France Summons US Ambassador in Snowden Affair

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It’s all for play isn’t it when the French Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls summons the US Ambassador? It’s just for the newspeak and the media on the advice of his spin-doctor to swivel the French public around so much that they won’t know what’s hit them. The National Security Agency will hardly be quaking in its eavesdropping boots since they probably got wind of it long before Valls had even picked up the phone. Anyhow, what will come of it all. The NSA is hardly going to either back down or come clean, is it?

Revelations

The French newspaper Le Monde has published an article today in which it reveals that Edward Snowden has provided the proof that there was a massive-scale program carried out between December 2012 and January 2013in which not only suspected terrorists were being listened in on but also members of industry and politicians as well as the general public.

There were 70.3 million calls that were recorded during that period.

Apparently by simply dialing certain numbers the NSA was triggered and the calls were listened into. The codename of the operation was US-985D. It also covered text messages that were sent and not just voice communication.

Valls: NSA Spying Scandal in France

USA

The US has declined to make a comment so far on this matter and has simply referred media to a statement that was issued by the NSA in June regarding the surveillance of foreign countries. It was restated today that the practices “are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress. Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber-attacks against the United States and its allies”. So, the US has been listening in on French politicians to thwart terrorist attacks on those very same allies. Ah! Gotcha! It’s a homegrown version of terrorism yet again. It’s the French state that is pitching against itself in this story. Is that it?

Just as we thought that there was nothing more to come, Edward Snowden’s father returned after a visit to meet with his son to publically announce that there were more revelations. Snowden had been rather quiet for the past few months and rightly so. The media space was taken up with the trials and tribulations of the US shutdown. Now, it’s the best time for new impact.

France’s Reaction

Valls has also requested an explanation from Washington. But, what is happening is nothing more than the tentative vociferations by a country that will do nothing in the face of the USA. What happened last time when the NSA was revealed to have spied on the EU?

Hollande said “we would like an explanation…please” and Merkel said nothing more than “you can’t do that to your friends” or words to that effect. Nobody did much else in the EU as they were more preoccupied by their own state fallout from the sovereign debt-crisis than human rights. To boot, we all know that all countries are doing the self-same thing. Spying is as old as the hills and nearly as old as the other oldest profession. Wouldn’t do any good to shout too much, the people might just hear you leaders and they certainly wouldn’t want questions to be raised about their own eavesdropping on their very own citizens, would they?

Valls stated on Europe-1 Radio station: “Rules are obviously needed when it comes to new communication technologies, and that’s something that concerns every country. If a friendly country, an ally, spies on France or other European countries, then that is completely unacceptable”.

Mais oui, Mais oui, but what are you going to do about it Monsieur Valls? Is there going to be a duel at dawn after knocking back a good drop of claret? At one time Manuel Valls had stated that despite looking at a request for asylum for Edward Snowden he wouldn’t be in favor of it. Then, it really isn’t worth saying anything. Another example of newspeak?

39% of US citizens believe that Snowden is a traitor, while 35% believe him to be a patriot. It would be interesting to see just how many French people agree with those figures of a divided nation. I thought that Putin had granted asylum on the condition that Snowden would cease damaging the US. That has obviously been thrown out of the Siberian window, hasn’t it?

Well, no worries, Snowden is learning Russian and reading Dostoyevsky by all accounts. I wonder what he is leafing through right now? Is it Crime and Punishment or The Idiot?