DHAKA: American spies secretly listened in to 70.3 million private phone calls in France over less than one month, it emerged today.

The astonishing figure gives an indication of just how easy it is for the US to monitor people’s activities across Europe and has caused outrage in France.

The country`s foreign minister has summoned the US ambassador `immediately` to the Elysee Palace to explain himself and has described America`s espionage activities as `totally unacceptable`.

The scale of spying by America on French individuals and companies was revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the whistleblower and former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA).

If repeated every month, more than 843.6 million calls a year would be intercepted in a country with a population of just 65 million.

The report in Le Monde, co-written by Glenn Greenwald who originally revealed the NSA surveillance program, found that when certain numbers were used, the conversations were automatically recorded.

Citing Snowden`s leaked documents, Le Monde says links to terrorism were not always necessary for an intercept to take place, describing.

All of the calls were hacked and taped in the period from December 10 last year to January 8 this year as part of an NSA programme called ‘US-985D’.

Source: dailymail
BDST: 1013 HRS, OCT 22, 2013
AKA/BSK