France Spies On Its People, Too

Looks like America isn't the only country with a massive surveillance hobby. France is monitoring its people's phone calls, emails and social media activity as well, the Le Monde newspaper reported today, according to Reuters. France's external intelligence agency, the DGSE, intercepts signals from phones and computers and stores them for years in a massive database of "who is talking to whom," the report alleges. As in the US, the actual content of phone calls is not recorded.

"All of our communications are spied on," writes the paper, which contends that the database is illegal. The French national security commission disputes the entire report. Just yesterday France was urging the EU to suspend trade talks with the US over reports of NSA spying on European concerns. The European Parliament today took up that baton, recommending in a 483-98 vote that the EU drop a pair of agreements giving the US access to European financial and travel data unless Washington comes clean about its spying activities. (More France stories.)