The NSA/Prism controversy rumbles on. Today the European Parliament President Martin Schulz said there could be a severe impact on EU-US relations if the claims that the US had bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks turned out to be true. He’s said he’s ‘deeply worried’ about the issue and called for clarification from the US over the stories that have appeared.
Respected German magazine Der Spiegel made the claims today in the the latest in a series about alleged NSA spying. Spiegel claims a “top secret” US National Security Agency (NSA) document from September 2010 has been taken by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It says its journalists have seen the document and claims that it goes into detail about how the NSA spied on EU offices and internal computer and phone networks in Washington and at the UN.
The magazine reports that over five years ago security officers at the EU noticed missed calls and traced them to NSA offices within the Nato compound in Brussels. It also reported that the NSA had looked at half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and had put Germany in the same class as China.
Earlier this month the European Commission (not the Parliament) raised the Prism matter with US authorities at a meeting Dublin.