Tag Archives: Intelligence
11 May 2015
Germany has decided to limit its cooperation in joint intelligence efforts with the United States. The decision comes in the wake of revelations of US spying on European partners and signals a breach in the long-standing information sharing partnership between the two nations. For the United States, the restriction follows a series of ‘blows’ to its intelligence apparatus which have included reconsideration of its drone programme, a renewal of the Patriot Act, and a recent ruling by the Appeals Court that its practice of surveillance data collection was illegal. (more…)
Source: The New York Times | Germany Limits Cooperation With U.S. Over Data Gathering
3 April 2014
The exchange of information between Dutch intelligence services and the United States National Security Agency (NSA) is no longer taking place entirely outside the public eye. After a graph published in German news magazine Der Spiegel in August 2013 initially seemed to suggest that the NSA had intercepted 1.8 million records of metadata from Dutch phone calls in the period of December 2012 to January 2013, it became clear this February that Dutch intelligence services had gathered these records themselves, and had subsequently shared them with the NSA. This information consisted of metadata records gathered in the context of anti-terrorism and military operations abroad.
A substantial share of Dutch intelligence efforts is directed towards Somalia, and millions of Somali phone calls have been intercepted from both the Dutch town of Burum and Dutch navy ship HMS Rotterdam. The Netherlands has been collecting this information in order to support the Dutch contribution to the navy missions combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden. The (meta)data is shared with the NSA (who do not have access to Somali telephone traffic) and in return the US has provided the Netherlands with technical support needed to intercept local telephone traffic from the HMS Rotterdam.[1] (more…)
8 March 2013
On 5 March, a human rights trial began in Argentina to investigate the crimes committed during the so-called ‘Operation Condor‘, involving six states, in response to the populist and socialist movements emerging throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.
The six participating states were Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. The operation resulted in tens of thousands of people being kidnapped, tortured and killed by military regimes across the continent. Those who fled repression in one state were often targeted in another state. Al Jazeera quotes from a United States (US) intelligence report from 1976: ‘Intelligence representatives from Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina decided at a meeting in Santiago early in June to set up a computerised intelligence data bank – known as “Operation Condor”…’ Al Jazeera also notes that Operation Condor was executed with knowledge of the United States.
Source: Al Jazeera | Tracing the shadows of 'Operation Condor'
26 February 2013
Al Jazeera has published a report detailing involvement of the United Kingdom (UK) in drone attacks by the United States (US). The report states that the UK has been providing locational intelligence in order to assist US drone operators carrying out strikes in Pakistan, and that it has granted General Electric export licenses for products integral to the production of Predator drones.
Source: Al Jazeera | Foreign complicity in the drone war