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Once Shocking, U.S. Spying on Its Allies Draws a Global Shrug

April 13, 2023, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/politics/us-spying-allies.html

The last time a trove of leaked documents exposed U.S. spying operations around the world, the reaction from allied governments was swift and severe.

In Berlin, thousands of people protested in the streets, the C.I.A. station chief was expelled, and the German chancellor told the American president that “spying on friends is not acceptable.” In Paris, the American ambassador was summoned for a dressing-down.

That was a decade ago, after an enormous leak of classified documents detailing American surveillance programs by … Edward Snowden. The latest leak of classified documents that appeared online this year, the motive behind which remains unknown, has again illustrated the broad reach of U.S. spy agencies, including into the capitals of friendly countries such as Egypt, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates.

Though the documents mainly focus on the war in Ukraine, they include C.I.A. intelligence briefs describing conversations and plans at senior levels of government in those countries, in several cases attributed to “signals intelligence,” or electronic eavesdropping.

Unlike in 2013, however, U.S. allies appear to be mostly shrugging off the latest examples of apparent spying. So far, the only evident political fallout from the latest leaks has occurred in South Korea, where one classified U.S. document described a debate among senior national security officials about whether to send artillery shells abroad that might wind up in Ukraine, potentially angering Russia.

April 27, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA