SCANDAL: AMERICA'S INDISCRIMINATE SPYING REACHES THE EUROPEAN UNION

Scandal: America’s indiscriminate spying reaches the European Union

Posted at: 12:21, June 30, 2013 By Luis Miranda
NSA

Heaviest spying directed to Germany. EU president warns spying could sour diplomatic relationship between EU and the US. German Justice Minister says spying reminds her of Cold War.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, says a proverb. Well, the United States has done just that, according to new information about the global reach of America’s spying operation.

New information published on The Guardian, which later decided to take down its article, the U.S. spied directly on representatives and officials of the European Union and the UN. The National Security Agency (NSA) bugged and infiltrated the computer networks of the EU delegation in Washington, say the reports.

Besides the Guardian, German weekly Der Spiegel, also reported on findings related to confidential documents in the hands of Edward Snowden. The head of the leaks about the PRISM program, consisting of massive Internet surveillance by the NSA, that had been kept as “top secret” and dated September 2010 in which American agents allegedly described attacks on the embassy of twenty-seven EU members in Washington, DC.

As of right now, it is not known whether or not the US removed microphones used to spy on the European delegation or if the spy holes opened to monitor their communications have been closed. The deputy national security adviser to the White House, Ben Rhodes, refused to comment on the report, calling it “unauthorized information” during the official visit of President Barack Obama to South Africa. The Obama Administration is in a particularly delicate situation after the spying scandal was unleashed by Snowden.

In a series of cyber attacks against the EU delegations in Washington, the US apparently used its internal computer network, says Der Spiegel, which also confirms it had access to documents put out by Edward Snowden. With this system, the U.S. secret services accessed both confidential discussions in emails and files in computers.

NSA documents label EU member delegations as the “target” for computer attacks, which extend to more spying attacks detected in Brussels.

Der Siegel also tells that for about five years, security experts from the EU have witnessed numerous attempts to hack their computers at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, where all EU ministers and high civil servants of the European Union office have Internet connections. Computer security experts tracked those attacks and discovered that the origin was NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

Information on 500 million emails collected

The National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States not only spied on the European Union (EU) as it became known yesterday, but it has been storing some 500 million monthly telephone or Internet communications in Germany, according to Der Spiegel.

This publication, which refers to documents obtained from Edward Snowden, reports systematic espionage operations and data collection against Germany. Such data was collected through emails, phone and internet conversations that were stored at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade.

The German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has expressed shock at the revelations about massive spying from the U.S. and urged Washington to give explanations on the case. “It exceeds everything imaginable that our U.S. friends look to Europeans as enemies,” said the minister, to whom such information, reminds her of the type of spying done “between enemies” during the Cold War.

Today the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, has demanded the United States to clarify whether it spied on the EU.

“I am deeply concerned and surprised,” said Schulz, in a statement, which said that “if the allegations prove to be true, it would be a very serious matter that will have a serious impact” on relations between the European Union and the United States.

According to information that Der Spiegel claims to have had access to, in a day “stream”, the NSA collects about 20 million telephone conversations and 13 million Internet communications. The count can range from 13 million checks, on Christmas Eve, 2012, to 60 million on January 7, 2013, apparently one of the busiest days in communication.

The German weekly also claims that this communication control is greater in the case of Germany compared to other European partners such as France, with about two million cases a day. The most intensely monitored by the NSA is Frankfurt, the financial capital of the EU.