14 DAY TRIAL // In yet another leak about the NSA spying practices, it seems the intelligence agency has been pretty busy targeting France.
According to French publication Le Monde, the spy agency got its hands on some 70.3 million local phone calls in total between December 10, 2012, and January 8, 2013 through a program called "US-985D" which enables the agency to listen in on telephone calls and pick up text messages based on key words.
The paper indicates the NSA automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded text messages. The people targeted by the intelligence agency were most likely not involved in terrorism, but rather people involved in the world of business or politics.
Graphs indicate the NSA intercepts an average 3 million records per day, with peaks of around 7 million. US authorities have refused to comment.
France has previously criticized the United States over its practices and even called for the suspension of talks in regards to the US-EU trade deal. This was after it was revealed the intelligence agency was targeting European Union diplomats and embassies of over 80 countries.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the authors of this particular report and also the journalist who has been in contact with Edward Snowden for months, has previously mentioned that there were incoming articles on how the NSA was spying on France.
This weekend, German publication Der Spiegel also revealed the NSA had been snooping on Mexico for a while, as it was closely keeping tabs on former president Felipe Calderon, a politician who had a close relationship with Washington and an outspoken ally of the US.
Previous reports indicated the NSA has been keeping an eye on current president Enrique Pena Nieto since before he came into office, in the same file that set Brazil on fire, revealing the NSA was spying on their president, Dilma Rousseff.