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US may have monitored Merkel's phone, says German government US may have monitored Merkel's phone, says German government
(about 1 hour later)
The German government claims to have obtained information suggesting that the United States may have monitored the mobile phone of Angela Merkel. The chancellor called Barack Obama to demand an immediate clarification, it said. The furore over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.
"We swiftly sent a request to our American partners asking for an immediate and comprehensive clarification," Steffen Seibert, a German government spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday. Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be "livid" over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.
Seibert said the chancellor had made clear that "she unambiguously condemns such practices, if they prove to be true, and considers them completely unacceptable. They would constitute a grave breach of trust. Such practices would have to be stopped immediately." The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel's mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.
A statement issued by the White House on Wednesday said: "Today, President Obama and Chancellor Merkel spoke by telephone regarding allegations that the US National Security Agency intercepted the communications of the German chancellor. The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel. The outrage in Berlin came days after President François Hollande of France also called the White House to confront Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.
"The United States greatly values our close co-operation with Germany on a broad range of shared security challenges. As the president has said, the United States is reviewing the way that we gather intelligence to ensure that we properly balance the security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share. While European leaders have generally been keen to play down the impact of the whistleblowing disclosures in recent months, events in the EU's two biggest countries this week threatened an upward spiral of lack of trust in transatlantic relations.
"Both leaders agreed to intensify further the co-operation between our intelligence services with the goal of protecting the security of both countries and of our partners, as well as protecting the privacy of our citizens." Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, made plain that Merkel upbraided Obama unusually sharply and also voiced exasperation at the slowness of the Americans to respond to detailed questions on the NSA scandal since the Snowden revelations first appeared in the Guardian in June.
But asked by the Guardian if the US had monitored the German chancellor's phone in the past, Caitlin Hayden, the White House's National Security Council spokeswoman, said: "The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel. Beyond that, I'm not in a position to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity." Merkel told Obama that "she unmistakably disapproves of and views as completely unacceptable such practices, if the indications are authenticated," Seifert said. "This would be a serious breach of confidence. Such practices have to be halted immediately."
Thomas Oppermann, of Merkel's likely coalition partner, the SPD, said: "If these allegations turn out to be true, they would constitute a major breach of trust, and that's why this matter has to be cleared up very quickly and very thoroughly." The sharpness of the German complaint direct to an American president strongly suggested that Berlin had no doubt about the grounds for protest. Seibert voiced irritation that the Germans had waited for months for proper answers from Washington to Berlin on the NSA operations.
The German chancellery was alerted to the possibility of Angela Merkel's phone being monitored after a report by Der Spiegel. Merkel told Obama she expected the Americans "to supply information over the possible scale of such eavesdropping practices against Germany and reply to questions that the federal government asked months ago", Seibert said.
Earlier this week, the White House conceded that revelations about how its intelligence agencies have intercepted enormous amounts of French phone traffic raised "legitimate questions for our friends and allies". The White House responded that Merkel's mobile is not being tapped. "The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor," said a statement from Jay Carney, the White House spokesman.
In a statement released after a phone call between Obama and his counterpart, François Hollande, the White House acknowledged the diplomatic impact of the disclosures by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Berlin promptly signalled that the rebuttal referred to the present and the future and did not deny that Merkel's communications had been monitored in the past.
"The president and President Hollande discussed recent disclosures in the press, some of which have distorted our activities, and some of which raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed," the White House said in a statement. Asked by the Guardian if the US had monitored the German chancellor's phone in the past, a top White House official declined to deny that it had.
"The president made clear that the United States has begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share. The two presidents agreed that we should continue to discuss these issues in diplomatic channels." Caitlin Hayden, the White House's National Security Council spokeswoman, said: "The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel. Beyond that, I'm not in a position to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity."
On Tuesday, the US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, disputed the reports in Le Monde, saying they "contain inaccurate and misleading information regarding US foreign intelligence activities". Obama and Merkel, the White House said, "agreed to intensify further the co-operation between our intelligence services with the goal of protecting the security of both countries and of our partners, as well as protecting the privacy of our citizens."
"The allegation that the National Security Agency collected more than 70 million 'recordings of French citizens' telephone data' is false," he said in an emailed statement. The explosive new row came on the eve of an EU summit in Brussels opening on Thursday afternoon. Following reports by Le Monde this week about the huge scale of US surveillance of France, Hollande insisted that the issue be raised at a summit which, by coincidence, is largely devoted to the "digital" economy in Europe. Hollande also phoned Obama to protest and insist on a full explanation, but received only the stock US response that the Americans were examining their intelligence practices and seeking to balance security and privacy imperatives, according to the Elysee Palace.
He declined to discuss details of NSA activities, but said: "We have repeatedly made it clear that the United States gathers intelligence of the type gathered by all nations … to protect the nation, its interests and its allies from, among other things, threats such as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The French demand for a summit debate had gained little traction in Europe. On Wednesday morning, briefing privately on the business of the summit, senior German officials made minimal mention of the surveillance scandal. But by Wednesday evening that had shifted radically. The Germans publicly insisted that the activities of the US intelligence services in Europe be put on a new legal basis.
Hollande's office said the French leader asked Obama to make available all information on the NSA monitoring of French communications. "The [German] federal government, as a close ally and partner of the USA, expects in the future a clear contractual basis for the activity of the services and their cooperation," Merkel told Obama.
"This sort of practice between partners that invades privacy is totally unacceptable and we have to make sure, very quickly, that this no longer happens," said the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius. "We fully agree that we co-operate to fight terrorism. It is indispensable. But this does not justify that personal data of millions of our compatriots are snooped on." In 2009, it was reported that Merkel had fitted her phone with an encryption chip to stop it being bugged. As many as 5,250 other ministers, advisers and important civil servants were supplied with similar state-of-the-art encryption technology. Merkel is known to be a keen mobile user and has been nicknamed "die Handy-Kanzlerin" ("Handy" being the German word for mobile phone).
When asked how he had communicated with Merkel during an EU summit in Brussels in 2008, then French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: "We call each other's mobiles and write text messages."
Katrin Goring-Eckhart, parliamentary leader of the Greens, said: "If these allegations turn out to be true, we are dealing with an incredible scandal and an unprecedented breach of trust between the two countries, for which there can be no justification."
On social media, a number of Germans mocked Merkel's change of tone over the NSA affair, given her previous reluctance to talk about the controversy. Jens König, a reporter for the news weekly Stern, tweeted that it was "the first time that Merkel is showing some proper passion during the NSA affair".
The European Commission has thrown its weight behind new European Parliament proposals for rules governing the transfer of data from Europe to America and demanded that the forthcoming summit finalise the new regime by next spring.
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