The National Security Agency conducted widespread surveillance during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits with the blessing of host country Canada’s government.
Documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show
the US converted its Ottawa embassy into a security command for
six days in June 2010 as world leaders met in Toronto. The covert
operation was known to Canadian authorities, CBC News reported.
The documents do not reveal targets of the espionage by the NSA -
and possibly by its counterpart, the Communications Security
Establishment of Canada (CSEC). The NSA briefing notes say the
operation was "closely co-ordinated with the Canadian
partner."
Ultimately, the documents obtained by CBC do not give exact
specifications of CSEC’s role, if any, in the Toronto spying.
Former Guardian reporter and Snowden’s chosen journalist to
receive the NSA documents, Glenn Greenwald, co-wrote the story
for CBC.
But the documents do spell out that CSEC’s cooperation in the
venture was crucial to ensuring access to telecommunications
systems needed to spy on targets during the summits.
Both NSA and CSEC were implicated, along with British counterpart
GCHQ, for monitoring phone calls and email of foreign leaders and
diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit in London. In addition, it was
recently reported that CSEC hacked into phones and computers at
the Brazilian government’s department of mines. These revelations
also came via documents from Snowden, who has received asylum in
Russia.
The revelations also contradict a statement made by an NSA
spokesman to The Washington Post on August 30, which said that
the US Department of Defense - of which the NSA is is part of -
“does not engage in economic espionage in any domain,
including cyber.”
The NSA briefing document says the operational plan at the 2010
summit included "providing support to policymakers.”
The Toronto summit was chock full of major economic issues
following the 2008 recession. Measures like the eventually-nixed
global bank tax were strongly opposed by the US and Canadian
governments. Further banking reform, international development,
countering trade protectionism and other issues were on the
docket - and on NSA’s list of main agenda items in the aim of
supporting “US policy goals.”
The partnerships by some Western spying arms at the Toronto and
London summits, not to mention other stories that have come out
based on the Snowden documents, call attention once again to the
“Five Eyes” surveillance coalition among Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, the UK and the US.