Britain's electronic intelligence agencymonitored delegates' phones
and triedto capture their passwords during an economic summit held
there in 2009, the Guardian newspaper reported Sunday.
The targets included British allies suchas Turkey and South Africa,
the newspaper reported. The Guardian cited documents provided by
Edward Snowden, the American computer analyst now spilling secrets of
the U.S.intelligence community.
The latest report was published on theeve of another economic summit
hosted by the British government -- the Group of Eight economic summit
in Northern Ireland. According to the newspaper, the documents show
that the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ used
"ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to intercept calls made by
members of the larger G-20 conference delegations at meetings in
London.
Analysts received round-the-clock summaries of calls that were being
made, and GCHQ set up Internet cafesfor delegates in hopes of
intercepting e-mails and capturing keystrokes, the Guardian reported.
One briefing slide explained that would give intelligenceagencies the
ability to read delegates' e-mails "before/as they do," providing
"sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has
finished."
Bigger threat: Snowden or NSA?
GCHQ is Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency, the
highly secretive U.S. communications intelligence service. The
Guardian reported that the NSA had attempted to eavesdrop on
then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during theconference as his
phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow and briefed its
British counterparts on the effects.
Snowden, 29, worked for the NSA through a private contractor firm
until May, when he decamped to Hong Kong. He went public a week ago as
the source of articles by the Guardian and The Washington Post, saying
the NSA's efforts posed "an existential threat to democracy."
Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, said Sunday he was aware of the Guardian's latest report
but declined to comment on it.
"What we should be focused on is howirresponsible and egregious these
recent leaks are," he told CNN. "It's impossible to know exactly how
much damage is being done by these disclosures, but they will have an
effect on our counterterrorism efforts."
Snowden's revelations about the NSA'scollection of millions of records
from U.S. telecommunications and technology firms have led to a
furious debate within the United States about the scale and scope of
surveillance programs that date to the days after the 2001 al Qaeda
attacks on New York and Washington. Defenders say the programs --
approved by Congressafter a warrantless surveillance effort under the
Bush administration was revealed in 2005 -- have protected American
lives by helping agents break up terrorism plots.
Cheney defends NSA, calls Obama's credibility 'nonexistent'
Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, a formerNSA director, told CNN's Fareed
Zakaria GPS that what the agency collects are "essentially billing
records"that detail the time, duration and number of a phone call. The
records are added to a database that agents can query in cases
involving a terror investigation overseas, and agents can't eavesdrop
on Americans' calls without an order from a secret court that handles
intelligence matters, he said.
If a phone number related to that investigation has links to a
domestic phone number, "We've got to go back to the court," he said.
But critics such as Sen. Mark Udall, a member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, had raised questions aboutthe scale of the
program even before Snowden's leak. Udall told NBC's "Meet the Press"
on Sunday that he doesn't believe the program is makingAmericans any
safer, "and I think it's ultimately, perhaps, a violation of the
Fourth Amendment."
"I think we owe it to the American people to have a fulsome debate in
the open about the extent of these programs," said Udall, D-Colorado.
"You have a law that's been interpreted secretly by a secret court
that then issues secret orders to generate a secret program. I just
don'tthink this is an American approach to a world in which we have
great threats."
But President Barack Obama does not feel that he has violated the
privacy ofany American, his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, told CBS'
"Face the Nation." McDonough said the president will discuss the need
to "findthe right balance, especially in this new situation where we
find ourselves with all of us reliant on Internet, on e-mail, on
texting."
Shortly after the stories broke, Obama publicly defended the NSA
programs as "modest encroachments on privacy"that help prevent
terrorism.
No comments:
Post a Comment