Snowden Leaks } Both Google and Yahoo Were Hacked by NSA
The latest revelations come hours after a German delegation of intelligence officials arrived in Washington for talks at the White House following claims that the US monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.
Two of Mrs Merkel's most important advisers, foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen, and intelligence coordinator Guenter Heiss were sent to take part in the talks - a measure of how seriously Mrs Merkel takes the matter, the BBC's Stephen Evans reports from Berlin.
Next week, the heads of Germany’s spying agencies will go to meet their opposite numbers in Washington. n leaders as a key goal of operations but the US is facing growing anger over reports it spied on its allies abroad.
It has also been reported that the NSA monitored French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, and that it conducted surveillance on millions of French and Spanish telephone calls, among other operations against US allies.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that if Spain had been a target of the NSA, this would be "inappropriate and unacceptable between partners".
However Gen Alexander has said "the assertions... that NSA collected tens of millions of phone calls [in Europe] are completely false".
However on Wednesday, the agency denied Italian media reports that it had targeted communications at the Vatican.
The UN said it had received assurances that its communications "are not and will not be monitored" by American intelligence agencies, but refused to clarify whether they had been in the past.
'Basic tenet'
On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Gen Alexander testified before the intelligence panel of the House of Representatives.
Gen Alexander said much of the data cited by non-US news outlets was actually collected by European intelligence services and later shared with the NSA.
Meanwhile, Mr Clapper told lawmakers that discerning foreign leaders' intentions was "a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse".
He said that foreign allies spy on US officials and intelligence agencies as a matter of routine.
Mr Clapper said the torrent of disclosures about American surveillance had been extremely damaging and that he anticipated more. Although the pair were not given a tough time by the committee, correspondents say that sentiment is turning within Congress toward tightening up the reach of American intelligence agencies.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that Moscow used free USB memory sticks and mobile phone charging cables to spy on delegates attending the G20 Summit in St Petersburg last September.
Reports in two Italian newspapers suggested that the USB sticks and cables had bugs on them that could steal data from the delegates.
Spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the reports were an attempt to distract from the problems between European countries and the US.
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