Angela Merkel's call to Obama: are you bugging my mobile phone?
By Ian Traynor in Brussels, Philip Oltermann in Berlin, and Paul Lewis in
Washington
The Guardian
Thursday 24 October 2013
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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 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.
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.
"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.
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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