While China tops the list of countries engaging in cyber-espionage, according to a report published February by the US secret services, France shares second place with Russia and Israel, leading Foreign Policy to describe Hollande’s outrage as “pretty hilarious”.

Colourful stories about the lengths the French secret services would go to emerged in the early 1990s, such as the bugging of seats on Air France planes to eavesdrop on American business leaders.

At the time, then-CIA director Stansfield Turner qualified French intelligence as “the most predatory service in the world, now that the old Soviet Union is gone”.

And the Americans are not the only country to have complained about French espionage.

In a 2009 US diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks, an unnamed German CEO of a satellite manufacturer was quoted calling France “the evil empire, stealing technology, and Germany knows this”, adding that French industrial spying was doing as much damage as anything coming from Russia or China.

Putting a scandal ‘on the back burner’

In France, one intelligence expert contacted by FRANCE 24 dismissed the criticism as part of a foggy media-political attempt to shift the blame game away from “the real story”.

“All the statements and stories reported in the American press are only very small pieces of a much larger puzzle,” said Éric Denécé, director of the French Centre of Intelligence Research.

“It amounts to virtually nothing in the world of espionage – a world in which it is impossible to see things in anywhere near their true scale.”

read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20130702-france-usa-spying-snowden-hollande-nsa-prism-hypocritcal

Brazil says it will demand an explanation from the US after allegations that the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on Brazilian government communications.

The allegations were made by Rio-based journalist Glenn Greenwald in a programme on TV Globo on Sunday.

Mr Greenwald obtained secret files from US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Communications from the Mexican president were also accessed by the NSA, Mr Greenwald said.

The US ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, was briefly summoned to the Brazilian foreign ministry, "to explain" the claims made by the American journalist.

He did not speak to reporters when he left, and there have been no comments from the foreign ministry either.

Mr Greenwald, a columnist for the British Guardian newspaper, told TV Globo's news programme Fantastico that secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed how US agents had spied on communications between aides of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff.

Brazil's Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo said that "if these facts prove to be true, it would be unacceptable and could be called an attack on our country's sovereignty".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23929257

The Canadian government agency that allegedly hacked into the Brazilian mining and energy ministry has participated in secret meetings in Ottawa where Canadian security agencies briefed energy corporations, it has emerged.

Claims of spying on the ministry by Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) come amid the Canadian government's increasingly aggressive promotion of resource corporations at home and abroad, including unprecedented surveillance and intelligence sharing with companies.

According to freedom of information documents obtained by the Guardian, the meetings – conducted twice a year since 2005 – involved federal ministries, spy and police agencies, and representatives from scores of companies who obtained high-level security clearance.

Meetings were officially billed to discuss "threats" to energy infrastructure but also covered "challenges to energy projects from environmental groups", "cyber security initiatives" and "economic and corporate espionage".

The documents – heavily redacted agendas – do not indicate that any international espionage was shared by CSEC officials, but the meetings were an opportunity for government agencies and companies to develop "ongoing trusting relations" that would help them exchange information "off the record", wrote an official from the Natural Resources ministry in 2010.

At the most recent meeting in May 2013, which focused on "security of energy resources development", meals were sponsored by Enbridge, a Canadian oil company trying to win approval for controversial tar sands pipelines.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/09/canadian-spies-met-energy-firms-documents

Read all articles from top toon...

The US National Security Agency secretly recorded millions of phone calls made in France, daily Le Monde reported on Monday, citing documents from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The spy agency taped 70.3 million phone calls in France over a 30-day period between December 10 and January 8, 2013, Le Monde reported in its online version.

According to the paper, the NSA automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded text messages under a programme code-named "US-985D."

Le Monde said the documents gave grounds to think the NSA targeted not only people suspected of being involved in terrorism but also high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics.

US authorities declined comment to the French daily on the "classified" documents.

The Le Monde article followed similar revelations by German weekly Der Spiegel that US agents had hacked into the email account of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

Mexican authorities have said they will be seeking answers from US officials "as soon as possible" following the allegations.

All this of course may have something to do with the French refusing air space entry to the president of Bolivia earlier this year... The French government by law is not allowed to spy on its citizens but should the NSA offer to do so for nothing the French government is not breaking the rules....

Read 
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_10_21/US-spy-agency-snooped-on-French-citizens-report-9653/

"The allegation that the National Security Agency collected more than 70 million 'recordings of French citizens' telephone data' is false."

Mr Clapper said he would not discuss details of surveillance activities, but acknowledged "the United States gathers intelligence of the type gathered by all nations".

Iran sanctions

His statement did not mention the second set of allegations about the National Security Agency (NSA) programmes that allegedly monitored French diplomats in Washington and at the UN.

The paper laid out how US spies used computer bugs and phone-tapping techniques to monitor French diplomats at the UN and in Washington.

German magazine Der Spiegel had previously reported the monitoring of French diplomats, and the Washington Post had revealed the existence of a global cyber-spying programme called Genie.

But Le Monde's story gives details of how US agents used the intelligence, apparently gathered from French diplomats under the Genie programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24633108

Gus: actually the number was either 69 or 71 million... thus it cannot be 70 million... In another world it could have been 70 billion...

spying on the frogs...

Y. B. (Yves Pozzo di Borgo): Of course. We know very well that the power of American listening networks is extraordinary, they do not need to seek permission from their allies and they do this unscrupulously. All great countries do this. Not only the Russians, the French do that, I think all countries do that. But the listening power of the Americans is much stronger than that of other countries.

(translation by Google)

read more:

https://francais.rt.com/opinions/34154-cia-espionner-france-elections-2017