Dutch ex-Foreign Secretary on being spied upon

This video from the USA is called PRISM – Just The Beginning of Spying on You.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Ben Bot: I was bugged as well

Added: Monday, 1 July 2013, 18:21
Updated: Monday, 1 July 2013, 18:23

There is espionage again and again, says Dutch former Foreign Secretary Ben Bot tonight in an interview with Nieuwsuur TV show. That it becomes apparent now that the U.S. secret services bugged many people does not surprise him at all. In the twenty years during which Bot was an European Union diplomat, he noticed several times that he was being spied on.

He was once upon an evening negotiating a treaty, when the then Prime Minister (Balkenende, ed.) called him. “He said: “Maybe you should adjust this and that part a little, because I just got a call that you are maybe working a little too hard. “Ever since half past eight that evening I had been talking and had not left that room, so no one could have told him that.” Bot will not say which country was responsible for that bugging, except that it certainly was not the U.S.

Furthermore Bot remembers that it was discovered during a building renovation that spying devices had been installed. Some country also committed foul play with translation booths which they had supplied.

Bot thinks that U.S. Americans want to know two things. They do it in the first place for security. They also want the most advantageous results in negotiations, the former minister says. “It is always an advantage to know what concessions the other party is willing to make. That way you can fine tune your negotiations. That’s just one-upmanship. Making money”.

George W. Bush Defends PRISM: ‘I Put That Program In Place To Protect The Country’: here.

Berlin has accused Washington of treating it “like a Cold War enemy” after it emerged that US spooks spied on targets from friendly European countries: here.

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• US actions spook European allies (smh.com.au)
• How can we invest our trust in a state that spies on us? | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian (guardian.co.uk)
• Germany and France Demand to Know Why They Were Being Spied On (theatlanticwire.com)
• Report: U.S. Targeted EU Allies With Massive Spying, Trade Deal Pullout Threatened (dailytech.com)