SHARE
COPY LINK

SPYING

Spain shares phone data with US: Report

Spanish secret services regularly share large amounts of intercepted data with their US counterparts, including details of telephone calls, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

Spain shares phone data with US: Report
"Spain's secret intelligence service CNI regularly transmits to the US National Security Agency large quantities of personal metadata," says El País. Photo: Ludovic Bertron

The report by leading Spanish daily El Pais supported allegations by US spy chiefs and officials that European intelligence services collected information from telephone communications to hand to US services.

The allegations were a challenge to media reports that US intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) collected data from tens of millions of telephone calls in Spain and France. The reports have tested European relations with Washington.

Citing sources with knowledge of the spying practices, El Pais said that Spain's secret intelligence service CNI, "like most of the main European espionage services, regularly transmits to the US National Security Agency large quantities of personal metadata" for analysis.

The data include the origin, destination and duration of telephone calls, it said.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the head of the CNI will address parliament next Wednesday over earlier reports of US telephone-spying in Europe.

Spain's foreign minister summoned the US ambassador in Madrid on Monday over the issue.

The United States' European allies protested after newspapers reported, based on leaks from fugitive former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, that Washington collected European telephone calls and online communications as part of anti-terror operations.

Rajoy said such spying, if true, is "inappropriate and unacceptable between partners and friends".

Spanish newspaper El Mundo on Monday published a document it said was supplied by Snowden that purportedly showed the agency had spied on more than 60 million telephone calls in Spain in a month.

That followed similar reports of spying in France, Germany and other European countries.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

RUSSIA

Germany arrests Russian scientist for spying for Moscow

German police arrested a Russian scientist working at an unidentified university, accusing him of spying for Moscow, prosecutors said on Monday, in a case that risks further inflaming bilateral tensions.

Germany arrests Russian scientist for spying for Moscow
Vladimir Putin. Photo: dpa/AP | Patrick Semansky

Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the suspect, identified only as Ilnur N., had been taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of “working for a Russian secret service since early October 2020 at the latest”.

Ilnur N. was employed until the time of his arrest as a research assistant for a natural sciences and technology department at the unnamed German university.

German investigators believe he met at least three times with a member of Russian intelligence between October 2020 and this month. On two occasions he allegedly “passed on information from the university’s domain”.

He is suspected of accepting cash in exchange for his services.

German authorities searched his home and workplace in the course of the arrest.

The suspect appeared before a judge on Saturday who remanded him in custody.

‘Completely unacceptable’

Neither the German nor the Russian government made any immediate comment on the case.

However Moscow is at loggerheads with a number of Western capitals after a Russian troop build-up on Ukraine’s borders and a series of espionage scandals that have resulted in diplomatic expulsions.

Italy this month said it had created a national cybersecurity agency following warnings by Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Europe needed to
protect itself from Russian “interference”. 

The move came after an Italian navy captain was caught red-handed by police while selling confidential military documents leaked from his computer to a Russian embassy official.

READ ALSO:

The leaders of nine eastern European nations last month condemned what they termed Russian “aggressive acts” citing operations in Ukraine and “sabotage” allegedly targeted at the Czech Republic.

Several central and eastern European countries have expelled Russian diplomats in solidarity with Prague but Russia has branded accusations of its involvement as “absurd” and responded with tit-for-tat expulsions.

The latest espionage case also comes at a time of highly strained relations between Russia and Germany on a number of fronts including the ongoing detention of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who received treatment in Berlin after a near-fatal poisoning.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has moreover worked to maintain a sanctions regime over Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the scene of ongoing fighting between pro-Russia separatists and local forces.

And Germany has repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks on its soil.

The most high-profile incident blamed on Russian hackers to date was a cyberattack in 2015 that completely paralysed the computer network of the Bundestag lower house of parliament, forcing the entire institution offline for days while it was fixed.

German prosecutors in February filed espionage charges against a German man suspected of having passed the floor plans of parliament to Russian secret services in 2017.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas last week said Germany was expecting to be the target of Russian disinformation in the run-up to its general election in September, calling it “completely unacceptable”.

Russia denies being behind such activities.

Despite international criticism, Berlin has forged ahead with plans to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, set to double natural gas supplies from Russia to Germany.

SHOW COMMENTS