NSA surveillanceNSA broke UN video-conferencing encryption, eavesdropped on deliberations
The National Security Agency (NSA) in 2012 broke the encryption which secured the UN internal video conferencing at the organization’s headquarters in New York. Among other things, the NSA discovered that the Chinese secret service was also eavesdropping on the UN.
The UN was on the NSA surveillance list // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
The National Security Agency (NSA) in 2012 broke the encryption which secured the UN internal video conferencing at the organization’s headquarters in New York, Der Spiegel reported Sunday, referring to secret NSA documents.
One of the documents cited says that breaking the encryption allowed the agency to benefit from “a dramatic improvement of data from video teleconferences and the ability to decrypt this data traffic.”
Other revelations in Spiegel’s report:
- The NSA broke the encryption in the summer of 2012 and within three weeks, had increased the number of decrypted communications from twelve to 458.
- The agency on one occasion in 2011 also caught the Chinese secret services eavesdropping on the UN.
- The documents show that after the European Union’s U.S. delegation moved into new offices in New York in September 2012, the NSA began eavesdropping on the organization’s headquarters in an operation codenamed “Apalachee.”
