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US To Be Questioned By UN Over NSA Report

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Verizon special service technician Mark Rose adjusts cables attached to a framework in a Verizon network room at the Main Post Office in New York.
Verizon special service technician Mark Rose adjusts cables attached to a framework in a Verizon network room at the Main Post Office in New York.
The United Nations said on Monday, August 25, that it plans to contact the United States over a report that the U.S. National Security Agency bugged its New York headquarters and warned that countries are expected to respect the world body’s diplomatic inviolability.

Citing secret U.S. documents obtained by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the United States succeeded in gaining access to the internal U.N. video conferencing system in 2012.

“We’re aware of the reports and we intend to be in touch with the relevant authorities on this,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.

He said well established international law, like the 1961 Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations, protected functions of the United Nations, diplomatic missions and other international organizations.

“Therefore member states are expected to act accordingly to protect the inviolability of diplomatic missions,” said Haq.

Der Spiegel also said the European Union and the U.N.’s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], were among those targeted by U.S. intelligence.

According to the documents, the NSA runs a bugging program in more than 80 embassies and consulates worldwide called “Special Collection Service.”

“The surveillance is intensive and well organized and has little or nothing to do with warding off terrorists,” wrote Der Spiegel.

On other related matters, it has been reported that U.S. intelligence officials told reporters that in 2011 the NSA discovered that it had inadvertently collected thousands of communications between U.S. citizens under a program aimed at monitoring foreign communications. The agency revealed its discovery to a secret court that oversees the NSA’s activities, which ordered the agency to revise the program to keep domestic communications from being mixed in with overseas communications.

But in an 85-page ruling issued in October 2011, Judge James Bates concluded that the government had engaged in a pattern of misleading statements when it sought authorization to conduct the program. Judge Bates also suggested the NSA may have violated the U.S. constitution’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures”

The NSA destroyed the information after determining it was mistakenly collected.

Intelligence officials told reporters they declassified the documents to show the NSA was not willingly eavesdropping on Americans’ private communications.

U.S. lawmakers are demanding more oversight of the agency and are preparing legislation that would curb U.S. surveillance operations.

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