France is latest US ally angered by NSA snooping

The sweep and scope of National Security Agency snooping abroad forced President Barack Obama once again to hear complaints from a US ally angry about the surveillance net that has sparked an international debate over the limits of American spying.
France is the latest in a growing list of nations - Germany, Brazil and Mexico included - demanding explanations from Washington. A report published yesterday said the US swept up 70 million French telephone records and text messages and recorded some private conversations.
President Francois Hollande's office expressed "profound reprobation," saying the spying violated the privacy of French citizens. The White House said some news reports have distorted the work of US surveillance programmes, but said Obama acknowledged to Hollande in a telephone conversation that some reports have raised "legitimate questions for our friends and allies."

"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 White House said.
The report in Le Monde, co-written by Glenn Greenwald, who originally revealed the surveillance programme based on leaks from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, found that when certain phone numbers were used, conversations were recorded automatically. The surveillance operation also gathered text messages based on key words, Le Monde reported.
In another instance, a former French intelligence director stated that the spy agency compiled a detailed secret dossier of the proprietary proposals that US and Soviet companies wrote to compete with a French company for a USD 1 billion contract to supply fighter jets to India.

But while corporate and spy- vs-spy espionage may be common, the newspaper report indicated that French citizens were unwittingly drawn into US surveillance, too.