Saturday, September 20, 2014

NSA shared Americans’ private communications with Israel: Snowden

9/20/2014

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has accused the United States of routinely passing private and unedited communications of American citizens to Israel.


Snowden told James Bamford from the New York Times that the intercepts included communications of Arabs, and Palestinian-Americans, whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the information.
The material included "unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content,” according to documents leaked by Snowden.
The whistleblower said the data was routinely transferred to the Israeli intelligence organization known as the Unit 8200.
The Israeli intelligence used the info to force the Palestinians into becoming collaborators.
The snooping has been carried out based on a deal between the US spy agency and the Israeli intelligence since 2009.
Snowden began leaking classified intelligence documents in June 2013, revealing the extent of the NSA's spying activities.
He revealed that the spy agency has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans and foreign nationals as well as political leaders around the world.
Following the revelations, Snowden fled the United States to avoid espionage charges.
In August 2013, Russia granted him asylum for one year and last month it granted him permission to stay in the country until August 2017.
A US Department of Defense report said the extent of damage to the US national security from the leak of secret NSA documents by Snowden is staggering.


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