Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Submission Preview

Link to Story

WikiLeaks Publishes NSA Target List (UN, EU, and Italy)

Accepted submission by takyon at 2016-03-02 06:05:06
Digital Liberty

This story wasn't here for some reason. From Bruce Schneier's blog [schneier.com]:

As part of an ongoing series of classified NSA target list and raw intercepts, WikiLeaks published details [wikileaks.org] of the NSA's spying on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, and key Japanese and EU trade reps. WikiLeaks never says this, but it's pretty obvious that these documents don't come from Snowden's archive.

From WikiLeaks [wikileaks.org]:

Today, 23 February 2016 at 00:00 GMT [updated 12:20 GMT], WikiLeaks publishes highly classified documents showing that the US National Security Agency bugged a private climate change strategy meeting [wikileaks.org]; between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin; singled out the Chief of Staff of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for long term interception targetting his Swiss phone [wikileaks.org]; singled out the Director of the Rules Division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Johann Human, and targetted his Swiss phone for long term interception [wikileaks.org]; stole sensitive Italian diplomatic cables [wikileaks.org] detailing how Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to help patch up his relationship with US President Barack Obama, who was refusing to talk to Netanyahu; intercepted top EU and Japanese trade ministers [wikileaks.org] discussing their secret strategy and red lines to stop the US "extort[ing]" them at the WTO Doha arounds (the talks subsequently collapsed); explicitly targetted five other top EU economic officials for long term interception, including their French, Austrian and Belgium phone numbers [wikileaks.org]; explicitly targetted the phones of Italy's ambassador to NATO and other top Italian officials [wikileaks.org] for long term interception; and intercepted details [wikileaks.org] of a critical private meeting between then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Merkel and Berluscon, where the latter was told the Italian banking system was ready to "pop like a cork".

Some of the intercepts are classified TOP-SECRET COMINT-GAMMA and are the most highly classified documents ever published by a media organization.


Original Submission