Britain and US hacked into Israeli war drones
Snowden leaks show GCHQ and NSA watched in real time as remote aircraft bombed Gaza
BRITISH and US intelligence hacked Israeli drones’ video feeds, allowing them to watch in real time as Israel bombed Gaza and spied on Syria, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
GCHQ and its US counterpart, the NSA, also monitored the drone footage in the hope of getting an early warning if Israel was attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The disclosures are the latest in a series of examples of how the US and Israel profess friendship in public but also spy intensively on each other.
They may heighten tensions between the two countries, which are already at odds over the Iranian nuclear deal and Israel’s settlement policy in the occupied West Bank.
The hacking programme, codenamed Anarchist, also appears to confirm a badly kept secret: that Israeli drones carry missiles and are used for lethal strikes. Israel has never publicly confirmed it has armed drones but the footage appears to show a Heron drone, one of the world’s largest unmanned aircraft, carrying missiles.
Britain, the US and Pakistan are the only other countries thought to have carried out deadly drone strikes.
The data for the hacking programme was collected by a GCHQ monitoring station at RAF Troodos in the mountains of Cyprus. The base is only around 200 miles from Israeli coast.
The hacked feeds were then monitored at RAF Menwith Hill, an NSA base in North Yorkshire, according to The
Intercept, an online publication that has served as a platform to report on the Snowdon leaks.
In at least one instance, according to a report in The Intercept, the hackers were able to access the feed of a manned Israel F-16 fighter jet. The interception was made in January 2008, as Israel exchanged fire in Gaza with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.
A GCHQ report said the interceptions allowed Britain and the US to monitor one of the world’s most volatile regions in real-time. “In times of crisis this access is critical and one of the only avenues to provide up-to-theminute information and support to US and Allied operations in the area,” it said. The US and UK appear to have monitored Israeli drones on several occasions during the 2008-09 Gaza War, in which 13 Israelis and more than a thousand Palestinians were killed.
The hackers were tasked with accessing Israeli drones flying over the Golan Heights but also unmanned aircraft belonging to the Syria regime.
In one case in early 2012, the Anarchist hackers obtained footage from an Iranian-made drone operated by the Assad regime. An accompanying US document said there was “presidential level interest”.
British and American military planners were deeply concerned that Israel might carry out a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear programmes and saw the hacking programme as a way to get an early warning. “Our ability to collect and track and report this activity is important for the initial detection and tip-off for any potential pre-emptive or retaliatory strike against Iran,” said one GCHQ document.
The Foreign Office declined to comment. Israel’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.