A long article published in last weekend’s New York Times revealed that Israel is a high-priority target for NSA spy operations. Scott Shane wrote of documents showing NSA’s “tracking of ‘high priority Israeli military targets,’ including drone aircraft and the Black Sparrow missile system”. It is the latest tantalizing glimpse into the complicated intelligence relationship between Israel and America
The NSA papers revelations continue:
In a Le Monde article co-written with a French journalist, Greenwald revealed that Israel had almost certainly been behind a May 2012 hacking attempt on the French president’s network. According to an unnamed expert quoted in Greenwald and Jacques Follorou’s article, the attack “was not part of an act of sabotage… [but aimed] to be permanently installed invisibly at the centre of the Presidency”.
Read the rest of my article over at MEMO.
On the latest Greenwald-Snowden revelations:
This means Israel is spying on America – its biggest ally — more than most other states in the world. If this was a Facebook friendship, it would be listed as “It’s complicated”.
My new opinion/analysis piece on the Israeli connection to the revelations about the NSA’s massive internet spying program:
Because these are only rough indicators we are into uncertain territory here, but if Israel has access to PRISM, one would expect a lot more interceptions of Syrian and Palestinian internet traffic.
One possibility is that Israel runs its own version of PRISM, built using very similar technology from companies such as Verint and Narus, presumably snooping mostly on Palestinian, Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese traffic. But if it does have such a system, it is likely to be spying all over the world.
Read the whole thing over at the Middle East Monitor, who will be publishing me more often.