Quelle Surprise: NSA Spies on Europe

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Stephen Lendman

NSA spies globally. Enormous amounts of meta-data are collected. It's been ongoing for decades. Post-9/11, it intensified. It's out-of-control today. It's lawless. It's menacing. It persists.

Spying domestically isn't for national security. Nor is monitoring allies. It's about control. It's for economic advantage. It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations.

On June 30, London's Guardian headlined "New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies. Exclusive: Edward Snowden papers reveal 38 targets including EU, France, Italy. Berlin accuses Washington of cold war tactics."

One document includes 38 embassies and missions. It calls them "targets." Extraordinary spying methods are used. Bugs are planted in electronic communications gear.

U.S. Hypocrisy: We Claim To Defend Freedom, But We Spy On Our Friends And Intercept All Their Data

Michael Snyder

Why has the United States been bugging the offices of EU diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic?  European officials are absolutely seething with anger about reports that the NSA has been using “Cold War methods” to spy on EU diplomats.  Apparently the NSA had planted bugs in EU offices, had intercepted phone calls and emails from top EU officials, and had even tapped directly into the computer systems of “our friends”.

EU diplomatic offices in Washington D.C. and the EU’s mission to the United Nations in New York were two of the primary targets where this type of surveillance was employed.  Some EU politicians are so outraged by this behavior that they are threatening to derail sensitive trade negotiations that are currently taking place. And of course it is perfectly understandable that they would be outraged.  The United States holds itself up as the great defender of liberty and freedom in the world, and yet we have been spying on our friends as much as we possibly can.  How in the world is the rest of the globe supposed to look at us as the “good guys” if we are openly admitting that we are going to intercept their phone calls, emails and all records of their Internet activity and keep that information forever?  This kind of hypocritical approach is going to cause us to lose even more friends and make even more enemies.  If we keep going down this road, will just about everyone in the rest of the world end up hating us?