Telegraph: US intelligence has been operating a global network of 80 eavesdropping centres, including 19 European listening posts in cities such as Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid, the German magazine Spiegel has reported.
The new revelations, which Spiegel said were based on leaked American intelligence documents, are certain to fuel international outrage at the sweeping scale of US international surveillance operations.
Spiegel also reported that the telephone number of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has been a target of US surveillance since 2002, when she was leader of the opposition.
Mrs Merkel, who telephoned President Barack Obama on Wednesday to express her anger at reports that her phone had been hacked, was still under surveillance until a few weeks before the US leader Berlin in June, Spiegel said.
Even before the latest reports, Germany said that it would send a high-level delegation to the US this week to demand answer s at the White House and National Security Agency (NSA) about the reports that Mrs Merkel’s phone was tapped. The team will include spy chiefs, German media reported.
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