New report: NSA tapped into UN video conferences
NSA also bugged more than 80 embassies and consulates, says Der Spiegel.
by Joe Mullin - Aug 25 2013, 9:05pm EDT
New revelations about US spying continue to be released "in dribs and drabs," as President Obama recently complained.
Today's information comes courtesy of Der Spiegel, the Germany weekly magazine. While political discussion in the US has focused on the National Security Agency's deviations from its promise to not gather data on Americans, the international press continues to highlight examples of NSA spying that are perfectly legal, but may well stoke public outrage in other nations.
The new Der Spiegel report describes NSA programs that were focused on the United Nations, and embassies around the world. It's based, like earlier reveals by The Guardian and The Washington Post, on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!)," read one document, according to a report in Reuters. NSA operatives cracked that system in summer 2012, and "within three weeks the number of decoded communications rose to 458 from 12."
Spying targets at the UN included the International Atomic Energy Agency and an EU delegation, which was spied on at the UN's New York headquarters when it switched to new offices later in the fall of 2012.
The NSA also runs a bugging program in more than 80 embassies and consulates around the world, under a program called the "Special Collection Service," according to Der Spiegel. That program is "intensive" and has "little or nothing to do with warding off terrorists," the magazine wrote.
The new revelations come as the NSA and other US government intelligence agencies have taken unprecedented, but fumbling, steps towards openness. Just last week, the Department of Justice published some of the first opinions of the FISA surveillance court ever made public.
President Obama has promised further reforms, but the main measure taken thus far include appointing a committee of government insiders to review the situation.
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