Tag: spying

China slams US Human Rights Report

China has bashed the US with its own “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014”, argumentatively advising Washington that it should take a look in the mirror before pointing fingers.

Beijing has answered the US with its own annual Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014, which was released by the country’s State Council Information Office on Friday, a day after Washington published its Report on Human Rights Practices for 2014.

It brought into focus the grave human rights violations both inside the US and those it has exercised all over the world.

“While its own human rights situation was increasingly grave, the US violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more ‘red cards’ in the international human rights field.”

“In the field of international human rights, the US has long refused to approve some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important UN human rights resolutions.”

The report also stressed that the US National Security Agency had spied on world leaders and civilians all over the world.

The report pointed at the problems of racial discrimination within US, especially stressing how Washington treats its minority groups and indigenous people, which are “subject to unfairness in environment, election, health care, housing, education and other fields.”

American women and children’s rights were also not fully protected within their own country.“Money is a deciding factor in the US politics, and the US citizens’ political rights were not properly protected,” the report concluded.

Source: Sputnik News

Le Pen – US no ‘ally or friend’ to France

The leader of France’s far right Front National party, Marine Le Pen, has declared that the United States is not “an ally or a friend” to the French, in light of Wikileaks reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on three French presidents.

“France should react with firmness and send out a strong signal today by pulling out of discussions over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty,” Le Pen wrote in a statement, referring to the deal being discussed by the European Parliament to revise corporate rights in dealings with governments. She and other eurosceptics have opposed the TTIP plan.

“The US are a hegemonic power, prepared to do anything in order to increase its grip on our country” Le Pen said. “The French must recognize that the United States, which is to say its government that we clearly distinguish from its people, are not a country that is an ally or a friend.”…

Le Pen also dismissed Sarkozy’s decision to restore France to Nato’s integrated military command in 2009 as a “strategic mistake”. Former leader Charles de Gaulle removed France from the role in 1966, fearing it harmed France’s sovereignty.

In the conversation the two negotiate the possibility of Le Pen endorsing the Russian annexation of Crimea and visiting the peninsula as “an observer”.

Source: Newsweek

Silent Circle moves to Switzerland to bypass US surveillance

As US mass surveillance continues to make headlines, one man has had enough. Philip Zimmermann, creator of one of the most widely-used encryption systems, has moved his company to Switzerland, claiming societies need to “roll back” surveillance tactics.

Expressing his concerns about mass surveillance, Zimmerman told the Guardian that “every dystopian society has excessive surveillance, but now we see even Western democracies like the US and England moving that way.”

Zimmerman is the inventor of the encryption program Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), as well as the co-founder of three-year-old encryption start-up Silent Circle.

“We have to roll this back. People who are not suspected of committing crimes should not have information collected and stored in a database. We don’t want to become like North Korea,” the Internet Hall of Fame inductee continued.

Silent Circle will now operate from Switzerland – a move prompted by the 2013 Lavabit incident. The founder of Lavabit – which provided email addresses for 410,000 people including NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – was served with a court order in 2013, requiring him to install surveillance equipment. This prompted him to close the service.

Zimmerman paid close attention to the situation, realizing that Washington could also serve Silent Circle – which offered voice, text, and email services – with the same order. He shut down the email service, wiped its database and never looked back.

Now the company is setting up its headquarters in Switzerland – where, according to Zimmerman, he is “less likely to encounter legal pressures.”

On its blog, Silent Circle credits Switzerland with having the “world’s most robust privacy laws,” adding that the company will continue to grow its Washington and London offices, but that “most of our new growth will take place in our new headquarters.”

While the Snowden revelations have opened the world’s eyes to mass surveillance, Zimmerman knew the possibilities all along.

The user manual for PGP, written in 1991 and updated seven years later, warns: “Today, email can be routinely and automatically scanned for interesting keywords, on a vast scale, without detection. This is like driftnet fishing.”

Perhaps it is this insight that has led to such widespread support for Silent Circle. Earlier this year, the encryption system raised US$50 million in a second round of outside funding.

In addition to Silent Circle and PGP, Zimmerman also played a role in developing Blackphone, the world’s most spy-resistant phone. In addition to its sealed operating system largely preventing data leaks, Silent Circle is used on the phone to encode all calls, texts, and contacts.

The second generation of the phone, costing around $700, is expected to be released this year, and will be followed by an attempt at a tablet device.

Pressure builds on UK’s surveillance

A group of leading human rights NGOs in Britain are taking the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights over invasive mass surveillance practices they warn violate Britons’ right to privacy and freedom of expression.

The court appeal, filed by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Amnesty International, Liberty and other civil liberties groups, is a direct response to a ruling last December by Britain’s surveillance court, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).

The case, brought before the IPT, examined whether Britain and America’s industrial surveillance programs uncovered by ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden breach citizens’ right to privacy.

The IPT ruling found that Tempora, a program set up to monitor web traffic flowing in and out of Britain via fiber optic cables, is entirely lawful. It also said Britain and America’s intelligence sharing system known as Prism is legal.

During the court proceedings, fragments of previously clandestine government surveillance policies were made known to the public, which influenced the tribunal’s final decision. Because these policies had been made transparent, the IPT resolved industrial spying was compliant with international human rights law.

The appeal filed at the ECHR challenges the IPT’s December ruling that industrial spying under Britain’s controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) complies with the UK’s duty to protect its citizens’ human rights. RIPA regulates public bodies’ deployment of and access to surveillance.

The European Court of Human Rights will also consider whether certain provisions inherent to RIPA violate Article 14 of the Convention, which bans illegal discrimination.

On shaky legal ground

The court appeal comes at a time when legal arguments justifying the government’s surveillance policies are beginning to unravel. On February 6, Britain’s surveillance court ruled that British intelligence services breached the law by accessing millions of individuals’ personal data.

This landmark ruling signaled the first occasion that the IPT found UK security and intelligence services had acted unlawfully.

Several weeks later, during a separate IPT case involving Reprieve and Amnesty International, the UK government admitted that its program governing the interception, collection and use of material privileged under law breaches the Human Rights Act.

The most recent appeal filed at the ECHR follows 18 months of litigation between human rights NGOs and the British government. It uncovered multiple legal issues with the UK government’s mass surveillance techniques.

Throughout the course of this legal wrangling, it emerged the UK government deems it justifiable to engage in mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google user in Britain, even if there is no suspicion that the user has broken the law.

In a bid to legitimize this, the government has secretly redefined Britons’ use of these messaging platforms as “external communications,” according to Privacy International.

Carly Nyst, legal director of Privacy International, said mass surveillance tramples upon citizens’ basic rights.

“Intercepting millions of communications every day, and secretly receiving millions more from the NSA by the back door is neither necessary nor proportionate,” she said.

Nyst argued that the IPT revealed a pro-government stance by siding with UK spy base GCHQ. However, she noted the ECHR has a “strong history of ensuring intelligence agencies are compliant with human rights law.”

“We hope that the court continues this tradition and GCHQ is finally held accountable for its unfettered spying on the world’s communications,” she said.

James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, said the IPT maintains there are reasonable safeguards to protect Britons from industrial-scale privacy rights violations.

“We disagree, and hope the European Court will finally make clear to our security services that they cannot operate in near complete secrecy,” he said.

“It is thanks only to Edward Snowden’s revelations, and the scant disclosures we and the other claimants have been able to prise from the government, that we know anything whatsoever about what the intelligence services are up to.”

Amnesty International lawyer Nick Williams said no individual is “above the law” and the European Court of Human Rights now has an opportunity to “make this clear.”

“The UK government’s surveillance practices have been allowed to continue unabated and on an unprecedented scale, with major consequences for people’s privacy and freedom of expression,” he said.

“It is critical that we are able to seek and receive information of public interest from our confidential sources, free from government intrusion.”

One dead after SUV rams into NSA HQ

An SUV truck drove into the gates of the National Security Agency headquarters on Monday morning. One of the two alleged attackers was shot dead at the scene by security.

Police sources say two more are being treated for injuries as a result of the attack. Emergency workers were seen carrying a person in uniform to one of the ambulances.

NBC has cited inside sources claiming that the two men were disguised as women at the time of the attack. It further alleges that a gun and a quantity of illegal drugs were found in their Ford Escape.

Chopper footage at ABC7 shows a significant police presence. The footage shows two damaged vehicles outside the gates.

FBI is investigating the incident, with police refusing to provide detailed comment, saying that the incident took place on NSA property. Fort Meade houses 11,000 military staff and 29,000 civilian employees.

British threaten to halt intel to Germany

British intelligence chiefs have threatened to halt their sharing of information with their German counterparts if Germany goes ahead with a parliamentary inquiry into British and US spying, according German media reports.

The British are worried that German politicians could expose classified information including details of code breaking and other technology, including a European surveillance program, which was launched last year, said a report in German weekly magazine, Focus.

Head of Germany’s federal intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) Gerhard Schindler, is reportedly taking the British threat seriously.

Schindler told the parliamentary inquiry on the issue on Wednesday evening that he was experiencing “unusually tense relations with British partner agencies.”

The UK provides crucial eavesdropping powers, which is shared with the German agencies.

“Without the information from British signals intelligence we would be blind,” an unnamed senior German intelligence official told Focus.

UN to investigate GCHQ, MI5 spying at climate talks

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced he will launch an inquiry into allegations that British secret service agents spied on foreign governments at two consecutive international climate summits in 2009 and 2010.

Speaking to Danish television, Ban Ki-moon said the allegations were a UN issue, because the climate summits are UN conferences.

“All diplomatic information is inviolable. If there has been any breach … they should be investigated. UN information should be protected in its entire confidentiality,” he said.

The presentation, disclosed by former NSA senior analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed it became a “serious intelligence priority” for Britain’s clandestine intelligence services to spy on negotiations brokered an international UN summits from 2007.

The 23-page PowerPoint presentation was first published by Swedish site Dagbladet Information.

The file entitled, “Supporting HMG’s (Her Majesty’s Government) Climate Change Ambitions,” states a GCHQ secret service official frequented the high profile UN gatherings, also attended by an array of international leaders.

The document indicates the spy reported to Downing Street, the foreign secretary, diplomats, the Department for International Development (DfID), the business department, the Treasury and MI5.

According to the file, the GCHQ official was planted in the UK delegation because such a cover would facilitate direct access to other state’s delegates along with useful documentation they were in possession of.

The spy’s remit, as outlined in the document, was to discern states’ climate policy leanings, report on how far they were prepared to broker on issues, uncover if foreign delegates poised at the UN negotiation table were receiving orders from their respective governments, and relay this information back to British officials to bolster Britain’s leverage at the climate talks.

While the talks failed spectacularly in 2009, the UK secret service operation was reportedly a success. States were expected to wrap up years of tenuous negotiations with a landmark cross-border agreement to curb carbon emissions.

Such actions could amount to a violation of international law, because UN climate conferences are officially declared to be UN territory throughout the negotiations.

Snowden’s disclosure could cause embarrassment to current leftist Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who held the position of energy and climate change secretary in 2009. Miliband also led the British delegation at the UN Climate Summit in 2009.

 

Snowden fingers Dropbox, Facebook, Google as hostile to privacy

Edward Snowden has hit out at Dropbox and other services he says are “hostile to privacy,” urging web users to abandon unencrypted communication and adjust privacy settings to prevent governments from spying on them in increasingly intrusive ways.

“We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We’re subjects, and we have rulers,” Snowden told The New Yorker magazine in a comprehensive hour-long interview.

There isn’t enough investment into security research, into understanding how metadata could better be protected and why that is more necessary today than yesterday, he said.

The whistleblower believes one fallacy in how authorities view individual rights has to do with making the individual forsake those rights by default. Snowden’s point is that the moment you are compelled to reveal that you have nothing to hide is when the right to privacy stops being a right – because you are effectively waiving that right.

“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights – you don’t have to justify why you need freedom of speech.”

In that situation, it becomes OK to live in a world where one is no longer interested in privacy as such – a world where Facebook, Google and Dropbox have become ubiquitous, and where there are virtually no safeguards against the wrongful use of the information one puts there.
In particular, Snowden advised web users to “get rid” of Dropbox. Such services only insist on encrypting user data during transfer and when being stored on the servers. Other services he recommends instead, such as SpiderOak, encrypt information while it’s on your computer as well.

“We’re talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy,” Snowden said.

The same goes for social networks such as Facebook and Google, too. Snowden says they are “dangerous” and proposes that people use other services that allow for encrypted messages to be sent, such as RedPhone or SilentCircle.

The argument that encryption harms security efforts to capture terrorists is flawed, even from a purely legalistic point of view, Snowden said, explaining that you can still retain encryption and have the relevant authorities requesting private information from phone carriers and internet providers on a need-to-know basis.

And the penchant for close, secretive cooperation with the government will only cost companies money and jobs, Snowden added, because no one would want to buy a phone made by a company that provides inherent backdoors for third parties to access your information.

“The same rights that we inherited our children deserve to inherit the same way,” Snowden said.

“But ultimately we have to remember that political reform in the United States is not going to solve the problem globally. Governments [everywhere] are going to have their own national laws. And these can be terrible governments… so, because of that, you have to use secure communications… the real key is that companies willing to collaborate with the government and compromise their products and services do not deserve to be trusted with your data. Because if they do it for one government, they’ll do it for another government,” Snowden said.

For consumers to retain trust in the services they use, they need to fight for the very idea of privacy, to keep the topic in focus, he said, adding: “I speak with computer scientists and cryptographers every day to try to figure out how we can create solutions” for metadata to be appreciated and viewed as someone’s own private business.

“There are solutions, there are ways forward, and we need to pursue them, to work toward them,” Snowden said. “And we need to say that this is an effort worth doing.”

The whistleblower continues to lead a secretive existence in Russia, where he’s been stranded since June 2013, hiding from his own government, which is seeking to prosecute him for his crimes behind closed doors.

“I’ve told the government again and again in negotiations, you know, that if they’re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial in the same way that Dan Ellsberg got, and I’m allowed to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so,” Snowden said. “But to this point they’ve declined.”

Source: RT

Swiss could grant Snowden asylum

Switzerland has reportedly decided it will not extradite National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US if he comes to testify against the NSA’s spying activities, Swiss media said.

It has been revealed that trade secrets from other nations are not safe with the NSA. Snowden suggested earlier that the United States conducted espionage to prevent losing its economic prowess to other countries.

In the document, titled “What rules are to be followed if Edward Snowden is brought to Switzerland and then the United States makes an extradition request,” Switzerland’s Attorney General stated that Snowden should be guaranteed safety if he arrives to the country to testify, Sonntags Zeitung reported.

In particular, the report proposes to ensure the whistleblower’s safety by inviting him as a witness to a parliamentary hearing focusing on the NSA’s surveillance practices.

In the document, the authority said that Switzerland does not extradite a US citizen, if the individual’s “actions constitute a political offense, or if the request has been politically motivated,” Swiss ATS news agency reported.

Snowden’s safety can thus be guaranteed if it is ruled that the charges against him have a “predominantly political character,” the document concluded.

The only obstacle for that could be “higher-level government commitments,” the Office of the Attorney General said, adding that it must be verified if such obligations do, in fact, exist.

The document was reportedly requested last November.

Snowden’s Swiss lawyer, Marcel Bosonnet, said he is pleased with the Attorney General’s conclusions.

“The legal requirements for safety are met,” he assured, adding that Snowden has already showed interest in testifying.

Immigration rights activist Sarah Progin-Theuerkauf hinted that Snowden might even have a shot at Swiss asylum following the proposed testimony.

“There is evidence that Edward Snowden meets the criteria of refugee status under the Geneva Convention and therefore should be granted asylum,” she told Sonntags Zeitung.

Swiss politicians meanwhile are calling to welcome Snowden to Switzerland as soon as possible.

“We must now move forward, so that Snowden can travel to Switzerland as a witness as soon as possible,” SVP National Luzi Stamm said, adding that the Swiss people have the right to know the truth behind the extent of US spying activities.

Over the past year, Snowden has been the recipient of the German ‘Whistleblower Prize,’ the Sam Adams Award which was presented to him in Moscow, the German ‘positive’ Big Brother Award, the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, and the Fritz Bauer Prize.

He also joined the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founded by Daniel Ellsberg, and was elected in absentia as rector of the University of Glasgow.

Source: RT

Merkel orders surveillance of US and UK

Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered her counter-espionage services to begin surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering in Germany for the first time since 1945 in response to a series of US spy scandals which have badly soured relations between Berlin and Washington.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung and two-state funded German TV channels, WDR and NDR, quoted an unnamed Berlin government source who said Ms Merkel’s Chancellery and her interior and foreign ministries had agreed to launch counter-espionage measures against Britain and the US for the first time.

“Right now we need to send a strong signal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the source as saying. The extraordinary measures are a direct response to a series of embarrassing US and British spying scandals in Germany which began last year with revelations that the US National Security Agency had bugged Ms Merkel’s mobile phone.

The Chancellor protested on several occasions that she was “not amused” by the disclosures

The Independent subsequently revealed that like the Americans, Britain was operating a secret GCHQ listening post from the top of its Berlin embassy. A similar listening post on the roof of the US embassy in Berlin was almost certainly used to eavesdrop on Ms Merkel’s phone.

Source: The Independent

Typewriters, classical music to end US spying

Politicians in Germany have devised an ingenious solution to combat the threat of eavesdropping by American spies: playing classical music during their meetings.

MPs who sit on the spying committee had become so concerned that US agents might listen in to their discussions that they had ordered classical music to be played, to drown out the discussions.

On arrival at the meeting, The Suddetusche Zeitung reported that for “security reasons” MPs had to put their mobile phones and computers into a large metal box to ensure that they were not subjected to outside surveillance. “Then the committee chairman, Patrick Sensburg switched the music on,” a source told the paper.

Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported at the weekend that German intelligence suspected that a further 10 CIA agents were working undercover in various Berlin government ministries.

Patririck Sensburg, head of a parliamentary inquiry investigating US National Security Agency spying in Germany, said MPs were seriously thinking about ending the use of computers.

Germany expels CIA chief in Berlin

Germany is expelling the CIA chief in Berlin in retaliation for the latest espionage scandal.

The expulsion comes shortly after two alleged US agents were unmasked, suspected of acting as double agents within the state security apparatus, and passing secrets to US intelligence contacts.

The move was “a reaction to persistent failure to work together in efforts towards clarification,” according to the chief of the Parliamentary Control Panel.

The two new cases, which came in quick succession of one another, increase the strain on already tense relations after the revelations made about the extent of global NSA espionage in June, 2013.

Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the spy’s presence in Germany, stating that when common sense is switched on, “spying is ultimately a waste of force,” reported Der Spiegle.

She added that in 21st century intelligence work, there should be a strong focus on the essentials rather than that which is just technically possible – to the point that “one can’t see the wood because of all the trees,” Merkel said.

“The order arose against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by the General Prosecutor’s Office, in addition to existing issues in recent months surrounding the actions of US intelligence agencies in Germany,” said the document.

The US stated on Thursday that it was imperative that the two nations continued to cooperate on intelligence and security matters.

“We have seen these reports and have no comment on a purported intelligence matter. However, our security and intelligence relationship with Germany is a very important one and it keeps Germans and Americans safe,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Reuters.

“It is essential that cooperation continue in all areas and we will continue to be in touch with the German government in appropriate channels,” she added.

A 31-year-old intelligence officer was arrested last week, and further reports on Wednesday indicated that a German soldier was also being investigated.

According to German newspaper Die Welt, the soldier was said to have made “intensive contacts” with alleged US intelligence officials, and had been under surveillance by Military Intelligence (MAD) for some time.

The US has not yet denied allegations that the German intelligence official was passing classified information to the NSA.

In a report published on Monday, two unidentified government officials told Reuters of the CIA’s involvement in the operation, which led to the recruitment of the 31-year-old suspected spy, who is now in the custody of German officials.

The man was alleged to have passed the Americans 218 secret documents in exchange for € 25,000 ($34,100), and having been a double agent for them for two years through meetings with his contact in Austria and passing on secret documents on a USB stick.

Last October, Merkel was enraged to learn she was allegedly on the NSA’s tapping list since 2002. The Chancellor called the alleged spying, which became known thanks to Edward Snowden’s leaks, “unacceptable.”

A German parliamentary committee has since been holding hearings on the NSA’s spying activities in Germany.

Source: RT

German agent arrested for spying raise fears of serious US rift

A suspected double agent has been arrested in Germany accused of spying for the United States, raising fears of a serious rift between the two allies.

The arrested man, who is a German citizen, is a member of the country’s own BND intelligence service, and German media warned that if the case against him is proved, “it will be the biggest scandal involving a German-American double agent since the war”.

“The matter is serious, that is very clear,” a government spokesman told journalists. It is evident that the German authorities are taking the matter seriously. An emergency meeting of a parliamentary oversight committee was convened at short notice, and briefed by the head of the BND, Gerhard Schindler.

The German government has not denied reports by Der Spiegel and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the suspected spy was a double agent and worked for Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND.

The newspapers said the man allegedly passed the US information about a German parliamentary committee’s investigation into the NSA’s activities.

He claimed to have worked with US intelligence since 2012, they reported. A spokesman for the German government, Steffen Seibert, told reporters that the Chancellor and members of the parliamentary panel had been informed of the arrest.

It appears from details leaked to the German media that the man has been passing highly classified intelligence documents to the Americans for the last two years, in exchange for tens of thousands of euros.

It was he who first initiated contact, in an email to the US embassy offering classified information in return for cash, according to reports in both Spiegel magazine and Bild newspaper.

Since then he has handed over between 200 and 300 documents. He had access to the classified material because of his work for the BND, and would travel to Austria to hand it to an American intelligence contact by USB stick.

There were at least three such meetings in Austria, and another meeting was planned for next week, this time in the Czech capital Prague.

He was paid €25,000 for the documents, according to Bild, which reported that he received his instructions directly from the US embassy in Berlin. Germany summoned the US ambassador in Berlin on Friday.

A statement from the foreign ministry said John B. Emerson was called in “in connection with an investigation by the federal prosecutor” and “was asked to help in the swift clarification” of the case.

The latest allegations of spying by the US, Germany’s supposed ally, have provoked outrage across the country, where memories of espionage by the Stasi secret police are still fresh for some residents.

A member of the opposition on the NSA inquiry panel, said the case indicated that anyone who examined Snowden’s revelations in detail was subject to scrutiny by US intelligence agencies. “If the media reports are confirmed then there can’t just be a legal response, there also has to be a political response,” she said.

Thomas Opperman, secretary of the Social Democratic Party group, said: “If the espionage allegations are proved, it is an outrageous attack on our parliamentary freedom.

“There is no justification for any power or country to enlist intelligence agents to spy on parliament.”

Another opposition parliamentarian told Spiegel Online: “All co-operation between German security services and allied agencies need to be reviewed.

“Should the suspected intelligence service spying on the parliamentary investigative committee be proved, it will be a huge fiasco for the BND and the government.”

The US National Security Council declined to comment.

India summons top US diplomat about spying

India summoned the top diplomat from the US for the third time about spying.

A new document supplied by Edward Snowden and made public by The Washington Post on Monday showed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was among authorised targets for the NSA in 2010 while it was India’s main opposition.

India has complained to the United States on two other occasions, in July and November 2013, over other revelations — including the disclosure that its UN mission in New York and its Washington embassy were snooped on.

“What we have said is that we expect a response and an assurance that this won’t happen again,” a foreign ministry source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Both times Washington has said it would look into what it can share about its espionage programme but failed to offer any details, the source said.

“We have said that we would like a response, which we haven’t received,” he said.

The new incident comes ahead of a visit to New Delhi by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is expected to meet members of Modi’s government in the next few months.

Modi, whose party swept to power in May with the first majority in 30 years, will travel to the United States in September for the UN General Assembly and his first meeting with President Barack Obama.