Der Spiegel reports NSA hacked Al Jazeera and Russian airline

[mountaineer]

ABC News via Yahoo!News:

By Lee Ferran | ABC News – 17 hrs ago


The U.S. government's shadowy National Security Agency spied on the Arab news network Al Jazeera and the popular Russian airline Aeroflot, according to a new report.

Germany's Der Spiegel reported the NSA hacked Al Jazeera's internal communications system and read communications from "interesting parties" and managed to breach Aeroflot's reservation system.

Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news organization that recently launched an American cable news network, has repeatedly broadcast video and audio messages from terrorist organizations including several from Osama bin Laden. The NSA called hacking into Al Jazeera's communications a "notable success" and listed that target, as well as Aeroflot, as those with "high potential as sources of intelligence," Der Spiegel reported.

READ: NSA Spied on Al Jazeera Communications (Der Spiegel)

The newspaper said their reporting was based on a document passed to them by former NSA contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden. ...

Click on link for rest of story.

[mountaineer]

The real question is, "On whom hasn't the NSA spied? America's actual enemies?"
Oops, that would be two questions. Never mind.

[mountaineer]

Brazil, Mexico ask U.S. to explain if NSA spied on presidents
By Anthony Boadle | Reuters – 13 hrs ago


BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil assailed the United States on Monday after new allegations that Washington spied on President Dilma Rousseff, complaining that its sovereignty may have been violated and suggesting that it could call off Rousseff's planned state visit to the White House next month.

A Brazilian news program reported on Sunday that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on emails, phone calls and text messages of Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, a disclosure that could strain Washington's relations with Latin America's two biggest nations.

Mexico asked the United States to investigate the allegations, saying they would be a serious violation of its sovereignty if proven true.

Brazil's government, already smarting from earlier reports that the NSA spied on the emails and phone calls of Brazilians, called in U.S. ambassador Thomas Shannon and gave the U.S. government until the end of the week to provide a written explanation of the new spying disclosures based on documents leaked by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

"I expressed to (Shannon) the Brazilian government's indignation over the facts revealed in the documents," Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo said at a news conference.

"From our point of view, this is an inadmissible and unacceptable violation of Brazilian sovereignty," he said.

Figueiredo declined to explicitly say whether the allegations could lead Rousseff to call off her visit to Washington, the only state visit offered by President Barack Obama this year. The trip had been intended to highlight improving U.S.-Brazil ties since Rousseff took office in 2011.

But, in response to a question from reporters about the visit, he said that Brazil's response to the allegations "will depend" on the U.S. explanation.

The report by Globo's news program "Fantastico" was based on documents obtained from Snowden by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro and was listed as a co-contributor to the report.

"Fantastico" showed what it said was an NSA slide dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by Pena Nieto, who was still a Mexican presidential candidate at that time. In the messages, Pena Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.

A separate slide displayed communication patterns between Rousseff and her top advisers, "Fantastico" said, although no specific written passages were included in the report.

Both slides were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be "intelligently" filtered by the agency's secret internet surveillance programs that were disclosed in a trove of documents leaked by Snowden in June, "Fantastico" said. ...


Rest of story at Yahoo! News

[Oceander]

I have to say that it's possible - provided the republicans don't muff it up (I know, rather a fantastic hope) - that Snowden's leaking may substantially isolate Obama from other world leaders and set the stage for a republican President - the next President (again, provided the republicans don't muff it up) - to redeem the US and undo that isolation by being, in part, the Not-Obama President.  Just as Obama started off being the Not-Bush President, and in fact did manage initially to bring other countries back to the US, until his own arrogance, egotism, and ignorance became too evident to ignore any longer and all of his pretty promises of collaboration as equals revealed for the lies they were.

Now if only the republicans/conservatives can take advantage of this situation and - to quote another disgusting democrat - not let a crisis go to waste.

[DCPatriot]

I do not have any problem with them spying on other governments and heads-of-state of same.

That's their job and function.   but it must stop when it comes to American citizens and businesses.

[Oceander]

I do not have any problem with them spying on other governments and heads-of-state of same.

That's their job and function.   but it must stop when it comes to American citizens and businesses.

Neither do I; however, the fiction the world operates under is that every country is strong enough to limit the degree to which other countries are spying on them and when that fiction is revealed for what it is - a fiction - it necessarily engenders the sort of backlash that the mere tacit knowledge that some (unknown) level of spying is always going on.