US intelligence services are spying on the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington, according to the latest top secret US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as "targets". It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae.
Along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the EU missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey. The list in the September 2010 document does not mention the UK, Germany or other western European states.
One of the bugging methods mentioned is codenamed Dropmire, which, according to a 2007 document, is "implanted on the Cryptofax at the EU embassy, DC" – an apparent reference to a bug placed in a commercially available encrypted fax machine used at the mission. The NSA documents note the machine is used to send cables back to foreign affairs ministries in European capitals.
The documents suggest the aim of the bugging exercise against the EU embassy in central Washington is to gather inside knowledge of policy disagreements on global issues and other rifts between member states.
The new revelations come at a time when there is already considerable anger across the EU over earlier evidence provided by Snowden of NSA eavesdropping on America's European allies.
Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, demanded an explanation from Washington, saying that if confirmed, US behaviour "was reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war".
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported at the weekend that some of the bugging operations in Brussels targeting the EU's Justus Lipsius building – a venue for summit and ministerial meetings in the Belgian capital – were directed from within Nato headquarters nearby.
The US intelligence service codename for the bugging operation targeting the EU mission at the United Nations is "Perdido". Among the documents leaked by Snowden is a floor plan of the mission in midtown Manhattan. The methods used against the mission include the collection of data transmitted by implants, or bugs, placed inside electronic devices, and another covert operation that appears to provide a copy of everything on a targeted computer's hard drive.
The eavesdropping on the EU delegation to the US, on K Street in Washington, involved three different operations targeted on the embassy's 90 staff. Two were electronic implants and one involved the use of antennas to collect transmissions.
Although the latest documents are part of an NSA haul leaked by Snowden, it is not clear in each case whether the surveillance was being exclusively done by the NSA – which is most probable as the embassies and missions are technically overseas – or by the FBI or the CIA, or a combination of them. The 2010 document describes the operation as "close access domestic collection".
The operation against the French mission to the UN had the covername "Blackfoot" and the one against its embassy in Washington was "Wabash". The Italian embassy in Washington was known to the NSA as both "Bruneau" and "Hemlock".
The eavesdropping of the Greek UN mission was known as "Powell" and the operation against its embassy was referred to as "Klondyke".
Snowden, the 30-year-old former NSA contractor and computer analyst whose leaks have ignited a global row over the extent of US and UK electronic surveillance, fled from his secret bolthole in Hong Kong a week ago. His plan seems to have been to travel to Ecuador via Moscow, but he is in limbo at Moscow airport after his US passport was cancelled, and without any official travel documents issued from any other country.
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Barack Obama seeks to limit EU fallout over US spying claims
President says NSA will assess espionage allegations as France and Germany demand answers and warn of delay to trade talks
Barack Obama has sought to limit the damage from the growing transatlantic espionage row after Germany and France denounced the major snooping activities of US agencies and warned of a possible delay in the launch next week of ambitious free-trade talks between Europe and the US.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande, demanded quick explanations from Washington about disclosures by the Guardian and Der Spiegel that US agencies bugged European embassies and offices. Berlin stressed there had to be mutual trust if trade talks were to go ahead in Washington on Monday.
Hollande went further, indicating the talks could be called off unless the alleged spying was stopped immediately and US guarantees were provided.
The diplomatic row came as Edward Snowden – the fugitive National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, who faces espionage charges in the US and is holed up in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport – applied for asylum in Russia. Snowdenhe used his first public statement to attack the US for revoking his passport and accused it of bullying countries that might grant him asylum.
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, said on Monday: "If he wants to go somewhere and someone will take him, go ahead. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition – he must stop his work aimed at bringing harm to our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my mouth.
"Russia never gives anyone up and doesn't plan to give anyone up. And no one has ever given us anyone."
As Washington desperately sought to contain the diplomatic fallout from the bugging controversy, Obama acknowledged the damage done by the revelations and said the NSA would evaluate the claims and inform allies about the allegations.
After the Guardian's disclosure that US agencies were secretly bugging the French embassy in Washington and France's office at the UN in New York, Hollande called for an immediate halt to the alleged spying.
"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies," he said. "We ask that this stop immediately … There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union … We know well that there are systems that have to be checked, especially to fight terrorism, but I don't think that it is in our embassies or in the European Union that this threat exists."
Merkel delivered her severest warning yet on the NSA debacle. "We are no longer in the cold war," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. "If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable."
Seibert said Berlin was keen on the trade talks with Washington, but qualified that support: "Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement."
While Obama sought to defuse the tension amid growing anger in Europe, he also said the US agencies were simply behaving in the same way as other intelligence organisations everywhere. "Not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there's an intelligence service – here's one thing that they're going to be doing: they're going to be trying to understand the world better and what's going on in world capitals around the world," the US president said in Tanzania.
Obama sought to reassure fellow world leaders that the scale of US espionage against friendly nations did not signify a lack of trust.
The Europeans received their first opportunity to demand answers from the top level of the Obama administration about the alleged massive scale of US spying on its EU allies when Lady Ashton and John Kerry met in Brunei. On Sunday she demanded prompt US clarification over the veracity of the media reports.
Kerry, the US secretary of state, delivered a low-key response to the growing European clamour for answers, saying the NSA activities were not unusual. "Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that," he said. "All I know is that is not unusual for lots of nations."
A sense of outrage gathered momentum across Europe at the reports that US agencies were bugging and tapping EU offices in Washington and New York, as well as the embassies of several EU member states. The European commission said it had ordered a security sweep of EU buildings following the bugging disclosures. José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, had "instructed the competent commission services to proceed to a comprehensive … security sweep and check," a spokeswoman said.
The push for clear answers from the Americans threatened to derail the long-awaited talks on a transatlantic pact between the US and the EU to create the world's biggest free-trade area.
"This is a topic that could affect relations between Europe and the US," said the French trade minister, Nicole Bricq. "We must absolutely re-establish confidence … it will be difficult to conduct these extremely important negotiations."
"Washington is shooting itself in the foot," said Germany's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
"Declaring the EU offices to be a legitimate attack target is more than the unfriendly act of a machine that knows no bounds and may be out of the control of politics and the courts."
A front-page editorial in Le Monde charged the Americans with very bad behaviour.
Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, likened the NSA to the Soviet-era KGB and indirectly suggested a delay in the talks. Greens in the European parliament, as well as in France and Germany, called for the conference to be postponed pending an investigation of the allegations. They also called for the freezing of other data-sharing deals between the EU and the US, on air transport passengers and banking transactions, for example, and called for the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, to be granted political asylum in Europe. French Greens asked Hollande to grant Snowden asylum in France.
Schulz said: "I feel treated as a European and a representative of a European institution like the representative of the enemy. Is this the basis for a constructive relationship on the basis of mutual trust? I think no."
"It is shocking that the United States take measures against their most important and nearest allies, comparable to measures taken in the past by the KGB, by the secret service of the Soviet Union."
While the anger is broad and growing across Europe, it is particularly intense in Germany which, according to Snowden's revelations, is by far the main target within the EU of the NSA's Prism programme sweeping up metadata en masse, capturing and storing it.
Given the high sensitivity of data-privacy issues in Germany, the scandal could test Merkel and force her on to the offensive against the Americans as she seeks to win a third term in general elections 11 weeks away.
The opposition Social Democrats in Berlin demanded action from Merkel, but left her scope to cut a deal that would allow some snooping and data exchanges. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrats leader in the German parliament, said the chancellor had to insist "the mania for data collection be palpably limited".
The Germans are also incensed at the British over GCHQ's Tempora programme which is gathering electronic information from across Europe.
The Germans were given their first proper opportunity to be briefed by the Britishon Monday afternoon, according to Der Spiegel. London called a video conference with the Germans at the British embassy in Berlin. The Germans sent intelligence officers, diplomats, and officials from the interior and justice ministries to
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Revelations from European leaders on Monday that the National Security Agency bugged European Union offices in Washington and hacked into its computer network bring to light hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. government.
In 2011, the Pentagon released its first formal cyber strategy, which called computer hacking from other nations an "act of war," according to the Wall Street Journal. In late June of this year, WSJ reported that Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, released information alleging the U.S. government was hacking Chinese targets "that include the nation's mobile-phone companies and one of the country's most prestigious universities."
Now that EU offices have been hacked by the U.S. government as well, one must wonder if that was an "act of war" on the part of the United States.
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Pentagon officials emphasized in 2011, however, that not every cyberattack would be considered an act of war unless it threatened American lives, commerce or infrastructure. There would also have to be indisputable evidence that the suspected nation state was involved.
U.S. hacking of China and the EU may not have caused such harm to those countries, but that hasn't stopped EU officials from expressing outrage. "I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices," Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament said. "If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations."
Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister, also chimed in, calling the practice "abominable."
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that "bugging friends is unacceptable."
French President Francois Hollande condemned the practice as well, saying, "We cannot accept this type of behavior between partners and allies." Hollande later said that the hacking was not necessary for anti-terrorism efforts. "We know that there are systems which have to control notably for the threat against terrorism, but I do not think that this is in our embassies or in the EU that this risks exist," he said.
President Obama, however, doesn't seem to think he's done anything wrong.
Apparently, you might be a terrorist if you work for the EU.
h/t @mikko