MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko – The upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York will in all likelihood be awash with surveillance operations, a spokesman for Canada’s Open Media civil liberties non-profit told Sputnik on Thursday.
US media outlets cited former intelligence analysts as saying world leaders may find their calls intercepted and hotel rooms bugged at the annual UNGA next week.
"I think it’s all but certain that the United Nations will be a hive of spying activity, not just from the NSA [National Security Agency] and Five Eyes but from many other spy agencies around the world," David Christopher said.
"Way back in the early 2000s Claire Short, a UK minister who resigned over the Iraq war, revealed that British intelligence had been spying on the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan," the NGO spokesman recounted.
On Wednesday, NBC News cited a top-secret 2007 NSA report of blanket NSA surveillance of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his 143-member delegation to the UNGA.
Open Media’s Christopher observed the "age-old" espionage between nations is not something the global community must look out for.
"I think there's an important distinction to be made between this kind of age-old nations-spying-on-nations activity, and the very grave threat to democracy posed by the Five Eyes' mass surveillance of everyday citizens, which is a relatively much more recent phenomenon," he stressed.
The Five Eyes alliance is a network of US, UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand intelligence agencies that share their monitoring activities over individual, business and government organizations, including the UNGA.
The annual general debate at the UN General Assembly where world leaders are invited to address the global audience is set to take place on September 28-October 3.
