France Is Surprised By America's Giant Surveillance Net On It's Country

Even Spy-Crazy France Is Surprised By America's Giant Surveillance Net -- Shane Harris and John Hudson, Foreign Policy

It's hardly a secret, or much of a shock, that the United States spies on some of its closest allies. But recent revelations about the National Security Agency hoovering up the telephone calls of French citizens have even surprised officials in that country, one of the world's great bastions of espionage.

According to a report in Le Monde, the NSA has monitored more than 70 million French phone calls in a 30-day period. French officials had initially expressed little shock at a previous report that the United States was spying on its officials -- that is, after all, what intelligence agencies do. But they were taken aback by the scale and scope of the latest revelations about monitoring its citizens, a French official told The Cable.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned what he called the NSA's "unacceptable practices." The government summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain what the spy agency is up to. (It was not clear from the report why NSA was monitoring so many phone calls, and whether the agency was listening to them.)

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My Comment: This NSA focus on France is not a surprise. France has a huge Arab population .... and the french themselves are involved extensively throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The Americans are /were clearly looking for something .... what that may be is something that we may know one day (or not).