Edward Snowden, a former CIA contractor, has been charged with espionage after leaking classified documents that revealed extensive internet and phone surveillance by US and UK intelligence agencies. Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, left the US in late May 2013 before the leaks were published.
The scandal began in early June 2013 when the Guardian reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. The paper published a secret court order directing Verizon to hand over all its telephone data to the NSA on an ongoing daily basis. Subsequent revelations in the Washington Post and Guardian disclosed that the NSA had tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, under a surveillance programme known as Prism. Britain's GCHQ was also accused of gathering information via Prism.
On 21 June, the Guardian reported that GCHQ was tapping fibre-optic cables carrying global communications and sharing vast amounts of data with the NSA. The operation, codenamed Tempora, had been running for 18 months, giving GCHQ the ability to monitor up to 600 million communications every day. Information from internet and phone use was allegedly stored for up to 30 days for analysis.
Further revelations in October 2013, sourced to Snowden, indicated that GCHQ and the NSA had eavesdropped on Italian phone calls and internet traffic, targeting three undersea cables with terminals in Italy. Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta called the allegations "inconceivable and unacceptable". Snowden also told the South China Morning Post that the NSA had led more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including targets in Hong Kong and mainland China.
On 29 June, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA had spied on European Union offices in the US and Europe, citing leaked documents from Snowden. The documents suggested the NSA had conducted electronic eavesdropping in Brussels, where the EU Council of Ministers is located. In October, German media reported that the NSA had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone, prompting the German government to summon the US ambassador.
