The British newspaper Independent has made a major revelation: it has published, citing “documents obtained by Edward Snowden from the American National Security Agency” (NSA), the existence of a secret British station for mass interception of telecommunications and Internet traffic throughout the Middle East. This station, part of a wider surveillance network with a total cost of one billion pounds, was put into operation during the days of David Miliband at the helm of British diplomacy and is based in a location that the newspaper, for security reasons, avoids naming, but is considered extremely important, due to the access it offers to the undersea fiber optic networks of the region. The collected data is forwarded to Cheltenham, headquarters of the British surveillance agency GCHQ, and is mostly shared with the American NSA.
This revelation is notable for three reasons: first, because it shifts the focus of attention on the activities of the Anglo-American services to the already volatile and in many ways “current” region of the Eastern Mediterranean. Second, because it is the first leak in the context of the “Snowden affair”, which is published in the Independent and not in its competitor the Guardian or the Washington Post . And third and most importantly, because Snowden himself states that he is not the source of this specific leak.
The complete material that the American fugitive obtained from the NSA is, as has been stated, in the hands of only three people: Snowden himself, the Rio de Janeiro-based American former lawyer and current Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, and the Berlin-based American award-winning documentary producer (and informal coordinator of the trio) Laura Poitras.
Therefore, Greenwald's post on the Guardian website (a few hours after the Independent's publication) under the title "Snowden: the British government is now leaking documents for itself" is particularly significant. In it, the 30-year-old fugitive states that he never collaborated with Independent journalists and claims that the source of the leak in question can only be the British government itself, in its attempt to discredit, as damaging to national security, what has already been leaked by Snowden and his collaborators to the Guardian and the Washington Post. The same statement emphasizes: "the journalists with whom I have collaborated have been, at my request, particularly careful to reveal only what the public should know and not information that could put any individual at risk.".
For his part, Greenwald believes that the leak to the Independent is an attempt by the British government to divert attention from the abusive invocation of anti-terrorism legislation for the nine-hour detention and questioning of his Brazilian partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport (coming from Berlin and heading to Rio) and the seizure of all his equipment. Indeed, British police have announced that they are conducting terrorism investigations into the documents in Miranda’s possession, the publication of which “could threaten lives”. As it turns out…
Greenwald also refutes the rival paper's claim that the Guardian's director agreed with British authorities to "restrict" coverage of Snowden's leaks. It is recalled that recently, in the basement of the Guardian's offices in London, a paradoxical (and seemingly pointless in the age of digital technology) "ceremony" of the destruction of the hard drives containing Snowden's files took place, in the presence of British security services, in order for the newspaper not to be forced to allow access to the disputed data, under British legislation on preventive censorship.
Unlike the United States (which forced President Obama to maneuver, make reassuring denials, and take corrective measures, such as appointing a panel of experts to oversee the NSA), Britain, the country with the world's largest number of closed-circuit cameras per capita, has a much looser framework for surveillance of intelligence agencies, and much greater scope for shielding them through restrictions on information. The White House spokesman himself acknowledged that similar supervised destruction of hard drives would be unthinkable in his own country.
However, beyond the issues of political freedoms, the leak to the Independent, if and as long as the speculations of Snowden and Greenwald are valid, has great importance from a security perspective, and even with implications for Greek interests.
Because, despite the "discretion" of the Independent's officials in naming the location of the controversial monitoring station, it is obvious that the only location that could offer secure facilities, proximity to the Middle East and access to the Mediterranean's undersea cables are the British "sovereign bases" in Cyprus.
Pointing them out as a crucial surveillance hub for the “war on terror” in the entire region is almost an “invitation to terrorist retaliation”. Those prone to conspiracy theories would see this as an ideal recipe for a more intense involvement of the EU countries in the Syrian crisis, but also for “uniting” the two communities of Cyprus against a newly emerging external threat. And in any case, given the experience of the British side in black flag operations (the most recent being the arrest in September 2005 in Basra, after the murder of two Iraqi police officers, British soldiers disguised as Arabs), Nicosia and Athens should exercise the utmost caution.
Source:www.capital.gr
