Europe Fuming: NSA Bugged, Spied on European Union Offices

By Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Fidelius Schmid and Holger Stark. America’s NSA intelligence service allegedly targeted the European Union with its spying activities. According to SPIEGEL information, the US placed bugs in the EU representation in Washington and infiltrated its computer network. Cyber attacks were also perpetrated against Brussels in New York and Washington.

Information obtained by SPIEGEL shows that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) not only conducted online surveillance of European citizens, but also appears to have specifically targeted buildings housing European Union institutions. The information appears in secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that SPIEGEL has in part seen. A “top secret” 2010 document describes how the secret service attacked the EU’s diplomatic representation in Washington.

The document suggests that in addition to installing bugs in the building in downtown Washington, DC, the European Union representation’s computer network was also infiltrated. In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and internal documents on computers.

The attacks on EU institutions show yet another level in the broad scope of the NSA’s spying activities. For weeks now, new details about Prism and other surveillance programs have been emerging from what had been compiled by whistleblower Snowden. It has also been revealed that the British intelligence service GCHQ operates a similar program under the name Tempora with which global telephone and Internet connections are monitored. Read more from this story HERE.

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New Warning: ‘Totalitarianism’ On Way

By F. Michael Maloof. Europeans are beginning to express increasing alarm over the Obama administration and the extent of electronic snooping it has been conducting on people around the world, including Americans, and are proposing heavy penalties on U.S. internet networks if they’re caught, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

“Is Barack Obama a friend?” asks one commentary in the highly regarded German magazine Der Spiegel.

“Revelations about his government’s vast spying program call the assumption into doubt,” it said. “The European Union must protect the continent from America’s reach for omnipotence.”

This feeling was further underscored on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s recent appearance in Berlin. The people who turned out for his speech were just a fraction of those who saw the one the president gave in Berlin years ago.

Der Spiegel referred to Obama as the “head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented.” Read more from this story HERE.