Between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, the US National Security Administration made 70.3 million recordings of the phone communications of French citizens, according to Le Monde, which based its revelations on information leaked about the NSA's Prism programme by former IT contractor Edward Snowden. The newspaper claims that the NSA’s targets include people with suspected links to terrorist activities as well as people connected to the worlds of business, politics and government. Documents also revealed the existence of a programme called "Upstream", which the NSA uses to tap communications transiting through undersea cables, such as those owned by Franco-American group Alcatel-Lucent.
In response, French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault expressed his "deep shock”, while politicians, the press and the public reacted angrily. Foreign minister Laurent Fabius summoned US ambassador Charles Rivkin for an immediate explanation on 21 October. Fabius is expected to raise his grievances on 22 October, when he meets US secretary of state John Kerry, who is meeting Arab League officials in London and Paris. Kerry said he sought to resolve the matter on a bilateral basis.
The White House told journalists that US president Barack Obama had spoken by phone to French president Francois Hollande, who asked for a full explanation and to know what information could still be at large. While accusing some press disclosures of distorting the US government's activities, the Obama administration admitted that some "raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed".
The two heads of state agreed to work together to establish the facts and the exact scope of these surveillance activities. In an earlier statement, the National Security Council had said that the "US gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations".
