secret surveillance<\/a> activities by the NSA ranks
\n countries according to how much surveillance they are currently
\n undergoing – green for the least and red for the most watched.\n <\/p>\nWhile all EU member states boast variant shades of green, Germany
\n stands out color-coded orange.\n <\/p>\n
The source behind the revelation of the top-secret NSA
\n surveillance program, already referred to as one of the most
\n significant intelligence leaks in US history, was uncovered late
\n last week. 29-year-old Snowden asked The Guardian to reveal his
\n identity, having fled to Hong Kong to escape retaliation by the
\n US authorities.\n<\/p>\n
\n
“The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to
\n intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast
\n majority of human communications are automatically ingested
\n without targeting,\u201d<\/i> he told The Guardian.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cI, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to
\n wire-tap anyone \u2026 even if you are not doing anything wrong, you
\n are being watched and recorded,\u201d<\/i> he added.\n <\/p>\n
The Boundless Informant documents show NSA collecting up to 3
\n billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a
\n 30-day period ending in March 2013, according to The Guardian.
\n The tool reportedly allows users to select a country on a map,
\n view the metadata volume and select details about the collections
\n against this or that state.\n <\/p>\n
Germany’s Interior Ministry had already been in contact with US
\n officials to find out whether there had been any infringement of
\n German citizens’ privacy lately. Chancellor Angela Merkel is due
\n to raise the issue of the NSA’s eavesdropping on Germany with
\n President Barack Obama, who said the monitoring program is a
\n means of defense against terrorism.
\n <\/p>\n
\n Senior European Union officials are also expected to discuss the
\n impact of NSA\u2019s programs on the privacy of EU citizens during a
\n trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin on Thursday.\n <\/p>\n
“This case shows that a clear legal framework for the
\n protection of personal data is not a luxury or constraint, but a
\n fundamental right,”<\/i> European Commissioner for Justice Viviane
\n Reding said.\n <\/p>\n
The European Parliament said it is always firm on data protection
\n within the EU, as well as when negotiating with third countries,
\n including the US.\n <\/p>\n
“It would be unacceptable and would need swift action from the
\n EU if indeed the US National Security Agency were processing
\n European data without permission,”<\/i> Guy Verhofstadt of the
\n parliament’s liberal bloc said.\n <\/p>\n
NSA’s tradition to survey international communities reportedly
\n goes back to the Cold War era, when the agency used monitoring
\n sites in Germany, Britain and other countries to spy on
\n communications within the Soviet Union and its East European
\n allies.\n <\/p>\n
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has meanwhile cancelled his
\n trip to Washington to speak about The Guardian\u2019s latest NSA
\n report.\n <\/p>\n
He assured parliament that accusations that the UK government
\n allegedly used information provided by the Americans to
\n circumvent laws were “baseless.”<\/i>
\n
“Our agencies practice and uphold UK law at all times,”<\/i> he
\n stated, “even when dealing with information from outside the
\n UK.”<\/i>\n <\/p>\n
In an interview with the British newspaper, successful NSA
\n consultant Snowden leaked top-secret documents that revealed the
\n existence of the US National Security Agency\u2019s extensive internet
\n spying program PRISM, which records digital communications and
\n allows for real-time online surveillance of US citizens. PRISM
\n gives US intelligence agencies direct access to files stored on
\n the servers of major internet companies, including Google and
\n Facebook, to identify and target potential terror suspects.
\n <\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany appears to be the most snooped on EU country by the US, the map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency shows. \u2018Boundless Informant\u2019 is among the data disclosed by former CIA contractor and NSA consultant Edward Snowden. The color-coded map of secret surveillance activities by the NSA ranks countries according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}