Asked if Britain had agreed to take part in the new US-Europe talks on intelligence, the German Chancellor replied that “David Cameron was present at the discussion”. “He listened to it. He wasn’t against it. That is silent acquiescence as far as I go,” she said.
Mr Cameron has angered other EU leaders by failing — at any point during a two day Brussels summit - to condemn revelations that America’s National Security Ageny (NSA) had bugged Chancellor Merkel’s telephone as unacceptable.
“Britain has a very strong, unique, intelligence partnership with the United States. That’s been very longstanding,” the prime minister said.
The surveillance of the German leader was allegedly conducted by a listening post of the “special collection service, run jointly by the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported.
Germany announced today that German officials would travel to the US “shortly” for talks about the spying allegations that have led to calls in some quarters for the EU to break off talks on a new transatlantic trade partnership until assurances are given.
In another potential embarrassment for Washington, Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish Prime Minister said on Friday he would call in the US ambassador to Madrid to explain reports of American spying on the country.
President Hollande also expressed anger that the NSA had failed to answer questions over whether the US was involved in a cyber-attack on the Elysee in May 2012.
Signalling a growing hostility to the US and its closest European ally, Britain, Mr Hollande he was not interested in striking a similar deal to the “Five Eyes” no-spying agreement between the UK, America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
“The five countries, the US, UK and others, they have their own rules, or so I understand. We’re not within that framework and we don’t intend to join,” he said.
“You should not spy upon or monitor the mobile phones of people you meet at international summits. If you want to monitor something or someone, you should inform the others. You should not store data that could challenge or impact another’s freedoms.”
US intelligence officials meanwhile, have warned that documents stolen by the NSA contractor Edward Snowden could expose previously secret levels of co-operation between some countries and the US.
The warning were issued in briefings by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as the White House continued to try and defuse the row with Europe.
The Washington Post said some of the documents Snowden stole contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the US.
Deutsche Telekom has announced that it wants Germany’s communications companies to cooperate to shield local internet traffic from foreign intelligence services.
“It is internationally without precedent that the internet traffic of a developed country bypasses the servers of another country,” said Torsten Gerpott, a professor of business and telecoms at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
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