British Spy On World Leaders, Earn Title of World's Worst Hosts

Apparently the UK noticed a while ago that the US was doing piddly little spying on its own citizens , and chuckled gracefully into their afternoon tea at the upstart colonists' antics. Because back in 2009, they apparently decided to up the ante and straight up spy on world leaders who gathered London for the G20 summit. In the latest leak from traitor / hero /missing contractor Edward Snowden to The Guardian :

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

What terrible hosts, those British! You step into the loo and all of a sudden they are bugging your phone. No wonder we dumped their goddam tea into the harbor.

On the other hand, take that, NSA! While you are secretly noting which porn sites terrorists are visiting (JihadJugs.com?) and which recipes Americans are looking up for summer cookouts, the Brits are bringing the big guns to listen in on world leaders!

The Brits didn’t half-ass this spying gig – they had 45 specialists who were able to get real-time information about who was calling who, who Obama was sexting, and other relevant tidbits. How did they do this? Was it by setting up complicated satellite relay systems, or through clever viruses slipped into Blackberrys? Nope:

Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

Haha! Apparently, some folks decided that Ye Olde Internet Café was a great place to check secure email messages. Maybe this espionage thing ain’t as tough as James Bond or that hot chick on USA Network (you know, the one fromCoyote Ugly) makes it out to be. After getting their passwords (Merica#1Bitchez was popular among Yanks), our tea-drinking friends across the pond were able to keep tabs on everyone. Today we are all User1234.

For what nefarious purpose was all this high-tech thievery deployed? World domination? Nuclear codes? Stop a terrorists plot with only 2 seconds left on the explosive device by cutting the red (NOT GREEN) wire? Apparently nothing that interesting:

[T]he analysts' findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: "In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential."

So the Brits spent all this time, energy and money just to see who was with them when negotiating a G20 document? Worst use of espionage EVER. While the G20 may be an important event when world leaders gather to discuss important topics of global policy and cooperation, spying is supposed to be for cool stuff to make an awesome movie out of. There is no way Matt Damon will play a cool spy with this plot. BORING, guys. We fart in your general direction.

As President Bamz and other world leaders gather today in Northern Ireland for this year’s G8 Summit, we can imagine that there will be some awkward questions directed at UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Then again, probably not, because these days everyone seems to be spying on everyone else So the next time you send an email, be sure to say hi to the NSA, the Brits, and everyone else who is monitoring your every move. Hooray technology, or something.

[ The Guardian ]