Brussels, 30/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 29 October, the head of the NSA, Keith Alexander, speaking before the Intelligence Committee of the House Of Representatives, denied that his services had themselves collected the telephone data of millions of Europeans of citizens, as reported in several newspapers, such as Le Monde , El Mundo and Espresso. The NSA chief said that these data had been collected by the European secret services, including the services of France and Spain, and then transmitted to the NSA, AFP reports.
According to General Alexander, who was speaking under oath, the documents leaked by Edward Snowden were simply misinterpreted by these newspapers. Their revelations on the interception of communications of European citizens by the NSA are “completely false”, he said. “Let's be perfectly clear, we did not gather this information on the European citizens”. Tuesday's Wall Street Journal was the first to state that the telephone tapping practised in these countries and attributed to the NSA was carried out by the European secret services and then “supplied” to the American agency. Additionally, they did not target the citizens of these countries, but of countries in which NATO is intervening, General Alexander added.
In an article on the Le Monde website on 30 October, it was acknowledged that this information tended to clear the NSA, at a time when all European eyes, in particular those of Viviane Reding, are trained on Washington. Le Monde acknowledges the existence of an agreement between France and the United States on the sharing of intelligence data, a programme entitled “Lustre” and which was already referred to by the German press late last week. According to Le Monde, it “therefore looks, on first sight, to be partly right, that some of the telephone data transiting on French soil has been transmitted in line with the cooperation agreements, and without any pre-sorting, by the DGSE [French intelligence service] to the NSA. The data therefore do concern French citizens receiving communications from these geographical areas as well as foreign citizens using these channels”, Jacques Follorou writes (our translation). On Wednesday 30 October, the government spokesperson, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said, however, that the denials from the head of the US National Security Agency (NSA) appeared rather unconvincing.
The matter of these data affecting France and Spain are a specific case, said Elmar Brok (EPP, Germany), visiting the United States with the delegation of the committee on civil liberties of the European Parliament. However, Angela Merkel's mobile number is “in the American files”, he said. A delegation of the German government was to travel to Washington on Wednesday to deal directly with this issue, which is particularly delicate as Barack Obama gave Merkel his word last week that she was not being spied on.
When asked about these new statements from the NSA, the European Commission did not make any specific comments on Wednesday, pointing out that intelligence is a matter that comes under member state competency. In Washington on Tuesday, Commissioner Reding did, however, say that there are “things which cannot be justified in the fight against terrorism” and that the states “do not have an unlimited right to secret surveillance”. We have to “strike the right balance” and each state “must play its own part”, the commissioner said.
As for the Commission, it has to deal with suspicions that its representatives may have been spied on, as well as the President of the European Council, at the most recent summit of the G20. The Russians are directly suspected of having given European officials USB drives fitted with snitches. A poisoned chalice which has reawakened the issues of the security of communications within the European institutions, when Herman Van Rompuy's e-mail account has already been compromised by Chinese hackers once. “It is recommended to all members of the Commission not to use any external materials when they are travelling overseas”, Frédéric Vincent said on Wednesday. “The European Commission has an extremely up-to-date security system” to protect its telephones and databases, the spokesperson added. “It uses state-of-the-art equipment to protect the communications of President Barroso and the commissioners”, Vincent added.
Another subject related to the NSA scandal: the future of the so-called “Safe Harbor” on the basis of which the American signatory companies, which include Google and Facebook, are allowed to use Europeans' personal data. This 'soft' agreement, signed between the EU and the American Department of Trade, is based on the understanding that the American companies will respect European data protection standards. The practices unveiled by Edward Snowden in June, linking these very same American companies closely with the PRISM system, have led the Europeans to question the validity of this agreement, which Reding described as no longer very “safe”. On Tuesday, the EPP itself called for this agreement to be scrapped and new rules drafted. The EP as a body has already asked for the SWIFT/TFTP agreement on the funding of terrorism to be suspended. (SP/transl.fl)