US 'spied on future Pope Francis during Vatican conclave'
NSA spied on the future Pope Francis before and during the Vatican conclave at which he was chosen to succeed Benedict XVI
The Telegraph
6:35PM GMT 30 Oct 2013
[The unwarranted indiscriminate snooping and spying on phone and electronic conversations by the United States on anyone it chooses appears to be expanding by the month. Now we learn that the US spied on the Vatican during the time of selecting a new pope. Ed]
The National Security Agency spied on the future Pope
Francis before and during the Vatican
conclave at which he was chosen to succeed Benedict XVI, it was claimed on
Wednesday. The American spy agency monitored telephone calls made to and from the
residence in Rome where the then Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio stayed
during the conclave, the secret election at which cardinals chose him as
pontiff on March 13.
The claims were made by Panorama, an Italian weekly news magazine, which said
that the NSA monitored the telephone calls of many bishops and cardinals at
the Vatican in the lead-up to the conclave, which was held amid tight
security in the Sistine Chapel.
The information gleaned was then reportedly divided into four categories — “leadership intentions”, “threats to financial system”, “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights”.
The information gleaned was then reportedly divided into four categories — “leadership intentions”, “threats to financial system”, “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights”.
At that time, Benedict XVI was Pope, suggesting that the Vatican may also have
been monitored during the last few weeks of his papacy.
The allegations follow a report on Cryptome, a website that gathers
intelligence on surveillance and national security, which claimed the US
intercepted 46 million telephone calls in Italy between Dec 10 2012 and Jan
8 January 2013. The monitoring of communications, including emails, continued after Benedict’s
resignation in February and encompassed the election of Pope Francis. “It is feared that the great American ear continued to tap prelates’
conversations up to the eve of the conclave,” the weekly magazine said. It added that there were “suspicions that the conversations of the future Pope
may have been monitored”, but provided no hard evidence or quoted sources
for the claim. . . .
The revelations have seriously strained relations between the US and its European allies and trade partners.
Separately, reports claimed on Wednesday that the NSA secretly tapped into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world, enabling it to collect information from hundreds of millions of user accounts. The NSA’s “acquisitions directorate” sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland, according to The Washington Post. It then analyses the information it gathers with a project called MUSCULAR, which is operated jointly with GCHQ, its British counterpart.
In a statement, Google said it was “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centres, and we are not aware of this activity.” A Yahoo spokesman said: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centres, and we have not given access to our data centres to the NSA or to any other government agency." Gen Keith Alexander, the NSA director, dismissed the report, saying the NSA is “not authorised” to do this and instead must go through a court process”.
The revelations have seriously strained relations between the US and its European allies and trade partners.
Separately, reports claimed on Wednesday that the NSA secretly tapped into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world, enabling it to collect information from hundreds of millions of user accounts. The NSA’s “acquisitions directorate” sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland, according to The Washington Post. It then analyses the information it gathers with a project called MUSCULAR, which is operated jointly with GCHQ, its British counterpart.
In a statement, Google said it was “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centres, and we are not aware of this activity.” A Yahoo spokesman said: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centres, and we have not given access to our data centres to the NSA or to any other government agency." Gen Keith Alexander, the NSA director, dismissed the report, saying the NSA is “not authorised” to do this and instead must go through a court process”.
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