In Italy, NSA Tracked 46 Million Phone Calls
By Countercurrents.org
29 October, 2013
Countercurrents.org
In Italy, the US intelligence agency NSA bugged 46 million phone calls in a month, said digital library host Cryptome. The report is the latest in the revelations that the NSA tapped hundreds of millions of phone lines across Europe. [1]
Cryptome also reported that during the same period, the NSA monitored 361 million phone calls in Germany, 70 million in France, 61 million in Spain, and 1.8 million in the Netherlands.
With the aid of its Boundless Informant data analysis and visualization system, the agency tracked 124.8 billion calls worldwide in that period.
The Italian snooping, between Dec. 10, 2012 and Jan. 8, 2013, reportedly did not appear to track the content of calls but rather telephony metadata, including the origin and duration of the calls.
The alleged monitoring of citizens’ phone calls follows an article in the Italian weekly, L’Espresso, which claimed that US intelligence had monitored Italian telecoms networks, targeting the government and companies as well as suspected terrorists.
Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) also reportedly monitored telephone, Internet and email traffic carried through three undersea fiber-optic cables in Italy as a part of its Tempora program.
"In this mass collection, our secret services had a role," the publication cited Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who helped publish leaked documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as saying.
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said Thursday that the alleged monitoring of Italian telecommunications by US and British intelligence would be both "inconceivable and unacceptable."
Letta questioned US Secretary of State John Kerry about the reported bugging during talks in Rome on Wednesday.
Ahead of an EU summit Friday, Letta said: "Obviously, all checks should be done, but we want the whole truth. It's not acceptable or conceivable that there are activities of this kind.”
In regards to the Cryptome report, Italian intelligence agencies had no information on the alleged monitoring and were unable to confirm it had taken place.
A statement released by an Italian parliamentary committee tasked with state security, however, said there was a difference between “spying” and "monitoring.”
“There is no evidence that the United States is spying on Italian citizens,” the statement from the Parliamentary Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services and for State Secret Control read.
The committee said that agreements on cooperation in the security sphere precluded the possibility that either side would spy on each other.
“The implementation of such activities would be a threat to national security,” it said.
The revelation is part and parcel of the deepening scandal over the United States vast spying apparatus.
Last week, the Germany daily Der Spiegel reported that Washington was directly spying on least 35 world leaders, including several US allies.
A coalition of more than 20 countries led by Brazil and Germany are now pushing for a UN resolution condemning the US for its “indiscriminate” wiretapping and “extra-territorial” surveillance. The countries are also calling for “independent oversight” of electronic monitoring.
An earlier report [2] said:
Everyday communications of Italians are also on the watch list of the US NSA, revealed a new report published by Corriere della Sera.
Italy’s spy watchdog COPASIR has recently learned details of large-scale monitoring of Italians by the NSA, according to a report published by Corriere della Sera.
COPASIR stands for Parliamentary Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services and for State Secret Control, and is tasked with overseeing the activities of Italy’s own spy agencies. The body has free access to intelligence agencies' offices and documents and has the authority to overcome judicial and banking secrecy.
In order to confirm the snooping on Italians, the committee members had to go to the United States and meet with US intelligence agency directors, as well as with congressional committee chairs.
A delegation of parliamentarians from the COPASIR confirmed their concerns regarding the extent of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program during an official visit to the US three weeks ago, the media said. As part of the program, phone calls and computer communications of “millions of Italians” are reportedly being gathered.
Moreover, Corriere della Sera added that the implications extended to “a monitoring network that started years ago and is still active,” of which the Italian government and spy agencies might have been well aware of.
Such discoveries have prompted uneasy questions to officials, with leading members of COPASIR now seeking clarification from the government, and reportedly awaiting the junior minister for the intelligence services, Marco Minniti, to visit the committee’s offices on Wednesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Italian intelligence sources quoted in the report rushed to justify the surveillance activities of their partners.
The acquisition of the sensitive private information “has as its sole aim the fight against terrorism,” one source was quoted as saying, while another denied that the NSA’s spying ever breached Italy’s sovereignty.
“We have never had any evidence that this kind of monitoring might have involved political spying on Italian public figures. All our investigations into any such eventuality have proved negative,” the source maintained.
However, such explanations did not satisfy COPASIR, nor did the NSA deputy director’s promise of “a complete overview of communications to and from the United States.”
According to the Italian media, the committee member Claudio Fava from Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) party, was “openly perplexed” as he commented on such statements.
“It’s a data trawling system based on various sensors. US intelligence experts explained that their main concern was to comply with American data protection laws and intervene to safeguard national security. Whether this conflicts with other countries’ laws is of no concern to them but it should be to us,” Fava was quoted as saying.
Another COPASIR member, Felice Casson of the Democratic Party (PD), said that the replies the committee received from top Italian intelligence officials were “far from reassuring.”
“It is clear that the United States has acquired information on individuals and institutions across Europe. What concrete elements exist to rule out that this has happened to politicians and institutions in Italy?” Casson questioned.
Leading Democratic Party (PD) politician Ettore Rosato also demanded an explanation from the government, saying that “a few months ago, when the first [NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s] revelations emerged, both the prime minister, Enrico Letta, and the foreign minister, Emma Bonino, professed astonishment at what came out.”
So far, the documents obtained by various world media from the former NSA contractor Snowden have revealed that the Italian embassy in Washington was subject to spying along with the diplomatic missions of other countries. Italian intelligence sources have been careful to deny the claims only “off the record,” Corriere della Sera says.
Right before the NSA scandal emerged, the collaboration between Italian and American intelligence services was “at its peak,” and, according to the media, included sharing of communications through the SIGINT interception system. However, such cooperation appeared to have been justified by the ongoing allied wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the search for western hostages there, the media adds.
But in the wake of recent revelations on the US spying activities in France, which triggered a media frenzy and public outrage, the media speculates Italy may find it difficult to maintain the same “stance” towards the NSA programs.
European lawmakers blast US
Citing Reuters a Washington, October 28 datelined RIA Novosti report said:
European lawmakers in Washington on Monday blasted the US in the wake of reports of massive US surveillance activities against its allies, including alleged eavesdropping by US intelligence on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Confidence is vanished,” Elmar Brok, a German member of an EU Parliament delegation visiting the US capital this week, said after meeting with members of the US Congress on Monday to discuss the alleged surveillance, reported.
The White House has been scrambling into damage-control mode in the aftermath of the disclosures about the surveillance dragnet, including allegations that the NSA tapped Merkel’s mobile phone and conducted extensive spying in Spain, Italy and France.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at the daily briefing Monday that US president Barack Obama has ordered a review of the surveillance program to be completed by the end of the year in an attempt to balance security needs against privacy concerns.
Carney declined to discuss specific allegations regarding the US government snooping, saying Washington was discussing the matter.
Carney did not say whether the United States had monitored Merkel’s communications in the past.
Citing unidentified US officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the White House ordered the NSA to halt the wiretapping of some 35 foreign leaders’ communications after it learned of the practice this summer.
The European Parliament delegation met with US lawmakers behind closed doors Monday on Capitol Hill, a meeting that addressed restoring trust between Washington and its allies abroad, according to US Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
“It started to identify some of the differences that we have that we’re going to have to bridge. That’s a good thing,” Rogers was quoted by Reuters as saying. “That’s a good start and that’s why we’ve pledged to take a delegation back to Brussels to follow up on this conversation.”
Claude Moraes, a British member of the EU delegation who is leading the inquiry into mass US surveillance, said Monday that alleged US spying “is not a cosmetic situation for us,” ABC News reported.
“We believe that this disconnection that’s going on suggests that perhaps there isn’t sufficient [U.S.] appreciation … for the lack of privacy that EU citizens feel for this activity,” ABC News quoted Moraes as saying.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry said Monday that it had summoned the US ambassador to the country, James Costos, to clarify information relating to NSA surveillance activities.
The announcement followed a report by Spain’s El Mundo newspaper Monday stating that the NSA had monitored more than 60 million telephone conversations in Spain between Dec. 10 and Jan. 8. The reported was based on documents leaked by fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, El Mundo reported.
Source:
1. RT, Oct 28, 2013, “NSA tracked 46mln Italian phone calls – report”, http://on.rt.com/nxhc5s
2. RT, Oct 23, 2013, “NSA's Italy op exposed: ‘Millions’ of private communications intercepted with govt awareness”, http://on.rt.com/nmtgcj
Comments are moderated