I know Americans like to think of themselves as number one. However, when it comes to establishing and running a police state, the United States is still learning from the truth granddaddy of the police state, Great Britain. As it turns out the British government was spying on foreign officials who came to London for the 2009 G20 conference:
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. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.
America may have PRISM but Britain had Closed-Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) on almost every street corner before the National Security Agency’s (NSA) massive surveillance network was a twinkle in a snoopy bureaucrat’s eye. Unfortunately, as the unveiling of PRISM demonstrated, the United States is quickly catching up to its ally across the pond.