U.S. Intelligence Leaks Shed Light on Unending Surveillance on Allies
According to U.S. officials, several of the documents are authentic and were believed to have been generated between mid-February and early March.
The reported leaks of highly classified documents that have been trending online recently shed light on the extensive spying activities conducted by Washington on its allies and foes alike.
The exposure of such activities has become increasingly common in recent years, and the latest leaks of documents have raised concerns from U.S.-friendly nations involved, while other allies are also conducting damage assessments to determine if their own sources and methods have been compromised. Earlier this month, reports regarding batches of alleged U.S. intelligence documents that were uploaded on social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram
grabbed headlines.
According to U.S. officials, several of the documents are authentic and were believed to have been generated between mid-February and early March. They contain extensive topsecret data related to U.S.-friendly nations including Ukraine, South Korea, and Israel.
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One leaked memo revealed the U.S. spying on one of its major Asian allies, South Korea, through signals intelligence, which involves electronic eavesdropping and communication interception, and the contents included discussions among South Korean officials about whether to provide weapons to Ukraine under the pressure from the United States.
Similarly, Israel, the most important U.S. ally in the Middle East, seems to have also been targeted under Washington’s surveillance network.
Amidst U.S. investigation into the leak, a “top secret” document reveals an alleged revolt by Israel’s top spy service against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul, the Washington Post reported.
The document stated that according to signals intelligence, in February, senior leaders of the Mossad spy service urged officials and citizens to protest the reforms, according to the report.
“If accurate, this is a dramatic change in the procedure by Mossad’s leadership and puts Israel in unprecedented territory,” Natan Sachs, an Israeli scholar at the Brookings Institution, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying.
The recent leak saga is just a glimpse of Washington’s longstanding indiscriminate surveillance of the world.
According to media reports, the U.S. intelligence agencies, with an annual funding of 90 billion U.S. dollars, have sweeping powers to tap electronic communications, run spies and monitor with satellites.