The weekend's NSALeak: the NSA has been spying on 60 million Spanish phone calls a month:
The US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored 60 million phone calls in Spain in one month, Spanish media say.
The reports say the latest allegations came from documents provided by the fugitive US analyst Edward Snowden.
They say the NSA collected the numbers and locations of the callers and the recipients, but not the calls' content.
Note that these aren't suspected terrorists; they're just ordinary people. The surveillance isn't targeted; its a dragnet.
Again, there's diplomatic blowback: ambassadors have been summoned and angry public statements made. The US is now apparently worried that its allies' reaction to their spying will affect counter-terrorism cooperation. And meanwhile, we're publicly snuggling up to the criminals, increasing the risk of sharing the diplomatic fallout. We're already being named on lists of countries that spy on their own citizens; how long until our membership of the Five Eyes blows back on us?
Meanwhile, it appears the US elite has finally found something to be outraged about. Mass-spying on Americans, on foreign publics, on foreign leaders is all fine. But the Senate wasn't told about it! Quelle horreur!. Still, if it means this will finally be stopped, I'll take what I can get.
