Merkel phone may have been spied on out of US embassy

Berlin: The alleged US spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone may have been run out of its Berlin embassy, less than a kilometre from the chancellery, media reported on Friday. The surveillance was allegedly conducted by a listening post of the Special Collection Service, run jointly by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency, said the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The eavesdropping programme ‘works worldwide in American embassies and consulates, mostly in secret,’ it said, citing documents provided by fugitive former NSA intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The alleged spying on Merkel, made public Wednesday by the German government, sent shock waves though the country and was roundly condemned by legislators and in the media.

‘Spying between friends, that’s just not done,’ Merkel said on Thursday from Brussels, where the agenda of a European Union summit was hijacked by the growing spy scandal.

Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle on the same day called in the US ambassador and then demanded Washington provide straight answers on the allegations.

German news weekly Der Spiegel this year reported that Special Collection Service surveillance devices could be hidden in US embassies around the world, again citing Snowden documents.

In August, a German police helicopter conducted a fly-over of the US consulate in Frankfurt to search for suspected listening posts, it said.  AFP