Kerry: NSA surveillance went too far

US National Security Agency surveillance went "too far" in some cases, and those excessive activities will end, Secretary of State John Kerry said. "There is no question that the president and I and others in government have, actually, learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot, because the technology is there and the ability has been there [to eavesdrop]," Kerry told a London conference organized by the international Open Government Partnership, which seeks government commitments to transparency and accountability. "I acknowledge, as has the president, some of these actions have reached too far, and we are going to make sure that that does not happen in the future," Kerry said by video link. President Barack Obama has promised a review of U.S. intelligence gathering but has not said it went too far. Kerry's remarks came as the U.S. State Department said the secretary would travel to Europe and the Middle East next week, in part to repair damage caused by reports of U.S. eavesdropping on its allies. Kerry defended the motives of U.S. intelligence gathering, insisting "innocent people are not being abused in this process" and saying U.S. and other nations' surveillance has saved lives. With the rise of radical extremism and terrorist attacks in the United States and elsewhere, "the United States and others came together -- others, I emphasize to you -- and realized that we're dealing in the new world where people are willing to blow themselves up," Kerry told the conference, whose panelists also included British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "There are countless examples of this," he said, citing several, including the September terrorist attack by the militant al-Shabaab Islamist group on a Nairobi, Kenya, shopping mall that led to at least 72 deaths, including 61 civilians. "What if you were able to intercept that?" Kerry said. "We have actually prevented airplanes from going down, buildings from being blown up, people from being assassinated because we've been able to learn ahead of time of the plans," he said. But the surveillance, "in some cases," went "too far, inappropriately," Kerry repeated, and the president, our president, is determined to try to clarify and make clear for people that he's now doing a thorough review in order that nobody will have a sense of abuse." Kerry criticized news coverage about the surveillance, which he said included "an enormous amount of exaggeration and misreporting." He said it's not true 70 million people "were being listened to" in France. "No. They weren't. It didn't happen," he said. French newspaper Le Monde reported Oct. 21 not that people were being listened to but that the NSA collected some 70.3 million phone records inside France from Dec. 10, 2012, to Jan. 8, 2013. The report prompted Paris to lodge a protest with Washington. NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told Congress Tuesday the spying was not done by the NSA but by allied European intelligence services and secretly supplied to the NSA under longstanding intelligence-sharing arrangements. A U.S. analysis of the document published by Le Monde concluded the phone records Paris collected and shared with Washington were actually from outside France, The Wall Street Journal reported. French officials declined to comment.