The US National Security Agency (NSA), which is responsible for spying on communications worldwide, secured legal approval in 2010 to target 193 countries, with the exception of four English-speaking countries, including Britain, according to today’s “Washington Post.” According to the newspaper, both Greece and Cyprus are on the list of countries being monitored.
The American newspaper secured from former NSA advisor Edward Snowden 2010 justice documents, which grant the NSA permission to monitor communications in a list of countries that were deemed to present a vital interest for the American intelligence service.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the EU and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are also among the legitimate targets of the NSA. However, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the four other countries that belong to the group of “Five Eyes”, together with which the United States has very close cooperation relationships in the intelligence field, are specifically excluded from this list.
The granting of this legal approval, which was given by the Fisc, the secret supervisory court of the actions of intelligence services abroad, and was valid for one year, does not mean that the espionage activities of the NSA had a permanent target on governments or organizations in these 193 countries, but only that this American service legally had the capability to operate.
The legal approval also allowed the NSA to intercept every communication “regarding” these targets, which alarms the advocates of individual freedoms in the US, as such a practice could include email messages of American citizens that referred to or were related to any foreign target. American law generally provides greater protection to the private lives of Americans than ’ that of foreigners.
On Friday, the director of intelligence released the first transparency report documenting the volume of NSA wiretapping. In 2013, the NSA had nearly 90,000 targets, with each target corresponding to a person, group or organization.
A reform of the NSA's phone surveillance program in the US is being drafted in Congress, but it does not foresee any change to the programs abroad.
