Monday, October 21, 2013
NSA hacked Mexican president's email, according to latest leaks
The United States has for years
carried out extensive surveillance and eavesdropping operations
targeting Mexico's government, according to new evidence obtained by Spiegel Online.
The German publication says its information comes directly from
classified intelligence leaked by Edward Snowden. Chief among the
allegations is that the NSA successfully infiltrated the public email
account of Mexico's former president, Felipe Calderon.
Once the agency gained access, according to Spiegel,
a top secret May 2010 report reveals that it monitored "diplomatic,
economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight
into Mexico's political system and internal stability." The NSA's
operatives accomplished this by exploiting "a key mail server in the
Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network," and
additional documents suggest the US has continued to take advantage of
this security hole — it's described as a "lucrative source" of
intelligence.
The NSA secretly gained access to a wealth of data on Mexico's government
In the summer of 2012, the NSA
would begin monitoring the communications of then-presidential candidate
Enrique Peña Nieto and "nine of his close associates." In all, it
intercepted 85,489 text messages from the politician's inner
circle; Peña Nieto is now Mexico's president. In a report detailing the
spying, NSA analysts trumpeted the technology it used for the snooping,
saying it "might find a needle in a haystack" and could accomplish this
"in a repeatable and efficient way." The NSA's surveillance of wireless
phone calls and text messages in Mexico is reportedly conducted under
the internal code name "Eveningeasel."
Spiegel's report claims that both Mexico and Brazil — which has grown outraged by revelations of NSA surveillance—
remain high priority subjects. The US has put the most focus on
monitoring Mexico's drug trade, political leadership, economic
stability, military prowess, and trade relations, among other areas of
interest. Last month, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff announced plans
to route internet traffic between South America and Europe, bypassing
the US entirely. Officials are also being pressured to pass laws
requiring American companies including Google and Microsoft to store
data on Brazilian users inside the country. When contacted by Spiegel to comment on the report, the NSA provided the following statement
We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. As the President said in his speech at the UN General Assembly, we've begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share.
President Obama in August unveiled new reforms aimed at calming unease over the government's spying both at home and abroad. But several of Obama's proposed solutions, including an NSA review panel,
have been criticized for not going far enough in addressing the
problem. US officials have since admitted that Snowden's leaks have
damaged ties with several countries, though it remains to be seen how
Mexico will react to the latest report.
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