Snowden: UK running secret Middle East surveillance base
The latest documents leaked by the US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed that the UK is running a secret spying center in the Middle East. ● Britain runs the secret snooping station in the Middle East to intercept huge numbers of emails, telephone calls and web traffic for the United States and other Western intelligence agencies, The Independent reported. The newspaper, however, has not disclosed the exact location of the station. ● According to the leaked documents, the information extracted from the underwater fibre-optic cables, is passed to Britain's eavesdropping agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and then shared with the US NSA. ● British government claimed the Middle East installation, is a key element in the West’s so-called “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system when it comes to possible attacks. The UK’s secret surveillance base in the Middle East is part of a larger $1.5 billion clandestine electronic operation, codenamed “Tempora,” which includes recordings of telephone calls, the content of email messages, Facebook entries and the personal internet history of users around the world.
Glenn Greenwald/The Guardian: Snowden: UK government now leaking documents about itself ● The NSA whistleblower says: 'I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent.' ● The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies." This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided. That leads to the obvious question: who is the source for this disclosure?
Boing Boing: Snowden denies being source of The Independent's "NSA leak" story exposing UK base