WASHINGTON — Electronic snooping by US spy agencies included the interception of top-secret communications of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a G20 summit in 2009, according to a report yesterday based on leaked documents.
The National Security Agency briefing papers show that its agents intercepted Medvedev’s communication on the same day he met with President Obama in London on the sidelines of the summit, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
The documents, which were provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, indicate NSA snoops believed they had likely discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted.”
The information leaked to The Guardian also shows that the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ hacked into foreign diplomats’ phones and e-mails during international conferences hosted in the UK.
The Brit spy agency even set up a fake Internet cafe in an effort to bug diplomats.
“The diplomatic fallout from this could be considerable,” said British academic Richard J. Aldrich.
It was not completely clear how Snowden would have had access to the British intelligence data while working as a contractor for the NSA.
The new revelations by Snowden yet expand the type of US secrets he’s willing to divulge. Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contract worker, shocked Americans earlier this month by revealing a secret program to collect vast amounts of their phone and Web data.
President Obama is headed to a meeting with Medvedev’s successor, President Vladimir Putin, at the G8 summit this week.
Obama plans to take to the bully pulpit soon to make his case for the surveillance to the nation, said White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “The president welcomes a public debate on these questions because he does say, and he will say again in the days ahead, that we have to find the right balance,” he said.