Spanish Newspaper El Mundo reported on Monday that Spain is the latest U.S. ally to find out over 60 million phone calls were being monitored by the U.S. National Security Agency in the last month alone, the Associated Press reported.
According to the newspaper, the bar graph document titled "Spain-Last 30 Days," was one of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden and shows daily call traffic between Dec.10, 2012 through Jan. 8, and the duration of the calls, but not their content, the AP reported. El Mundo reported that the Metadata system used by the NSA could be used to monitor emails, and phone texts.
The U.S. Ambassador James Costos was summonsed to Madrid after the report was published to discuss the spying accusations. He met with the Foreign Ministry officials for 45 minutes on Monday, according to the AP. The ministry did not reference the El Mundo report, but demanded the handing over of all documents pertaining to "supposed eavesdropping carried out in Spain," by the U.S., the AP reported.
In a statement to the U.S. Spain warned "of the importance of preserving the climate of confidence existing in bilateral relations and to know the extent of practices, which if true, are impropriate and unacceptable between friendly allies," the AP reported.
Costos said the U.S. "acknowledges that some of our closest allies have raised concerns about the recent series of unauthorized disclosures of classified information," but reminded Spain how it has benefited from U.S. intelligence, according to the AP
Costos added the NSA programs referred to in the El Mundo report "are national security programs that have played a critical role in protecting citizens of the United States. They have also played an instrumental role in our coordination with our allies and in protecting their interests as well," the AP reported.
Spain insists there is no proof of any cases of the U.S. spying on Spain, but the country's leading newspaper, El Pais, reported last Friday that "unidentified sources that saw documents obtained by Snowden as saying they showed that the NSA had tracked phone calls, text messages and emails of millions of Spaniards and spied on members of the Spanish government and other politicians," according to the AP.
An internal review ordered by President Barack Obama states the intelligence being collected is "intelligence that should and needs to be collected," the AP reported.
According to the AP, nine European Parliament officials are visiting Washington on Monday to ask for more information on the NSA's mass surveillance, and Angel Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, and French President Francois Hollande insisted they would press for an end to the American eavesdropping on leaders, businesses and citizens.
