14 DAY TRIAL // New reports indicate the NSA has its eyes on a lot of private networks, including that of Google.
The news comes as the Brazilian television network Globo published information regarding the NSA spying on the country’s oil company Petrobras.
In the documents revealed by the television network, coming from Edward Snowden, the NSA had not only targeted the oil company, but also several other important names, such as Google, the SWIFT network and the France Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The SWIFT network is a cooperative that unites over ten thousand banks in 212 countries, providing communications that enable international financial transactions. It basically means all transfers of money between banks across the world can be spied upon.
Also extremely important is the fact that Google was marked as a target in the files. In the slide wearing the headline “Many targets use private networks,” Google’s infrastructure takes up a top priority.
While in other documents Google is mentioned as one of the NSA’s partners, namely in the PRISM files, here, the company’s infrastructure is marked as a target, effectively turning Google into a victim.
Of course, other targets were mentioned in the documents, some of which actually had some relation with terrorism, which the NSA says is its main target.
Greenwald said the names were blacked out because it’s a matter of national security and of responsible journalism. “Nobody doubts that the United States, just as any other country, has the right to spy in order to guarantee national security. But there is much more information on spying on innocents, against people who have nothing to do with terrorism, or on industrial issues, which need to be made public,” he said.
The slides which got aired on television yesterday have been marked as classified. The US has shared the information with the “Five Eyes,” namely the US, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and New Zealand.