Beyond Criminals & Terrorists: NSA/GCHQ Targeted Humanitarian Groups

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/20-6

GCHQ and NSA targeted charities, Germans, Israeli PM and EU chief

Beyond Criminals & Terrorists: NSA/GCHQ Targeted Humanitarian Groups
by James Ball and Nick Hopkins
Published on Friday, December 20, 2013 by The Guardian

British and American intelligence agencies had a comprehensive list of surveillance targets that included the EU's competition commissioner, German government buildings in Berlin and overseas, and the heads of institutions that provide humanitarian and financial help to Africa, top-secret documents reveal.

The papers show GCHQ, in collaboration with America's National Security Agency (NSA), was targeting organisations such as the United Nations development programme, the UN's children's charity Unicef and Médecins du Monde, a French organisation that provides doctors and medical volunteers to conflict zones. The head of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) also appears in the documents, along with text messages he sent to colleagues.

The latest disclosures will add to Washington's embarrassment after the heavy criticism of the NSA when it emerged that it had been tapping the mobile phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

One GCHQ document, drafted in January 2009, makes clear that the agencies were targeting an email address listed as belonging to another important American ally – the "Israeli prime minister". Ehud Olmert was in office at the time.

[bemildred]

1. Well, see, when you don't know what you are looking for, you just look at everything.

If you don't look at it all, you don't know what you are missing, if might be the crucial piece of information that you need, it could save the world.


But seriously, this is what happens when you start thinking you are the most important people on the planet, and everything you do is the most important thing going on, and that is how the Pentagon thinks of itself, the most important thing on the planet. Sort of a modern church, something you can worship and obey unquestioningly, like that was a good thing.