NSA, UK agency ‘targeted Israel prime minister, EU officials’
LONDON » Newspaper reports say the latest documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor and former Waipahu resident Edward Snowden show that British and American intelligence agencies monitored the communications of hundreds of targets in some 60 nations, including an Israeli prime minister and European officials.
The Guardian newspaper reported today that one 2009 document showed that Britain’s eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, worked with the U.S.’s NSA to target an email address belonging to Israel’s Ehud Olmert.
Other prominent targets included a top European Union official responsible for competition policy, German government communications and the Thales group, a defense company partly owned by the French government.
If the reports are true, an EU spokeswoman said today that the U.S. and British actions were "unacceptable and deserve our strongest condemnation."
"This is not the type of behavior that we expect from strategic partners, let alone from our own member states," said the spokeswoman, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen.
Britain is one of the EU’s 28 member nations.
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The Guardian report said the U.N. development program and the children’s charity UNICEF, as well as several unnamed African heads of state, were also among the spy agencies’ targets.