key words.

French officials have deemed the spying totally unacceptable and demanded that it cease. “These kinds of practices between partners are totally unacceptable and we must be assured that they are no longer being implemented,” Mr Rivkin was told, according to ministry spokesman Alexandre Giorgini.

Previous disclosures from the documents leaked by Snowden had already pulled the veil off the spying by the NSA on other allies, including Germany, Britain and Brazil. Agencies

Related topics

spying

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.