About: eavesdropping Archives

Macedonia's chief opposition figure accused Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski on Monday of wire-tapping journalists, religious and opposition leaders, deepening a scandal that has engulfed the European Union candidate country in recent weeks.

EU member states have reacted in different ways to the security threat highlighted by the Paris terrorist attacks, pointing to how difficult it would be to put in place a common European response to the challenge. The EURACTIV network reports.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk yesterday (25 June) survived a vote of confidence in his coalition amid a high-profile bugging scandal that has prompted calls for his centre-right government to resign.

A Polish news magazine said Sunday (22 June) it had obtained a secret recording of Foreign Minister Rados?aw Sikorski, a contender for a senior European Union job, saying that Poland's relationship with the United States was worthless.

Polish prosecutors are searching the offices of the magazine Wprost, the Warsaw prosecutor's office said yesterday (18 June), after the magazine published tapes of officials' conversations embarrassing to the government.

Sunday’s local elections in Turkey are an important test for the country’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, who eyes the first directly-elected presidential election in August. The results in Istanbul and Ankara for his AK party are of particular significance, commentators say.

A second audio recording, presented as the voice of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan asking his son not to accept an amount of money on offer in a business deal but to hold out for more, was published on YouTube by an anonymous poster using a pseudonym on Wednesday (26 February).

A Dutch cabinet minister faced calls to quit yesterday (11 February) after admitting he wrongly told parliament that 1.8 million telecommunications intercepts had been collected by the US National Security Agency, rather than the Dutch spy service.

The Green group in the European Parliament has nominated whistleblower Edward Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, on the last day before a deadline for nomination expires tomorrow (1 February).

The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs voted today (9 January) to allow a pre-recorded video testimony from whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The hearing will feed into the Assembly's special inquiry into allegations of mass surveillance by US intelligence services.

European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding, responsible for justice and fundamental rights, expressed her satisfaction for the “positive and constructive” meeting with US Attorney General Eric Holder on data protection, following revelations about US interception of EU communications. 

Germany's parliament will hold a special session on revelations that the United States has tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone, with left-wing parties demanding a public inquiry and asking to call in witnesses, including former US intelligence agent Edward Snowden.

Barack Obama knew his intelligence services were eavesdropping on Angela Merkel as long ago as 2010, according to a report published yesterday (27 October) by German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, which claims the US president did not trust her handling of the eurozone crisis.

On the first day of the EU summit yesterday (24 October) German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded that the United States strike a "no-spying" agreement with Berlin and Paris by the end of the year, saying alleged espionage against two of Washington's closest EU allies had to be stopped.

The US National Security Agency has bugged the United Nations' New York headquarters, Germany's Der Spiegel weekly said yesterday (25 August) in a report on US spying that could further strain relations between Washington and its allies.

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland has asked UK Home Secretary Theresa May to explain the pressure that Downing Street had put on the Guardian newspaper over the Snowden case, warning of the potentially "chilling effect" on media freedom.

The European Commission has declined to comment on whether pressure exerted by UK authorities on the Guardian newspaper to destroy sensitive documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden constituted an attack on media freedom.

The controversy surrounding the Hungarian media law has triggered heated comments in EU circles, but few have bothered to look at the situation in other countries. EURACTIV's network takes up the challenge with this second article focusing on Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.