The European Union has demanded the United States explain a report in a German magazine that Washington is spying on the group, using strong language to confront its closest trading partner over its alleged surveillance activities, according to The Globe and Mail.com.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said Sunday that U.S. authorities were immediately contacted about a report in Der Spiegel magazine that the U.S. spy agency had tapped EU offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations.

 

"As soon as we saw these reports, the European External Action Service made contact with the U.S. authorities in both Washington, D.C., and Brussels to seek urgent clarification of the veracity of and facts surrounding these allegations," Ashton said in a statement.

"The U.S. authorities have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us as soon as possible," she said.

France also asked for an explanation.

"These acts, if confirmed, would be completely unacceptable," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

The U.S. government said it would respond through diplomatic channels.

"We will also discuss these issues bilaterally with EU member states," a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence said.

"While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations."

Der Spiegel reported Saturday that the National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, the latest revelation of alleged U.S. spying that has prompted outrage from EU politicians.

The magazine followed up on Sunday with a report that the U.S. agency taps half a billion phone calls, e-mails and text messages in Germany in a typical month, much more than any other European peer and similar to the data tapped in China or Iraq.

It also uses data from Internet hubs in south and west Germany that organize data traffic to Syria and Mali.

Revelations about the U.S. surveillance program, which was made public by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have raised a furor in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange, the founder of the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, said Sunday the disclosures from the classified documents that Snowden took as a National Security Agency contractor would continue.

"Look, there is no stopping the publishing process at this stage," Assange said on the ABC News program This Week. "Great care has been taken to make sure that Snowden can't be pressured by any state to stop the publication process."

Assange, speaking from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he has been ensconced for more the a year after being granted asylum, praised Snowden's actions and compared his plight with his own. He said Snowden was likely to be indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that Assange said was "made up of the CIA, Pentagon."

"He is a hero," Assange said of Snowden. "He has told the people of the world and the United States that there is mass unlawful interception of their communications, far beyond anything that happened under Nixon."

On Sunday, the extent to which Washington's EU allies are being monitored emerged as an issue of particular concern.

"If the media reports are correct, this brings to memory actions among enemies during the Cold War. It goes beyond any imagination that our friends in the United States view the Europeans as enemies," said German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.