By Jaime Ortega.
The U.S. has severely received criticism by E.U. countries for their spying operations in Holland, and Germany, but France has become another target by the National Security Agency.
France called the U.S. Ambassador in Paris, Charles Rivkin, to inmediately give explanations today on the latest information about the espionage to which they were subjected too, among others, French businessmen and politicians .
This was stated by the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, in remarks to reporters upon his arrival for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg.
” I immediately spoke the U.S. ambassador and I will be receiving him tat the Quai d’ Orsay ” said Fabius .
The French minister recalled that his Government had reacted ” strongly” in June when they heard the first details of the American espionage , but considered that based on the latest information “clearly we must go there.”
“This kind of practice between partners that threatens privacy, is totally unacceptable and must be secured as soon as possible to no longer be practiced ,” Fabius said.
This morning, the French Interior Minister , Manuel Valls , had already announced that his country would ask the United States ” precise explanations ” in the “coming hours ” on U.S. intelligence spying agenda.
According to documents from the National Security Agency (NSA ) released today by ‘Le Monde ‘ ,United States intercepted communications issued for more than 70.3 million from France in 30 days between late 2012 and early 2013 .
Over a span of 30 days between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013 , there was 70.3 million communications intercepted in France, according to documents published by the Web LeMonde.fr about NSA plans and were revealed by former adviser to the U.S. Agency Edward Snowden .
The average daily interceptions was three million, although there was a peak of nearly seven million on both December 24 and January 7, said the newspaper’s website, which stressed the ” mass extent” of this espionage mission.
The main objectives of the NSA in France were suspected of having links to terrorist organizations, but also others related to world business, as well as politicians amd officials .
The spying device consisted of automatic recordings of conversations or messages when phones activated certain number that matters.
Text messages were captured included certain important keywords.
Furthermore, the historical record was kept of the connections of each objective defined number .
The techniques used for these interceptions appear in NSA documents with two different codes , ” DRTBOX ” and ” WHITEBOX ” that in the 30 days specified , representing 62.5 million and 7.8 million respectively.
‘Le Monde ‘ , which got its information from the documents stolen by former NSA agent Edward Snowden, then transmitted by the journalist Glenn Greenwald , recalled that France is the most spied by the number of communications captured by the United States, in Europe, surpassing Germany and the UK.
In the latter case, however, such monitoring was done with the consent of the British authorities.
