English translation of the Der Spiegel article


The article on US spying on the other governments and the EU and UN agencies is by Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark that originally appeared in German in Der Spiegel has now appeared in translation..

Just over two weeks ago, Obama made a promise to the world. “The main thing I want to emphasize is that I don’t have an interest and the people at the NSA don’t have an interest in doing anything other than making sure that (…) we can prevent a terrorist attack,” Obama said during a hastily arranged press conference at the White House on August 9. He said the sole purpose of the program was to “get information ahead of time (…) so we are able to carry out that critical task,” adding: “We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that.” Afterward, the president flew to the Atlantic island of Martha’s Vineyard for his summer vacation.

Obama’s public appearance was aimed at reassuring his critics. At the same time, he made a commitment. He gave assurances that the NSA is a clean agency that isn’t involved in any dirty work. Obama has given his word on this matter. The only problem is that, if internal NSA documents are to be believed, it isn’t true.

The classified documents, which SPIEGEL has seen, demonstrate how systematically the Americans target other countries and institutions like the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the UN. They show how the NSA infiltrated the Europeans’ internal computer network between New York and Washington, used US embassies abroad to intercept communications and eavesdropped on video conferences of UN diplomats. The surveillance is intensive and well-organized — and it has little or nothing to do with counter-terrorism. [My italics-MS]

The last sentence is the key takeaway. The US thinks that ‘fighting terrorism’ is the ultimate get-out-jail-free card that enables them to treat the entire world and its various governments and organizations and people as its subjects, to do to them what they will. But woe to anyone or nation who tries to do the same things to the US. That would be an act of war, of course.

Comments

  1. tiberiusbeauregard says

    And to distract public attention from their their crimes, the US government is preparing just another imperialist warfare against just another middle east country.

    This time, american soldiers will fight side by side with radical islamists like Al-Quaeda against a largely secular government that refuses to be terrorised by radical Islam.

    And to close the circle, as sure as nothing else, the comments under this thread will receive special attention by the algorithms used by the american government spies to find out doesn’t like them.

    It’s a joke.

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