Foreign politicians and officials who attended the 2009 G20 summit in London had their calls intercepted and computers monitored by the host country's government.

by Nathan Mattise

The impact of Edward Snowden's leaked information now extends beyond the NSA. Today, The Guardian reported that—according to documents uncovered by Snowden—foreign politicians and officials who attended the 2009 G20 summit in London had their calls intercepted and computers monitored by the host country's government.

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the NSA's sister organization in the UK, used "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to spy on visiting diplomats according to The Guardian. Unlike the US spying drama being justified for national security, these G20 documents suggest this surveillance was for simple political gain.

The pure scale of the reported operation is impressive. Fake Internet cafes were set up with e-mail interception programs and key-logging software. Delegate BlackBerrys were monitored for phone call and e-mail information. And a total of 45 analysts had access to 24/7, real time telephone information from summit attendants. The documents apparently go into specific details, as The Guardian reported:

One document refers to a tactic which was "used a lot in recent UK conference, eg G20." The tactic, which is identified by an internal codeword which The Guardian is not revealing, is defined in an internal glossary as "active collection against an e-mail account that acquires mail messages without removing them from the remote server." A PowerPoint slide explains that this means "reading people's e-mail before/as they do."

The documents state that the overall initiative was "very successful" during its six months of operation. The timing of this leak is particularly fitting as the UK is set to host the G8 nations for a conference this week.