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US ‘bugged’ UN

The National Security Agency bugged the United Nations last year and has been snooping on the conversations of foreign diplomats who work inside its East Side headquarters, a report claims.

The German magazine Der Speigel said yesterday that documents leaked by rogue ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal that the domestic spy agency secretly infiltrated the UN internal video-conference system and cracked its high-tech security system last summer.

“The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!),” Der Spiegel quoted one record as saying.

NSA spooks allegedly began decrypting the supposedly secure video transmissions, which “dramatically increased the data from video phone conferences and the ability to decode the data traffic.”

Within three weeks of defeating the system, the number of decoded communications from inside the United Nations headquarters skyrocketed from 12 to 458, Der Spiegel reported.

It was unclear how much more information has been gathered since then, or what the United States has learned from the intercepted conversations.

The documents that Der Spiegel obtained from Snowden — currently on the lam in Russia — also show that the NSA allegedly bugged foreign governments and institutions, including the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ Vienna-based nuclear watchdog.

The snooping is allegedly part of a worldwide program called the Special Collection Service that targets more than 80 embassies and consulates around the globe.

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

The magazine said Snowden’s files also show that the NSA spied on the European Union’s delegation in New York after it moved to new offices last fall.

Documents that Snowden copied from NSA computers allegedly include architectural plans of the EU mission, its information-technology infrastructure and its computer servers.

Snowden, 30, has been charged with espionage for leaking information about NSA data-collection programs that he stole while working as an analyst for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

He has been on the run since May, when British newspaper The Guardian published a series of reports about NSA data collection based on information he stole while at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Der Spiegel’s exposé comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that NSA officers have for years used the agency’s powerful eavesdropping apparatus to spy on their love interests.

Snowden has been charged with espionage and was recently granted temporary asylum in Russia.

The practice has reportedly been limited to a handful of cases over the past decade, but is so well-known that it’s called LOVEINT, a play on the labels given to various types of intelligence.

For example, SIGINT refers to signals intelligence, or electronic communications, radar and weapons systems, while HUMINT stands for human intelligence, which is gathered through personal spying.

The NSA did not return a request for comment.