ndia’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was included in a top-secret list of six non-U.S. political parties worldwide that the U.S. National Security Agency received official permission to covertly spy upon, according to the latest trove of data released to the media by Edward Snowden, former NSA contractor-turned fugitive whistleblower.
According to documents that Mr. Snowden published via the Washington Poston Monday, the U.S.’ shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court gave the NSA “broad leeway” in conducting surveillance upon not only these six political parties but also a list of 193 foreign governments – including India – and only four countries were off-limits under this programme.
The Post reported that Washington has long adhered to broad “no-spying arrangements” with only the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a group known collectively with the U.S. the “Five Eyes.”
Yet the classified 2010 legal certification given to the NSA by the FISA court suggests the Agency received “a far more elastic authority than previously known,” one that reportedly allowed it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about those targets too.
The documents further revealed that the FISA court authorised the NSA to snoop on the Internet and telephone communications of the World Bank, United Nations, OPEC, and the European Union.
The other five political parties that the NSA had authority to spy upon were Amal of Lebanon, with links to Hezbollah; the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator of Venezuela, with links to FARC; the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; the Egyptian National Salvation Front; and the Pakistan People’s Party.
