Wikileaks has published a new cache of secret communications, and the documents come with explosive allegations about US surveillance of French government affairs. According to Wikileaks, the documents are the result of sustained NSA surveillance of the French elected officials, including the country's last three Presidents. That claim is backed up by an apparent list of NSA targets, including the names and phone numbers of more than fifteen French ministers and advisors, including the president. The dump also includes intercepts from conversations between various French officials, including intelligence summaries.
The source of the documents is still unclear. Notably, the organization has not named prominent NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has expressed support for Wikileaks in the past but disagrees with the group's full-disclosure policies and has never publicly worked with the group. Some have speculated that there may be other sources leaking NSA documents who have yet to come forward. If these documents do come from a separate source, it would represent the most significant breach of NSA security since the initial Snowden leaks.
The selector list isn't definitive proof that the officials were successfully wiretapped, but it's a credible claim in light of the NSA's voracious appetite for sensitive communications. In 2013, Der Spiegel reported that German chancellor Angela Merkel had been targeted by US surveillance for more than a decade, including a wiretap on her personal mobile phone. The Spiegel report cited confidential NSA documents as proof of those claims, but notably, it did not name Edward Snowden as the source of those documents
