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Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it is "really not on" for friends to spy on each other, referring to alleged US snooping on her phone calls.

The spying row threatens to overshadow EU talks on economic growth and migration to the EU. Mrs Merkel has demanded a "complete explanation" of the claims, which came out in the German media.

In a separate development, Italy's weekly L'Espresso reported that the US and UK had been spying on Italian internet and phone traffic.

The angry allegation by the German government that the National Security Agency monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel may force President Obama into making a choice he has avoided for years between continuing the age-old game of spying on America’s friends and undercutting cooperation with important partners in tracking terrorists, managing the global economy and slowing Iran’s nuclear program.

The pressure to make such a choice builds each day, as some of the United States’ closest allies have demanded explanations from Washington after similar disclosures about the breadth and sophistication of American electronic spying.

The tension with Germany built last week after German officials were given evidence of the cellphone monitoring by Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine. The first protests to Washington came in an angry phone call to Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, from her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.

Mark Kramer, the director of Cold War studies at Harvard, said the study cast new light on “how widespread espionage was in the Manhattan Project.” It helps to reframe a long debate, he added, on the relative importance of American spies and Russian scientists to Moscow’s 1949 atomic breakthrough.

In an interview, Mr. Kramer said that the news of Mr. Seborer’s spying, combined with the known atomic thefts, “makes clear that Soviet weapon scientists were receiving a great deal of valuable information. Espionage, by pointing them in the right direction and avoiding false leads, helped them a lot more than they were willing to acknowledge.”

The identities of the other three Los Alamos spies have long been known. Klaus Fuchs, a physicist, was arrested in early 1950, shortly after the first Soviet detonation. His testimony led to a second spy, David Greenglass, a machinist, who was also taken into custody. Not until 1995 was the third spy, Theodore Hall, the youngest physicist at Los Alamos, identified publicly. By then he had moved to England and was never convicted of espionage.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called US President Barack Obama after receiving information that the US may have spied on her mobile phone.

"views such practices... as completely unacceptable".

The White House said President Obama had told Chancellor Merkel the US was not snooping on her communications.

Fresh reports in German media based on leaked US intelligence documents are prompting damaging new questions about the extent of US surveillance.

Another report says Mr Obama was told in 2010 about the surveillance and failed to stop it.

The spy row has led to the worst diplomatic crisis betweeen the two countries in living memory.

The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Monday, March 7, 2011Monday, March 7, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Presented by The Rise and Fall of John Ensign Chris Good Sarah Palin Feud Watch Tina Dupuy In Wisconsin, the Mood Turns Against Compromise Natasha Vargas-Cooper Business Presented by Credit Card Balances Resume Their Decline Daniel Indiviglio 5 Ways the Value of College Is Growing Derek Thompson America's 401(k)'s Are a Mess, Are Its Pensions? Megan McArdle Culture Presented By 'Spy' Magazine's Digital Afterlife Bill Wyman http://as

To many on the right, this inequality is a non-issue, and in an abstract sense, I agree. Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful. But at a time of real sacrifice, it does seem to me important for conservatives not to ignore the dangers of growing and vast inequality - for political, not economic, reasons. And by political, I don't mean partisan. I mean a genuine concern for the effects of an increasingly unequal society.

it increasingly seems wrong to me to exempt the very wealthy from sacrifice, in the context of their gains in the last three decades, if we are to ask it of everyone else. It's not about fairness. It isn't even really about redistribution, as we once understood that from the hard left. It's about political stability and cohesion and coherence. Without a large and strong middle class, we can easily become more divided, more bitter and more unstable. Concern about that is a legitimate conservative issue. And if someone on the right does not find a way to address it, someone on the left may well be empowered to over-reach.

German authorities raided the homes and offices of three people suspected of spying for the Chinese government, officials said on Thursday, giving no details about their identities or the nature of the alleged espionage.

The raid comes amid an intensifying debate in Berlin over the country’s relationship with Huawei, the Chinese technology giant that Washington says is being used for espionage by Beijing.On Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel met with senior lawmakers in her party as part of continuing efforts to resolve a dispute over whether to allow Huawei to help build the country’s 5G next-generation mobile network.

Germany has been concerned about the threat posed by Chinese hackers seeking to steal information from the country’s companies, research facilities and ministries. But if sufficient evidence is found in the current case, it would be one of the first in years involving old-fashioned human espionage.

the United States’ top spy said Thursday the greatest online threat isn’t a crippling digital strike against American infrastructure — but the near-constant, lower-grade attacks that are carried out routinely

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also raised eyebrows among House lawmakers when he declined to describe a recent breach of servers belonging to the Office of Personnel Management as an “attack.” Rather, Clapper called the operation, which U.S. officials privately attribute to China, “a passive intelligence collection activity, just as we do.” The breach resulted in the exfiltration of the personal information of some 21.5 million current, past, and prospective federal employees.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Clapper described a permissive online environment in which hackers worldwide are able to operate essentially without impunity. That environment has resulted in difficulties for U.S. officials to deter future attacks, Clapper said, and has led American intelligence officials to conclude that cyber threats will probably intensify in the near future.

Britain Vows Retaliation if Russia Poisoned Former Spy

Calling Russia “a malign force around the world,” Britain’s foreign secretary on Tuesday vowed retaliation if investigators find that Moscow is behind the apparent poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter in southern England.

speaking in the House of Commons, he noted the widespread speculation that Russia was to blame and “the echoes of the death of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.” Mr. Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, was fatally poisoned in London, and a British investigation concluded that he had been killed on orders from the Kremlin.

In 1863, Harriet Tubman led soldiers with Colonel James Montgomery to raid rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. They set fire to buildings, destroyed bridges, and freed many of the slaves on the plantations

In addition to being the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military expedition, Tubman—whom John Brown called “General Tubman”—was a Union army spy and recruiter.

They had lived their lives as invisible people,” writes Allen in his book. “That quality of invisibility, which Harriet Tubman knew so well, became the basis for using ex-slaves as spies for the Union

France and Germany are "seeking full clarity" on a report claiming that one of Denmark's intelligence agencies helped the United States spy on several senior European officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.

"If the information is true," Macron said during a statement to the press following a virtual Franco-German summit , these practices are "unacceptable between allies, and even less acceptable between European allies and partners."

Revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) tapped Merkel's cellphone emerged in 2013 after former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden shared documents with The Guardian showing that a US official had handed the agency 200 phone numbers, including those of world leaders, for the agency to monitor.

The Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia in a case that raises concerns about the ability of Silicon Valley to protect the private information of dissidents and other users from repressive governments.

“The criminal complaint unsealed today alleges that Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users,” said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson. “We will not allow U.S. companies or U.S. technology to become tools of foreign repression in violation of U.S. law.

Twitter restricts access to sensitive account information “to a limited group of trained and vetted employees,” said a spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity “to protect the safety” of Twitter personnel. “We understand the incredible risks faced by many who use Twitter to share their perspectives with the world and to hold those in power accountable. We have tools in place to protect their privacy and their ability to do their vital work.”

A former German diplomat who worked in the EU’s institutions is under investigation along with two lobbyists on suspicion of spying for the Chinese government.

It is claimed that two of the individuals shared confidential commercial information with the Chinese ministry for state security. The third indicated a willingness to do so, according to Der Spiegel. The diplomat at the centre of the investigation is reported to have formerly worked in both the EU commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS), the bloc’s foreign affairs wing.

The investigation is notable for it being comparatively rare. Last year the EEAS alerted member states to the presence of about 250 Chinese and 200 Russian spies said to be roaming the embassy-lined streets of Brussels. But there are few cases of spies for Beijing being uncovered.

Like Oppenheimer, Fuchs is an ambiguous and polarising character. A congressional hearing concluded he had “influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy in the history of nations”

But by helping the USSR to build the bomb, Fuchs also helped to forge the nuclear balance of power, the precarious equilibrium of mutually assured destruction under which we all still live.

Oppenheimer changed the world with science; and Fuchs changed it with espionage. It is impossible to understand the significance of one without the other.

A Russian spy ship last seen off the coast of Connecticut was spotted late Wednesday steaming south -- and near the largest naval base in the world, where the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet is located.

U.S. SPIES REPORTEDLY KEEPING INTELLIGENCE FROM TRUMP

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday it was in the interests of both Russia and the United States to restore ties between the two nations' intelligence agencies

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said such efforts were a "top tenet" of US intelligence policy.

House of Representatives the US did not "indiscriminately" spy on nations.

"Leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse

The US National Security Agency has spied on French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, according to the latest claims in Le Monde newspaper.

US spies allegedly hacked foreign networks, introducing the spyware into the software, routers and firewalls of millions of machines.

NSA tapped millions of phones in France.