US Spying On EU Puts Trade Pact At Risk

The US has bugged the European Union’s offices and breached its networks, while also gathering massive amounts of data on citizens – with a special focus on Germans, according to revelations published in Der Spiegel at the weekend.

A key trade pact between the US and Europe is now in trouble after new leaks revealed that America’s NSA intelligence agency apparently bugged the EU’s Washington office and launched an operation in Europe to gain access to the European council’s phone and email networks.

The paper has seen documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which also show US authorities have been gathering phone-calls, emails and chat logs in Germany at a staggering rate of 500 million per month.

American Spy

The revelations have outraged French and German politicians.  “If the media reports are true, it is reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war,” Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said, according to Bild magazine. “It is beyond imagination that our friends in the US view Europeans as the enemy.”

“These acts, if confirmed, would be completely unacceptable,” said France France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius. “We expect the American authorities to answer the legitimate concerns raised by these press revelations as quickly as possible.”

Free trade talks are due to start next week between the US and Europe,  and Brussels officials have been hinting that the snooping allegations will throw a spanner in the works.

The attacks described go back several years: the EU’s building in Washington was bugged in 2010, according to the latest files from Edward Snowden, who has been on the run since revealing the American PRISM surveillance scheme last month, and is now in Moscow hoping for safe passage to Ecaudor.

The NSA also bugged the EU’s offices at the United Nations headquarters in New York, according to the leaks, and launched an operation from NATO headquarters in Brussels, to access the phone and email systems of the European Council’s Justus Lipsius building, where European summits are held.

That attack took place in 2007, according to the leak, and was carried out by calling remote maintenance systems in the building.

Even before the revelations of spying on the European authorities, the European Commission was already very concerned about US activities, according to a statement sent to TechWeekeurope: “We have seen the media reports and we are of course concerned for possible consequences on EU citizens’ privacy. For the moment it is too early to draw any conclusion or to comment further,” said home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström.

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