NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Claims Britain’s GCHQ Spied on Diplomats During 2009 G20 Summit. (Photo credit: gordasm)

NSA leaker Edward Snowden is now implicating the British government in his 15 minutes of fame. The Guardian newspaper is reporting the Government Communications Headquarters, the equivalent of NSA, spied on diplomats and foreign officials during the 2009 G20 summit. This revelation comes 24 hours in advance of Monday’s G8 summit in London. If ever a time we need a real-life James Bond to put an end to this madness, it’s now.

Edward Snowden, who I consider to be a traitor, leaked documents to the Guardian that states officials “had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts.” The newspaper also claims “some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.” It appears that the surveillance was approved by high-ranking officials under then-prime minister Gordon Brown’s watch.

The recent revelations about the NSA surveillance differs from the alleged British surveillance because the U.S. targeted terrorist plots, while the British agency was eavesdropping on officials for the purposes of gaining the upper hand in diplomatic negotiations, with Turkey and South Africa targeted in particular.

According to the Guardian, the sophisticated spying system included:

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates’ use of computers;

• Penetrating the security on delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

No wonder the British government said Edward Snowden wasn’t welcome in their country. I can’t stress enough that I don’t consider him a whistleblower by any means. He’s a traitor, plain and simple. Heads should be rolling at the CIA and NSA. How he got security clearance is amazing. I stand by my position that judging from Edward Snowden’s short tenure as a Booz Allen contractor at NSA, his mission was to get his hand on documents to leak. The shame is how he was able to get his hands on those documents, since he was obviously a low-level employee.