US spying on France now over, says Obama
President Barack Obama reassured his French counterpart Francois Hollande in a phone call yesterday that Washington was no longer spying on France and had stopped practices deemed ‘‘unacceptable’’ by its allies.
The US ambassador had earlier been summoned to the French foreign ministry to explain why the National Security Agency had hacked the phone lines of three heads of state and dozens of French ministers and top officials over six years.
After the phone call, the White House said: ‘‘We are not targeting, and will not target Mr Hollande’s communications.’’
The Elysee said: ‘‘President Obama unambiguously reiterated his firm commitment, initially made in November 2013 after the Snowden affair . . . to end the practices that may have taken place in the past and that are unacceptable between allies,’’ after the call.
The diplomatic spat was sparked when the online whistleblower WikiLeaks published documents it said were from the NSA showing that France has joined Germany on the list of close US allies targeted by the agency.
France’s national intelligence co-ordinator is being sent to the US to discuss the understanding between Paris and Washington that spying would no longer be carried out – a deal reached after earlier revelations in 2013.
The release of the documents by WikiLeaks appeared to be timed to coincide with a vote on Wednesday in the French parliament on a con- troversial Bill giving French intelligence agencies sweeping new surveillance powers to address terrorist threats.
It waives the need for judicial approval to use phone taps, hidden microphones, cameras and other spying devices.
Critics say the law permits activities similar to the mass intelligence gathering exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The WikiLeaks disclosures, which emerged late on Wednesday in the Left-wing French daily newspaper Liberation and the investigative website Mediapart, provide no startling new information.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament yesterday: ‘‘The US should recognise not only the danger that such actions represent for our freedom, but should also do everything in its power – and quickly – to repair the damage they have done to relations . . . between the United States and France.’’
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the farLeft firebrand, said the appropriate response was for France to offer asylum to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder currently holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, and to Edward Snowden, who is in exile in Russia.
Liberation reported that some of the phone intercepts may have been made from a secret spy station on the roof of the US embassy in Paris near the Elysee, where antennas are reportedly hidden behind a canvas with fake windows painted on it.