North America

US spied on 2010 global summits in Canada, porn habits

337062_NSA spied porn

The US National Security Agency spied on foreign leaders during the G8 and G20 summits in 2010 in Canada, the CBC reported on Wednesday.

Canadian authorities allowed the NSA to use the US Embassy in Ottawa as a command post for a nearly weeklong spying operation, the report said, citing documents shared by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden.

The documents, as reported by the CBC, do not mention the precise targets of the US spying operation but say that plans were “closely coordinated with the Canadian partner.”

A spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Jason MacDonald, late Wednesday said, “We do not comment on operational matters related to national security.”

A Canadian civil liberties group, OpenMedia.ca, quickly objected. “It’s … clear this spying was aimed at supporting US policy goals during a highly contentious summit,” executive director Steve Anderson said in a statement. “This is sure to cause huge damage to Canada’s relationships with our other G20 partners.”

A separate report by the Huffington Post has disclosed that the US super spy agency also has been monitoring online sexual activity and visits to pornographic websites of individuals the agency considered “terror suspects,” in order to harm their reputation.

However, none of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots, according to the documents also released by Snowden. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States, the report said.

“The NSA scandal turns a dangerous corner,” Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, wrote on Twitter after reading the Huffington Post report. “I bet Washington is full of nervous people.”

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of ACLU, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. “It’s important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused — the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone.”

US officials have in the past used similar tactics against civil rights leaders, labor movement activists and others to tarnish their reputation.

The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, collected information centered on sex to harass among others, Martin Luther King Jr., a black clergyman, activist and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

The latest revelations come as the European Union has threatened to halt a data-sharing pact with the United States because of recent revelations about Washington’s spying scandal.

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