Classified documents that were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden show that the U.S. spy agency had been spying on millions of telephone calls from France; French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has summoned Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the issue, according to the BBC.
The surveillance was revealed in an article co-written by Glenn Greenwald - the journalist who first published Snowden's leaks in the Guardian - in the French newspaper Le Monde. In a month long period from Dec. 10, 2012 until Jan. 8, 2013 over 70 million French call records were recorded by the NSA, according to Le Monde.
"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," Fabius said. "We were warned in June (about the program) and we reacted strongly but obviously we need to go further."
Kerry, who is in Paris on the first stop of a European tour to discuss Syria with allies, is expected to meet with his French counterpart on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"(The U.S.) gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations," Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told the Associated Press. "We've 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."
This past summer a French spy program that stored huge amounts of personal information on its own citizens was revealed. The French program - which is fairly similar to the NSA program exposed by Snowden - had been tracking emails, texts, and phone records for quite some time, according to the BBC.
Previously it had been learned that the United States had been spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's communications, a revelation that caused the leader to cancel a diplomatic dinner at the White House, according to the Associated Press.
