UK Spied on Foreign Politicians at G20 Summit: Leaked Docs

And the NSA was spying on Dmitry Medvedev
By Ruth Brown,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 16, 2013 4:58 PM CDT
UK Spied on Foreign Politicians at G20 Summit
President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, center, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, right, smile during a group photo at the G20 Summit in London.   (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

Looks like it isn't just the US government snooping on phone calls: The Guardian says it has leaked documents that show the British government monitored the computers and intercepted phone calls of foreign politicians and officials who attended the 2009 G20 summit in London. According to the documents, the GCHQ intelligence agency set up Internet cafes running email interception and key-logging software, monitored emails and calls on delegates' Blackberrys, and had 45 analysts tracking who was phoning who at the summit at any given time. One document specifically identifies Turkish finance minister Mehmet Simsek as a target

The Guardian has also revealed that the NSA was spying on then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the summit, according to a report leaked by Edward Snowden. The report shows the US spy base at RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire intercepted Russian communications just hours after Medvedev and Obama met for the first time. The timing of these leaks couldn't be better: The G8 summit starts in Northern Ireland tomorrow, and all the nations attending were also at the 2009 summit. Awkward. (More GCHQ stories.)

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