When the Americans spy on the EU behind NATO walls (update)

(BRUSSELS2) The Americans were watching the European Union in particular. This is detailed in a "top secret" NSA paper, dating from September 2010, held by Edward Snowden, and revealed this weekend by the German weekly Der Spiegel. They were not the only ones, certain embassies of several European countries (France, Italy, Greece, etc.) were also listened to in an overall plan, as the British daily completes. The Guardian, this Monday (July 1).

Via the US delegations to the Justus Lipsius...

US intelligence had succeeded in penetrating the computer system of the European Union delegation in Washington like that at the UN (New York). And, through them, the NSA succeeded in infiltrating the EU's internal computer network, thus being able to read documents and emails. The Americans had also infiltrated the computer system of the Council of Ministers of the EU. For more than five years, EU security experts have detected several unanswered calls believed to come from a remote maintenance center in the Justus Lipsius building.

... behind NATO buildings

The tracing of the calls made it possible to trace them to Evere... to NATO headquarters. The telephone attacks apparently came from a telecommunications system, installed in the NATO compound and used by NSA experts.

 The embassies of the Member States also

The embassies of several European countries (France, Italy, Greece, etc.) were also monitored, reveals the British daily The Guardian, in a vast overall plan targeting 38 embassies and missions established in the USA. Each receiving a code name. For France, it was "Blackfoot" and "Wabash", the names of Indian tribes. For the European Union, it was "Perdido", a river in Alabama, etc.

Germany and the United Kingdom were not included in this plan. In addition to European missions, the embassies of Turkey, South Korea, India, Mexico, etc., were also targeted. The logic underlying this espionage was sensitivity to Middle Eastern issues, the daily quotes. Among the methods employed is a program implanted in the Cryptofax (*) device used by the EU delegation in Washington.

* Cryptofax - manufactured by the Dutch company Philips - is one of the encryption and data transmission systems commonly used in EU delegations as well as in the various UN missions