On Monday, the U.S. ambassador to France met with angered French diplomats to discuss the alleged 70 million French phone calls that were intercepted for over a month. The French newspaper Le Monde exposed certain aspects of the National Security Administration’s spying, and shortly after the story was published, ambassador Charles Rivkin was called to the French Foreign Ministry in Paris to explain what really happened.
“These kinds of practices between partners, that violate privacy, are totally unacceptable,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters. “We must quickly assure that these practices aren’t repeated.” A U.S. official said that Fabius will meet with U.S. Secretary John Kerry on Tuesday to further discuss the situation.
Le Monde said in its report that the NSA screened phone calls that were made in France, and it referred to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Le Monde said in its online English version: “Telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale.” The report also claimed that the period of time in which the phone calls were monitored was between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013.
Le Monde explained how the monitoring probably worked: “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.”
