The Snowden leaks continue to put the US government in a very difficult position. The country’s premier intelligence agency, NSA, not only tapped into the emails of former Mexican President and the phone calls of German Chancellor, it also apparently collected data on 60 million phone calls in Spain, cites a new report.
The report has been penned down by The Guardian’s Glen Greenwald, who has been the primary person revealing the details of Edward Snowden documents. It would appear that Greenwald and his paper decided to divide the treasure-trove of these documents into two portions: domestic surveillance and foreign surveillance.
In the first phase, The Guardian unearthed how NSA has been involved in spying on the US citizens and collecting data on them. While that hit a raw nerve domestically, the US government has been reluctant in condemning such actions of the agency and has, rather, tried to justify them.
But now, the second phase of the leaks is snowballing into an international issue. These leaks show the extent of NSA’s surveillance on the citizens and leaders of other countries. A new story by Greenwald, due to be published in Spanish paper El Mundo, reveals that NSA collected data on 60 million phone calls in Spain back in December 2012. The surveillance period during which this data was collected lasted some 30 days.
In other words, the agency indiscriminately collected data on the citizens of another country, which is clearly illegal. Thanks to these, and earlier leaks about NSA’s international surveillance, many countries are now lining up to push for a UN resolution dealing with the issue. The said resolution aims to update the international protection of privacy rights so that agencies such as NSA be barred from illegally monitoring citizens and leaders of other countries. One hopes that this resolution gets the requisite support and puts an end to the Orwellian nightmares spelled out in Snowden leaks.
Courtesy: The Atlantic Wire
Source: Glen Greenwald
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